Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/49

Rh of the population was proportionate to the facilities it enjoyed for obtaining sustenance. Suddenly, by the visitation of God, those facilities were withdrawn; the potato failed; no other product of the soil existed to take its place; corn crops neither supplied the same amount of nutriment, nor could they be grown in successive years on the same spot. The life-sustaining power of the soil, had become restricted; as an inevitable consequence the population of the island has become proportionately restricted; and; exactly in the same way as the working classes of Manchester would have been obliged to remove to other centres of industry had the cotton famine continued, has the surplus population of Ireland been compelled to emigrate to a more fertile soil.

Though acting with diminished energy, the same causes may be expected for some time to come to produce similar results. The natural expansion of a prolific nation, still numbering upwards of five millions and a half, must be considerable. Did this increase maintain its normal rate, we might calculate on a net annual addition of 60,000 souls to our population; but as a large proportion of those who emigrate are men and women in their first youth, we must presume it has been considerably checked: putting however the excess of births over deaths at a minimum of 40,000 per annum, we shall confront a very formidable figure. How are these