CHAP. with the entire approbation of the nation, into a free gift.* XLIII. 1847. 45. of the emi Ireland. Great as was the devastation produced in the Irish Vast extent population by the famine and its consequent pestilence, grationfrom it was as nothing compared with the effects produced by it, combined with the results of free trade, upon that agricultural island. Incalculable has been the influence of these combined causes on the people of Ireland, and, through them, on the destinies of the world. The first caused them to lose all confidence in the potato, hitherto their sole means of subsistence; the last deprived them for several years of the profitable market for their cereal crops which Great Britain had hitherto afforded, and which was their chief means of paying the rents of their little possessions. The first effect of this universal panic was a migration from Ireland into the adjoining island of Great Britain on a scale unparalleled even in its long annals of suffering. Liverpool and Glasgow were the two points which principally attracted the immigrants, and on them the inundation of Irish paupers was excessive. In the first nine months of 1847, 278,000 immigrants from Ireland landed in Liverpool, of whom only 123,000 sailed from thence to foreign parts, leaving 155,000 as a lasting burden upon its inhabitants. For a long period the Irish paupers who landed were 800, sometimes as high as 1100, in a day.† It was considered matter for public thankfulness when the number sunk, in the end of the year, to 2000 a-week. The inundation into Glasgow at the same * SUMS ADVANCED UNDER THE DIFFERENT ACTS. 1. Under Public Works Act, 9 & 10 Vict., c. 1, £476,000 4,850,000 130,000 1,676,268 £7,132,268 + "Liverpool was so inundated that in eleven days they were compelled to afford relief to 198,000 cases, in addition to their own poor."—LORD BROUGHAM, lxxxix. 771. XLIII. 1847. period, though not so great, was still on a scale of unpre- CHAP. cedented magnitude. Between the 1st November 1847 and the 1st April 1848, it was ascertained by an official enumeration, that no less than 42,800 Irish immigrants had landed at the Broomielaw, besides those who came by the railway from Ardrossan, who were about half as many more. Many of these immigrants 1 Nicholls' Scotch PoorLaw, 205 Poor-Law, were in the last state of destitution, and not a few bore with them the seeds of contagious fever, which rapidly spread among the dense population, and not a little. aggravated their sufferings in the disastrous year which followed. Upon the whole, it is no exaggeration to say, English that in the course of the years 1847, 1848, and 1849, 393 not less than five hundred thousand persons came to the Irish PoorBritish shores from Ireland, the great majority of whom Personal never again left them, and formed no inconsiderable part Parl. Deb. of the apparent increase of British population in the 130. census of 1851.1 whole Law, 328; knowledge; lxxxix. 128, to foreign 2 Parl. Deb. The actual value of the crop destroyed in 1847 was esti- 46. mated by Lord Lansdowne in Parliament at £11,350,000 Still greater in potatoes, and £4,600,000 in oats, or in all about emigration £16,000,000. This amount, though very large when parts. compared to the agricultural produce of Ireland itself, lxxxix. 356. was inconsiderable when set beside that of the empire, which at that time was estimated in the British Islands at £300,000,000 annually. But, coming as it did upon a population left almost entirely for half the year without wages, and supported solely by the produce of their little patches of ground, and combined as it was with the repeal of the Corn Laws in England, which lowered to two-thirds of its former amount the average price of grain of every kind in the English market, it induced that despair in the minds of all classes which tore up all the attachments, heretofore felt as so strong, of home and country, and sent them in willing multitudes into the emigrant ships to flee from that land of woe. The emigration to foreign countries, CHAP. especially America, Canada, and Australia, in consequence XLIII. became such that no parallel to it is to be found in the 1847. whole annals of the world. From the authentic records collected by the Irish Census and Emigration Commissioners, it appears that the total number of Irish-born emigrants who left the country between the 30th June 1841 and the 31st December 1855, amounted to the enormous and almost incredible number of 2,087,856 persons, of whom 75 per cent were between 10 and 40 years of age, that is, in the prime of life with reference to the means of increase. Only 272,828 of the immense multitude had emigrated before 1846, leaving 1,814,928 who had departed subsequent to the introduction of free trade and the commencement of the famine. Of this number 1,600,753 had emigrated to the United States; 411,680 1 Irish Cen- to Canada; and 74,708 to Australia; and only 715 to sus Report, Part vi. lv.; all other places. History may be searched in vain for a port. parallel to so extraordinary a deportation of the human race in so short a time.1* General Re *IRISH-BORN EMIGRANTS, FROM JUNE 30, 1841, TO DEC. 31, 1855. -Census Report, No. VI., p. lv.-The influence of the gold discoveries in Australia, which first came into play in 1853, in increasing the emigration to Australia, and of the Russian War, which broke out in April 1854, in diminishing the general exodus, is very apparent in this very interesting table. XLIII. 1847. 57. this exodus population. The consequences of this prodigious exodus upon the CHAP. destinies of the British empire, and the fortunes of the New World, have been great and lasting; and we are still too near the time of its occurrence to be able to estimate Effects of them at their real amount. But the effect of it on the popu- on the Irish lation of Ireland itself has already been accurately ascertained; and this presents a result which may fully be considered as unparalleled in modern times. The population of Ireland, by the census of 1841, was 8,175,124 souls, and by that of 1851 it had sunk to 6,552,385, exhibiting a decrease of 1,612,739 persons. Great as this diminution is, it exhibits less than the real diminution of the population which has taken place since 1846. It is justly observed by the Census Commissioners, that "applying the English rates of 1 birth to every 31 persons, and 1 death to every 45, to Ireland, and supposing the immigration and emigration to be equal, there would have been in Ireland, in 1846, no less than 8,558,084 persons; and in 1851, 9,018,799." But as the population in 1851 was found to be only 6,552,385, it follows that between 1846 and 1851, a period of only five years, there had been an actual decline of the inhabitants to the extent of 2,000,000, of which number 1,700,000 can be easily accounted for. This number, how great soever in so short a time, will not appear at all surprising when the extent of the emigration and deaths, above the average number already given, is taken into consideration, which amounted to about an equal number. And the Census Commissioners estimate the decline of population, since 1851 when the census was taken, "including emigration, at 475,102 persons, to the 31st December 1855; so that it is probable that at the present time the population does not much exceed 6,000,000; and this number is still diminishing owing to the emigrants from the country con- 1 Sixth tinuing to be greater in amount than the assumed excess General of births over deaths." That is, IN TEN YEARS AFTER THE lviii. INTRODUCTION OF free trade, anD THE COMMENCEMENT Census Report, CHAP. 1847. 48. measures. OF THE FAMINE, THE POPULATION OF IRELAND HAD DIMI- Struck with consternation at so unprecedented and Which arose melancholy a catastrophe, a large and influential party mainly from free-trade in Great Britain have done their utmost to represent it as the result, not of the change of commercial policy introduced in 1846, but of the mortality and consequent panic produced by the potato rot, and famine thence arising which ensued in the close of that year. Without disputing what is self-evident, that the terrible nature of the malady in that year must have produced a very great feeling of distrust in the minds of the Irish peasantry in their favourite root, a very little consideration must be sufficient to show that, however powerful at first, this influence soon ceased to operate; and if we would find the cause of the long-continued exodus of the Irish people from 1847 to 1856, we must look for it in the gloom thrown over the prospects of their agricultural industry by the immense importation of foreign grain which followed the changes of 1846, and lowered the price of their staple produce so much, as made the DECREASE OF POPULATION IN IRELAND FROM 1847 TO 1851. |