sions, to render emigration far more conducive than it has yet proved to the public weal, as well as to the welfare of those engaged in it. The same subject may be spoken of, in popular language, as Emigration when considered with reference to the emigrant, and as Colonization when treated with reference to the new community to be formed. It is obvious, however, that Emigration is not necessarily even a step towards Colonization. It is only when the former is regarded as but the means, and the latter as the end, that we recognise the necessity of making Emigration systematic. Mere emigration might perhaps be left to itself: but if our design be to rear up new communities, we are then urgently reminded of those moral relations with which permanent societies cannot dispense, and for which a provision can be made only by systematic Emigration.

Grievous and extended as are the evils to which we have alluded, it is in Ireland that the pressure of distress is most immediately urgent; and it is natural that our attention should be in the first instance directed to that part of the United Kingdom. With an almost unexampled unanimity, our most influential statesmen and economical writers had repeatedly expressed their conviction, that a large system of emigration was necessary for that country, even before the potato failure. Statements to that effect were made by every committee of the House of Commons, with but one unimportant exception, which had deliberated on the social condition of Ireland, since the year 1822: and the necessity for assisted emigration was yet more strongly felt when an Irish poor-law was projected. In the year 1831 the present Lord Grey accordingly stated, that before any measure could be effectually introduced for the permanent relief of Irish destitution, that country must be relieved from its superabundant population. Mr. Nicholls, in his various reports, insisted strongly on the absolute necessity of emigration, considered with reference to the working of a poor-law in Ireland; and the same opinion was expressed by the commissioners successively appointed to inquire into the subject of Poor-laws; in one of whose reports, signed by the Archbishop of Dublin, it was expressly recommended that relief should be given to the ablebodied through emigration alone. During a quarter of a century, in short, all parties consulted have concurred in the conviction, that without an organised emigration the most guarded poor-law could not in Ireland have even a fair trial. As to the grounds of their opinion, no long inquiry is needed: facts speak for themselves. We shall notice but a few of those insisted on by witnesses examined before the recent Committee of the House of Commons on the Irish Poor-law.

1850.

Case of Ireland-Rural Statistics.

17

Referring to the rural statistics of the two countries, we find that, previous to the late famine, the agricultural labourers of Ireland stood to those of England in the proportion of 5 to 2, when compared with reference to the extent of land in cultivation: while, so far from this being accounted for by a corresponding surplus of produce in Ireland, the Irish labourers stood to the English in the ratio of even 4 to 1, when compared with reference to the produce raised. The agricultural labourers of England were estimated, in 1831, to be 1,055,982, those of Ireland to be 1,131,715; at which time the agricultural produce of England was valued at 150,000,000l., and that of Ireland at 36,000,000Z. per annum. This fact is in itself sufficient to account for the low rate of wages in Ireland: little as the labourer received, that little bore at least as large a proportion as in England to the produce raised by his labour. The Irish agricultural labourer found employment for hire, on an average, during only 135 days in the year, living in the interim, partly on his scanty earnings, and partly on his small holding, or on what has gained an unenviable notoriety under the name of con-acre. Taking into account the time that he laboured for himself, his employment did not last for more than 166 days in the year, and his earnings did not exceed an average of 2s. 3d. per week. With such an annual rate of wages it was impossible that his physical condition should be otherwise than miserable: But, far from such misery having had a tendency to work its own population advanced most recklessly wherever the standard of living was lowest, and the class of habitation was the meanest. While within the years 1831 and 1841 the increase of numbers was in Ulster 14 per cent., and in Leinster 9 per cent., in Munster it was 15 per cent., and in Connaught 21 per cent.

cure,

In such a state of things it was obvious that the first great failure of produce, if continued for any considerable time, must break up both the social and the agricultural system of Ireland, and must do so, not by degrees, but accompanied by the calamities which attend convulsive change. The great evil of an agriculture based on the potato was, that partly from its extraordinary productiveness, partly from the social relations produced by such a system, it superseded, to a large extent, the primal law of labour, as the cultivation of the bread-fruit tree on a large scale would yet more fatally do,-and established no proportion between numbers and employment. It is computed that there were two millions of acres under the potato culture; and on the ordinary calculation that it requires three acres even of oats to produce as much human food as one acre of potatoes, a new creation of land to the amount of four millions of acres, VOL. XCI. NO. CLXXXIII.

C

would have been necessary, in order to support on cereal food the population previously maintained on potatoes. But such a creation being impossible, there remains only one alternative,- either the removal of the unemployed population to regions in which food is abundant and a large demand for labour exists, or else the introduction of a greatly improved system of agriculture. The latter is the course which we should prefer if, as has been too often assumed, with a calamitous rashness, the two were really separate and independent courses: but it seems impossible, on mature reflection, to deny that for a sound system of agriculture, the very first requisite must be the withdrawal from the country of those who cannot find employment there, and who hang like a dead weight on the industry of others. It is true that high farming can maintain a large labouring population; but high farming requires not only that high scientific knowledge which is of slow growth, but also a large expenditure of capital. It is the possession of great skill, habitual energy, and vast capital, which alone renders possible such a system of farming, horticultural rather than agricultural, as has grown up in Belgium, in the midst of abundant markets, wealthy towns, and flourishing manufactures; a system the origin and growth of which has been favoured by every circumstance that can promote industry and protect its fruits. The Irish farmer has not, like the Belgian, capital to the amount of 157. per acre to invest in his land; and the Irish pauper is the great obstacle to the introduction of additional capital. Let us, then, consider for a moment what we actually mean when we speak of the improvement of Irish agriculture.

