Page:Considerations on the state of Ireland.pdf/6

 seasons would have produced had the emigration since 1847 not taken place.

It is well ascertained that wages in Ireland have considerably risen. From a paper by Mr. Frederick Purdy, Principal of the Statistical Department of the Poor Law Board in England, communicated to the Statistical Society of London in April, 1862, it appears that the advance in the wages of men for the whole of Ireland between 1843-4, and 1860, was equal to more than 57 per cent.—the highest rise, amounting to 87 per cent. having taken place in the province of Connaught, where at the earlier date the rate had been lowest. It seems highly probable that official figures do not exhibit the full amount of the rise in wages, for they are necessarily taken somewhat mechanically by the method of numerical average. But experienced and sagacious persons in country districts tell us that the time once was when the very best labour could in many localities be obtained at from 6d. to 8d. a-day; that since then great numbers of the stalwart and active young men have left the country; that the work is done by older and comparatively feeble hands; and that the class now earning a shilling a-day really represents those who used to obtain little or no employment. The advance in wages will probably go on with accelerated rapidity, as the present old generation of labourers dies out in process of time.

Whilst I must dissent from those who deplore the emigration as a national calamity, I am equally unable to agree with some who imagine that if it proceed as it is doing, it will be sufficient of itself to remedy all the evils of Ireland. Over-population, they tell us, was the one disease she laboured under; this will be removed by the depletion (as they call it) of the body politic which is now in progress; and, without any change in our social institutions, the country will hereafter steadily advance. The persons who hold this language seem to me to overlook certain other very important effects of the same causes which have brought about the emigration itself.

The extraordinary increase of communication between different parts of the world, which has made so large an emigration possible, is leading to the further result of a far more intense competition between the agricultural products of different countries. The corn and flax that are grown in our fields must compete with imported produce; the stock that is reared on our farms, with the cattle of continental Europe and the provision stores of America. In the first six months of 1862, the number of sheep and lambs imported from abroad into the United Kingdom was 49,332; in the corresponding period of 1863, it was 110,636; being an increase of more than 100 per cent. Again, of oxen, bulls, and cows the number imported from abroad was in the first six months of 1862, 11,462; whilst in those of 1863, it was 24,108; showing a similar increase. In bacon and hams the increase was from 821,960 cwt. in 1862, to 1,308,199 in 1863. One of the most interesting