Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/114

Rh have started this new theory. Still less would the inference that no landlord can have an interest in dispossessing a good tenant who pays his rent. I therefore recur to more positive data. Fortunately for the cause of truth, it is the practice of the Custom House authorities in their register of the persons embarking for foreign countries carefully to note their previous occupations. Now, it appears from these returns, which extend as far back as the year 1854, that the total number of the farming class who have quitted the United Kingdom during the last 13 years, amounted to 86,388 persons, that is to say, to about 4 per cent, of the total emigration. Even supposing, therefore, that no English or Scotch farmer were included in the category, the total number of occupiers leaving the ports of Britain would only form eight per cent of the emigration from Ireland alone; but I have been favoured by the kindness of the Emigration Commissioners with an analysis of the nationality of the agriculturists who emigrated during the years 1865 and 1866, from which it appears that the Irish element was very little in excess of the British, and that the total number of Irish occupiers who sailed from any part of the United Kingdom was exactly 2½ per cent of the Irish emigration during the same period.