The first condition of improvement is universally admitted to be such an enlargement of the holdings as will permit of a right rotation of crops. According to the return of the Poorlaw Commissioners, the number of holdings in Ireland under five acres, amounted, before the famine, to 317,264; being more than one third of the total number existing; while those under ten acres included more than half the number in the land. Now the occupiers of these small holdings were deprived by the failure of the potato, not only of their usual food, but also of the pig, and of that manure, in the absence of which the cultivation of corn is impossible. Without assuming, then, that it would be practicable in Ireland to adopt the English system of large farms, it is obvious that if their cultivator is to pay rent or rates, or even to live, these very small holdings must be consolidated. Such is the assertion of Mr. Blacker, a gentleman well known both for his acquaintance with agriculture, and for his vindication, till the potato failure, of the small farm system.

1850.

Case of Ireland as to sound Agriculture.

19

When examined before the Colonization Committee he observed: It is a physical impossibility to grow so much grain upon a five or six acre farm as will support a family 'consisting of six to seven persons. It would be necessary to 'sow part of the land with a grain crop twice in succession, 'which cannot be carried on; it could not be continued for any course of seasons.' To the same effect is the evidence of Mr. Kincaid, who states that no farm ought to be less than 201. in its annual valuation. What is then to become of those who can no longer cultivate their small tenements? They must fall, it is said, into the condition of labourers. But the labour market is already and independently of them, greatly overstocked. They are accordingly falling every day into the class of paupers, dragging down by the weight of poor-rates the farmers one grade above the position which they recently occupied, and thus condemning the land to barrenness, instead of leaving room for its improved cultivation. How rapidly this process is going on will be seen by a reference to Captain Larcom's agricultural returns for 1848. The difficulty is thus met by Count Strzelecki, a man whose name, known in many lands, can nowhere deserve to be more reverently or gratefully remembered than in Ireland: 'I think that the transfer of land from insolvent 'proprietors to capitalists should be combined with another 'measure, to enable unions to cope with a system of emigration, where such emigration is absolutely necessary; and if the relation is maintained which now subsists between numbers and land, it will be impossible to raise upon that land grain food sufficient to provide for the population.' (8590, 8591.)

6

for

Nor is it the cottier farmer of Ireland alone whose position has undergone such a total revolution: the occupiers of well-sized farms are exposed to difficulties hardly less serious, in consequence of the new-born necessity of paying in money wages that labour which had previously been remunerated chiefly by the con-acre. Money wages, it must be remembered, were in Ireland comparatively unknown; the potato constituted the agricultural currency of the country; and the bank which supplied that circulating medium having failed, the means of paying wages are intercepted, at the moment that a large additional employment of labour is necessary. To advance from the truck system to a system of money wages, and to advance from a lower to a higher species of food, are both of them important achievements in the progress of civilisation; but, if to take either of these steps is an arduous enterprise, to take both of them at once, and that too at a period of great agricultural depression, is a plain impossibility. An additional obstacle is

thus opposed, also, to the reclamation of waste lands; such improvements having formerly been promoted mainly by the potato crop, so abundantly yielded on land newly broken up. Now these difficulties cannot be met by native resources alone, whatever may be the aspirations of a certain party in Ireland styling itself exclusively national. Even if that party were to succeed in effecting what they, perhaps, consider the solution of the Irish problem, if they could elicit the latent energies of the Irish farmer by abolishing rents, and by giving him a permanent and absolute interest in the soil,-it is still certain that, without an influx of British capital, the resources of that soil could not be developed; and that, with a retrograde agriculture, the new class of farmer-proprietors could only be saved from ruin by an enormous mortality among the paupers who would otherwise divide with them a produce yearly diminishing.

The real question then is, under what circumstances is fresh capital likely to be invested in Ireland? If any proportion exist between numbers and employment, and again between employment and capital, the most sanguine can hardly hope that a much larger number of rural labourers can permanently find employment in Ireland, than find it at present in England. But it is not only when compared with English statistics that the disproportion appears between numbers and the means of employment in Ireland. In France, the number of the population is 39 to the hundred cultivated acres, in Scotland it is 51; in Ireland, at the last returns, it was 60. In England and Wales it is only 53, including the multitudes who derive their support from commerce, the distribution of that population being as follows: In Great Britain, the agricultural population is 22 per cent. of the whole; the commercial 46; and the miscellaneous 32 per cent. In Ireland, the agricultural population is 64 per cent., the commercial 18 per cent., and the miscellaneous 18 per cent. If we compare the population of the two countries irrespectively, as far as may be, of manufacturing employment, we find that in Westmoreland the number per cent. of the population engaged in agricultural pursuits is 27, in Lincolnshire it is 40; in Kerry, one of the poorest parts of Ireland, it is 77.

While these proportions are allowed to remain, what prospects lie before the English capitalist disposed to invest money in Irish land? The prospect of paying poor-rate to an extent that defies calculation, and, perhaps in his turn, of receiving it. On this subject a few figures have a large significance. The Poor-law statistics of the two countries, compared together, are such as might have been expected from