THOUGHTS ON EMIGRATION: THE CASE OF IRELAND.
LETTER II.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
London, December 1849. SIR—A tank fall of water, and a country full of people, will hold no more ; increase of any kind in such cases must result in overflowing; though, from the -difference between the respective compressibilities of liquids and the human race, a country apparently full will bear addition to its numbers—for some time per- haps without its population being deteriorated, but a limit will certainly be found somewhere. Again, there cannot be a different level, or what is tantamount, a .difference in the pressure of one part of a body of water and another: so neither, if the communication be free, can there be a different amount of distress between individuals of the same class in one country: but as the particles of water are more easily and rapidly moveable than the human individual, the level and the pressure are equalized much more rapidly in one case than in the other. Now, what is universally true is probably true of Ireland, whether considered by herself or as a part of the United Kingdom; and there are some facts in her history which, duly considered, strengthen the probability almost into a certainty. First, the Irishman does not pretend to be a natural production of his native land; he admits that he is not dius-Ox0we, but is either in himself or his ancestors an imported article, whether from Spain or elsewhere in the days of we know not whom, or in more modern and authentic times from England and Scotland, under . the auspices of Strongbow, James the First, or Cromwell. In his coming to Ire- land, therefore, he obeyed the universal law of migration; that is to say, he was a fugitive from an overpeossled land, driven thence by famine or superior force. Secondly, Irishmen have for a long time furnished the greater portion of our emi- grants, either by quitting their own island for ours or the United Kingdom for America. The Irish race, therefore, are still amenable to the same universal law; as they came to Ireland, so also do they quit it, urged en by the pressure of overpopulation. Nay, what are the cries of " Ireland for the Irish,' for home colonization, for the establishment of manufactures, but entreaties for more avail- able room? And what could the introduction of English capital effect, unless it • practically made the room they have more available? Sorely the deep mysteries of Irish politics and economics may in this case be safely neglected, and overpopu- lation may• be laid down as the present efficient cause of Irish distress.
It is difficult to get either Irishmen or Englishmen, landowners or cotters, to admit this; it is too simple a solution of apparently complicated difficulties to meet with much acceptance as a theory, though in practice evictions, emigra- tion, Irish hodaten and harvesters, are common enough. Things, it is said, might be different: the inhabitants of Ireland exist (times of famine excepted) somehow, and corn and cattle are largely exported; redistribute these and the problem would be solved. But though the tact of the exportation of produce sufficient to support the inhabitants of Ireland in plenty, and even to permit their further multiplication, be granted, it does not follow that this surplus could be retained in Ireland. For, omitting to consider the economical effects of the con- fiscation of all landed property and its appropriation by the tenant, let us suppose a law made against the absenteeism of landlords and mortgagees: still the beef, corn, and potatoes actually consumed by these in Ireland, would do no more for the Irish peasant than the same quantities consumed by the same persons in England or on the Continent; and the extra number of Irish servants employed in their service would be too trifling to be taken into the account. The rest of the rent would then, as now, be necessarily spent on imported articles ; which, unless the Irish are prepared to do without sugar, tea, coffee, claret, gunpowder, and other such like necessaries and luxuries, would still require agricultural pro- duce to be exported to pay for them. So far, then, no good would be done; and the only possible gain to Ireland, in the supposed case, must be looked for in the pre- sent surplus of Irish labour being employed in manufactures. Now, as there is no law prohibiting the employment of Irishmen in the English factories, and no practical difficulty in their crossing the Irish Channel in any numbers, it follows that they are not so employed simply because their services are not required; in other words, that there is in the United Kingdom, and not merely in Ireland, a surplus population for which no employment can be pro- vided. As the retention of rents in Ireland could not appreciably increase the -gross consumption of the kingdom, and as a redistribution of employment is no increase of it, for every Irishman earning a livelihood in Ireland as a manufac- turer an Englishman would be thrown out of employment. Admitting, then, that the establishment of manufactures in Ireland is desirable as a benefit to that is- land separately considered, nay, is even on economical grounds a fit object of Im- perial policy, still it is no way a remedy for an overpopulation which clearly de- pends on the gross amount of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. One main difficulty in this question is the amazing difference between the ge- neral material condition of the population of the two islands: the Englishman reasons as if there were an actual difference in the nature and capacities of the two races, the Irishman concludes that it is to be ascribed to political causes. But however great aniinfluence these may have in aggravating, they cannot be the efficient cause of the difference: for Poor-law returns, Gaol returns, the reports of Sanatory Commissioners, the records of history, and present experience, all tend to show, that were there no Ireland and no Irish, we should have abundant instances in England of the direst destitution. The case of the Dorsetshire labourer is, if better than that of the Irish cotter, a source of commiseration to the humane and anxiety to the politician.
The vast increase of the population of the United kingdom is duly recorded in the decennial returns; and from these and other sources it is apparent, that this increase in England is chiefly in the manufacturing and other non-agricultural districts: not that the agriculturists have been behindhand with the townspeople in multiplying their kind, but that the constant tide of emigration has relieved the one class and increased the numbers of the other; so that the conclusion is forced on us, that had there not been a vast increase of manufacturing prosperity accompanying agricultural multiplication, England would now be no better off than Ireland. Now employment in England is as open to the Irishman as to the Eng- lishman; why, then, has not the Irish agricultural population participated equally with the English in the benefits derived from our manufacturing prosperity ? The only explanation reconcileable with the facts is, that the demand for factory hands has been supplied in the first place, as all other demands for labour are, by the population nearest at hand, and that it has not been sufficient to keep down distress in English Southern counties, far less to relieve the Irish. Two parties in England are necessitated to deny the faot of overpopulation, at least in their own division of the empire,—namely the Protectionists, and the advo- cates of an unlimited issue of unredeera.ble paper. If the price of wheat be sufficiently
high, the Protectionists think their labourers can the
paper circulation be properly inflated, the other ioY
be illimitably increased. But as this remunerati aornon-
existing facts, but are desired by their respective dv. 44. our present condition, both parties agree in admitting dis- proportioned to our numbers; that is, that and Ite are suffering from overpopulation. es
On the whole, then, it must be admitted that the po r the United Kingdom is greater than can be conveniently provided for within its limits, and that this overpopulation, though most developed in Ireland, is not peculiar to that island either in its origin or its effects; in fact, that we have here, if ever, an Im- perial evil, calling for an Imperial remedy.
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