Page:Considerations on the state of Ireland.pdf/2

 still strongly impress every thoughtful mind. I have felt that, at such a time, I could not seek to engage your attention with any mere generalities of social science. It seemed to me that I should best imitate the antecedents of the Society, and best reflect the earnest character of its discussions, if I addressed myself to some of the important questions arising out of the condition of the country. I proceed, therefore, to lay before you a few plain and practical considerations on the present economic circumstances of Ireland, and the measures which appear necessary to ensure her future prosperity.

It is natural that we should first direct our view to the remarkable spectacle of the emigration which is removing so many of our fellow-countrymen to other lands.

This great movement, though its dimensions cannot fail strongly to impress the imagination, we can yet see to be a perfectly natural consequence of economic laws acting under the new conditions of human societies. If in former times the Irish peasant squatted from year to year on his poor little patch of land, or toiled on for miserable wages in a state of chronic semi-starvation, when in other countries he and his children might have earned, with no greater effort, a comfortable livelihood, it was not because he wished to remain, but because he was unable to go. Often speaking only the Irish language, and without any distinct notion either of the geographical situation, or of the industrial condition of other countries, he was, in the strictest sense of the words, adscriptus glebœ. And, even if he had learned English, and was otherwise fitted to take his place in a new social medium, how was he from his scanty resources to pay the expense of the passage, then no inconsiderable amount?

The two agencies which have set him free are the diffusion of knowledge by the National System of Education, and the reduction of the passage money to America and Australia, by the immense recent development of trade and intercourse between different countries. First of all, in the national schools he learned English. The number of Irishmen who could speak only Irish was estimated in 1822 at two millions; in 1861 it was less than 164,000. Here was one obstacle removed—the same that still, as we are told by Sir John M'Neill, makes it impossible to apply the obvious remedy to the over population of the island of Skye. The Irish farming and labouring classes became generally better informed and more intelligent; they understood more distinctly the facilities for obtaining land in the United States, and the high rate of wages that prevailed there, and they were better able to avail themselves of those advantages. The old narrowness of view, timidity, and want of enterprise rapidly disappeared, and large numbers of the people desired to try their chances in a new country. While their fitness for emigration was thus increasing, and their wish for it becoming strong, the wonderful increase of trade and communication between different nations stimulated the arts of shipbuilding and navigation; and the cost of the passage to America and Australia gradually fell. Then the influence of the natural law—sure in its action as that under which water finds its level—began to be felt; and the Irish