Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/94

Rh the emigration, so far as it has extended to the occupying class at all, having been chiefly confined to the poor people who attempted to get a living out of bits of land ranging from half-an-acre to five or six acres, and whose destiny, no custom, or law of tenant-right, however liberal, could have materially affected. No doubt, the diminution of the holdings in this last category has been enormous, but even among these, as compared with the area of land under tillage in Ireland, the reduction has not been so startling as it might have first appeared: the proportion amounting, in