Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/42

Rh taken place, the disproportion between the respective amounts of agricultural labour, and the area cultivated in the two countries, which was noted in 1846 by Archbishop Murray and his colleagues as being in the ratio of 5 to 2, may still be taken as about 2 to 1. Of course, as I have already observed in a previous publication, such a comparison can only be regarded as a rough approximation. On the one hand the canon which regulates the proportion of men to acres in a country of large farms, cannot be applied without modification to an area subdivided into such small holdings as prevail in Ireland, while on the other a correction must be made for the predominance of pasture lands in the one kingdom, and of tillage in the other. Making however every allowance for these counter considerations, it is probable that at the date of our last census, some three hundred thousand persons were engaged in the cultivation of the soil in excess of those whose exertions, if directed with greater skill and energy, and accompanied by an adequate expenditure of capital, would be sufficient to ensure us as high a rate of production as is obtained in the sister country.

Consequently, even making allowance for the decrease of the agricultural population which has since been going on, it is probable that there is still in Ireland a considerable section of the inhabitants with their wives and children dependent for their support