Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/19

16 is made up. Those who deny that Ireland can maintain her people, usually adduce as their strongest proof the statistics of the county of Mayo.

But what are these statistics? The population of Mayo in 1841 was under 400,000. The acreage of cultivated land is, in round numbers, 500,000, or four persons to five acres, which is at the rate of about six acres of cultivated land to each family. The population being almost entirely agricultural, this, no doubt, appears tolerably close packing. But what is the entire area of the county? No less than 1,300,000 acres; 800,000 acres being still uncultivated; of which very nearly 500,000 acres are declared by Mr. Griffith to be reclaimable with profit I Were these wastes, therefore, reclaimed, the proportion of cultivated land to the population would be doubled. Instead of six acres to each family on the average, there would be twelve acres, besides the run of four or five acres more of rough mountain or bog for their cattle and turf digging. Then it is evident that even Mayo itself is far from being over-peopled in reference to its natural capacity for maintaining an agricultural population. It is only the land now arable that is really overstocked. And this chiefly because it is cultivated in the most barbarous methods, rundale and joint-occupancy being general; drainage and green crops