Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/67

Rh Condition of the Irish People in 1834.

(See supra, pp. 3 & 9.)

"The Commissioners appointed in 1834 for inquiring into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland—a Commission comprising amongst it members Archbishop Whately, Archbishop Murray, and the Right Hon. More O'Ferrall—at the commencement of their Third Report, published in 1836, state their opinion as to the condition in which the labouring classes of the Irish people were at that time. They say:—

"It appears that in Great Britain the agricultural families constitute little more than one-fourth, while in Ireland they constitute two-thirds of the whole population; that there were in Great-Britain in 1831; 1,055,982 agricultural, labourers; In Ireland, 1,131,715: although the cultivated land of Great Britain amounts to about 34,250,000 acres, and that of Ireland only to about 14,000,000. We thus find that there are in Ireland about five agricultural labourers for every two that there are for the same quantity of land in Great Britain. It further appears that the agricultural produce of Great Britain is more than four times that of Ireland; that agricultural wages of Ireland vary from 6d to 1s a-day; that the average of the country in general is about 8½d; and that the earnings of the labourers come on an average of the whole class to from 2s to 2s 6d a-week or thereabouts for the year round. . . . A great portion of them (agricultural labourers) are insufficiently provided at any time with the commonest necessaries of life. Their habitations are wretched hovels; several of the family sleep together on straw, or on the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes with not even so much to cover them. Their food commonly consists of dry potatoes; and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as so be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day. . . They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide."—(P. 3.)

That the condition of the labouring classes in Ireland had not improved up to the famine, is shown by the Report of the Land Occupation Commissioners in 1845. They say:— "In adverting to the condition of the different classes of occupiers in Ireland, we perceive with deep regret the state of the cottiers and labourers in most parts of the country from want of certain employment, It would be impossible to describe adequately the privations which they and their families almost