We were attacked by a contemporary about five weeks ago
for our inadequate estimate of the number of evictions in Ire- land. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone was roughly attacked at the same time, for not indicating clearly how numerous those evictions really were. As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone was as explicit as he possibly could be, and we were quite right in following Mr. Gladstone. The evictions, he stated, were just then at the rate of 120 a week, with deductions for the case of those readmitted as caretakers ; and this we assumed to imply that, allowing some five persons to every eviction, there were, with a certain deduction for the caretakers, some 600 persons turned out of the shelter of their homes every week, or between 20,000 and 30,000 in a single year. This was surely bad enough, though it was not bad enough for those who insisted on inferring from some loose language of Mr. Parnell's, colloquially confirmed by Mr. Trevelyan, a very much more serious state of things. The returns of evictions for the first six mouths of the year are now published. The sum-total—including the cases of all who have been readmitted as caretakers—is 3,049, which, allowing four to five persons for each eviction, would come to just the number we suggested,—between 20,000 and 30,000 in the year. Sensa- tional exaggerations are surely hardly necessary, where the facts themselves are so painful as these.
Previous page
