Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/20

17 almost unknown! Hear the evidence of the Dean of Killala, given before the Devon Commission: —

73. "Is there sufficient employment for the people in the cultivation of the arable land?—No, it does not employ them half the year.

74. "But there would be employment for them in reclaiming the waste?—Yes, more than ample if there was encouragement given. Where I reside there are many thousand acres waste, because it would not be let at a moderate rent.

75. "Is the land which you term waste capable of being made productive, if a fair rent was fixed on it?—Yes, every acre of it."

But the landowners of Mayo prefer driving their people out of the country, to England or America^ or starving them out of existence, to encouraging them by long leases and assistance to settle on their waste lands at home. This is why Mayo appears so over-peopled, when the contrary is, or ought to be, the fact.

And let me here remark upon the fallacy often put forward by those who insist on the impossibility of a county situated like Mayo maintaining its population. They compare the numbers of that population with the net valuation of the land now in (wretched) cultivation,—e.g. 400,000 souls with a rental of under £300,000. And allowing say £3. a head for each individual, see, they exclaim, it will take four times the entire rental of Mayo to maintain its population only on the footing of paupers!