Page:On Irish absenteeism (Hancock).pdf/9

9 assumed that the entire of this expenditure is a loss to the country from which they derive their income.

There cannot, however, be a grosser exaggeration; for wealthy proprietors who reside at home spend a great part of their income in foreign luxuries, and in British manufactures, and so a great part of their income is exported to pay for those articles. Besides, in the direct consumption of Irish produce, all that the capitalists and labourers in the locality gain by the expenditure of a resident in such articles, is not the entire expenditure, but only a reasonable profit on it.

The estimate of the loss, therefore, to the community from the expenditure of absentees, is subject to the following deductions. In the first place, we have seen already that that part of the absentee's rental which goes to pay interest on incumbrances, tithe rent charge, poor rates, law costs, and expense of managing property, is expended not by the absentee, but by others, and consequently its destination is quite independent of his place of residence. Now, of the alleged £4,000,000 of absentee rent, at least £2,000,000 go in these ways. So the only question we have to consider is, the effect of the profit of the expenditure of the remaining £2,000,000.

In order to state the economic effects of this expenditure, I will suppose two cases. First, suppose the wealthy absentees to go to some country like Japan, between which and Ireland there is no intercourse, so that labourers never migrate there, and capital is never sent there for investment; and so that Japan and Ireland do not compete in the production of any commodities. In such a case, there can be no doubt that the effect of £2,000,000 being spent in Japan, which had been previously spent in Ireland, would be to lower wages in Ireland and lower profits in Ireland, and to raise both in Japan.

But if the wealthy absentees go to England, with which we have the most intimate commercial intercourse, to which our labourers migrate yearly to the extent of 50,000, and migrate permanently in such numbers that at the last census there were 400,000 native Irish in England and Scotland, and to which our capital is exported for investment in the public funds in such quantities, that the exports have exceeded the imports of such investment by upwards of a million in each year for the last six years. In such a case, the expenditure of £2,000,000 in England, instead of in Ireland, does not lower the rate of wages or the rate of profits here, and consequently is not injurious in an economic point of view to the Irish people.

The effect of the residence of wealthy absentees is only to bring over a few more Irish labourers, and to have some more Irish capital sent to England for investment. The fallacy of supposing that wages and profits could be permanently depressed in Ireland, by the expenditure of wealthy absentees in England, arises from supposing the temporary effects of their going away to be lasting.