Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/103

Rh calamity sufficiently shows with what impartial severity every part of Ireland was visited, and how unfair it is to attribute solely to the oppression of the landlords of the south a disaster which wrought an enormous though perhaps not an equal amount of ruin in those districts where their malign influence is acknowledged not to prevail.

But the measure of the Irish landlord's responsibility is not allowed to be limited by the decrease of agricultural holdings; nay, though it appears from the census returns that during a period of ten successive years, ending in 1861, the number of farms in Ireland actually increased, we are still told that because a considerable portion of the population is leaving the country, its departure cannot possibly be occasioned by any other cause than the consolidating policy of the landlords. Let us then continue the application of the test made use of in the preceding paragraph. If emigration is only occasioned by landlord oppression, Ulster ought to have enjoyed a comparative immunity from the general depletion. But what is the fact? Although immediately after the famine the emigration from the south was, for obvious reasons, in excess—though not very largely—of that from the north, the first