Page:Celtic migrations (Heron, 1853).pdf/9

 Again for the last four years, the numbers relieved were as follow:—

It will thus be perceived that the number of persons in Ireland on the out-door relief was, during the year ending the 29th of September, 1848, 1,443,042; but, during 1851, it had sunk to 47,914. And, taking into account the numbers of the census of 1851, I consider it certain the entire difference in numbers either emigrated to England or America, or now, by their labour, supply the places of those who have emigrated. And do we regret that our countrymen have escaped from the terrible misery evidenced by this vast number of nearly one million and a-half upon the out-door relief list in 1848, to a land where there is a hope their progress will at last commence? Their life in the pauperised counties and towns of Ireland was but stagnant and hopeless misery. Their dwellings in the country were cabins, inferior to the habitations of any other civilised beings; their dwellings in the towns were in old dilapidated houses. Families slept in the same narrow chamber—at once a cause of disease, and an offence against good manners. The damp, the filth, the vitiated and corrupted vapours arising from want of drainage and ventilation, in periods of epidemics, caused a terrible mortality. In such pestilential abodes, the most robust constitutions were weakened; natures more delicate succumbed; generations were decimated; and the survivors languished through life enerved. The roofless walls of these miserable hovels are now seen all through Ireland; and I sincerely trust that such wretched huts never will be roofed again for human beings, but that if the population again increase, it will be in comfortable houses. The man who lets an unwholesome house to another should be punished more than the man who sells unwholesome bread or meat.

We have next to consider what may be the probable reduction of the population under this pressure.

Ireland is essentially an agricultural country, with the exception of the three northern counties of Antrim, Down and Armagh. Her great towns are partly centres of trade to supply the farmers and their landlords with articles of consumption—partly centres of government, where the legal business of the district is conducted. There are very few towns like Belfast, that live by manufactures. But, whilst the agricultural districts of England do not employ a population of more than one person to every four acres, Ireland, in 1851, still retained a population of one person to every 2¾ acres. I have not time to go through these tables; but I may state their result In order to assimilate the population to the agricultural districts in England, it will require to be reduced to 4,500,000, or two millions below its present amount.