PART IV.

POPULATION AND EDUCATION OF IRELAND.

CHAPTER VI.

Population Augmentation from 1641 to 1800, and from 1800 to 1840 ;-Number of Houses;-Sexual Proportions ;-General Area and Arable Land and Inhabitants in each County ;-Occupations of the Inhabitants ;-Comparative Greater Density of Population of Ireland than any other Part of the World; -Causes of Irish Inferiority, Physical and Natural, not Owing to the Union or Government ;-Education of the People.

WE have tested the state of Ireland in relation to her political institutions and civil and religious freedom; her external commerce and shipping, internal trade, and social progress since the Union; let us now proceed another stage in the argument, and ascertain the truth or falsity of the allegation that, by means of the Union, Ireland has been depopulated, and "hundreds of thousands" destroyed.

An increase of population is a convincing test of the advancing state of a nation. It was correctly observed as such by Arthur Young, in his Tour through Ireland, in 1766, when he observes:

Ireland everywhere evinces the marks of a rapid increase of population." Various censuses have been made of the popula tion of Ireland, but they have in general been framed on inaccurate data. At the end of Elizabeth's reign the population was estimated at not more than 700,000, and before the rebellion in 1641, at 1,456,000.*

In

*The population of England in 1682 was so great as 7,369,230, on a surface of 49,450 square miles; so that it has scarcely been doubled in 150 years; but in Ireland has been doubled in about forty years,

These returns were all vague, some being founded on the estimates of private individuals, others on the hearth-money collectors' returns. In 1805, Newenham estimated the population at 5,395,456, and an incomplete census of 1812 gives it at 5,937,356.

The number of inhabitants is now upwards of eight millions, independent of nearly half a million of Irish now residing in England and Scotland, and of a large yearly emigration, which from 1831 to 1841 has been 403,459.

By the general law of population, there is now, however, a less rapid increase than formerly; the number of females, however, still exceeds the number of males in the proportion of 103, and until the sexes are equal, population is not stationary; nor does the population begin to retrograde until the number of male births exceeds those of females. Population in Ireland has increased much faster than property, and hence the still comparative difference in the wages and comforts of Ireland in relation to Great Britain.

The preponderating number of the female population is a sure test of augmentation and of prosperity. The relative numbers of the sexes at three periods were as follow: :

In the West Indies, during slavery, the male population and male births preponderated over those of females. But since the abolition of slavery, the female births predominate. In new-peopled countries, such as America, Australia, &c., the female births predominate, and continue so, until population has reached the limit of subsistence.

When population and subsistence are at a par, the numbers of the sexes are equal; and when subsistence is below popula

tion, the male births predominate, and population is diminished to the level of subsistence.

We are as yet very imperfectly acquainted with the fixed laws that govern the increase or decrease of population; but, adopting the generally recognised assertion,-that population increases in the ratio of food and comforts,-it must be admitted, that as Ireland has doubled its population in less than half a century, there must have been a great augmentation of food, and of material prosperity conducive to the social advancement of a nation.

In addition to the Census returns of the resident population of Ireland in 1841, we ought to add, first, the numbers who have emigrated to the Colonies and United States from 1881 to 1841, viz. 403,459, which, with the low addition of 1 per cent. for births, gives 25,012-428,471. Then we must add the recruits who have entered the army during the same period from 1831 to 1841, viz. 39,179. Next, we must look at the number of persons of Irish birth, residing in England, Scotland, and Wales on the 7th of June, 1841, viz. 419,256, and estimating that only one-fourth of this number have been added since the Census of 1831, we have another abstraction (not allowing for children) from Ireland of 104,814. The total of these three sums will be 572,464, which added to the actual resident population on the 7th June, 1841, gives 8,747,588, which abstracted from the population of 1831, similarly computed, viz. 7,854,317, shows at the very least an increase on ten years of 893,271, or nearly twelve per cent. Now, when we consider how densely peopled Ireland was in 1831, this augmentation is extraordinary. The whole increase in Scotland between 1831 and 1841, was only 10 per cent. ; and, separating the manufacturing counties from the agricultural, (which more nearly resemble Ireland,) the increase in the farming Scotch counties was only 47 per cent. The unity of the physical law of population is manifested in Scotland as in Ireland; that is, population diminishes when density increases beyond a certain ratio.

Thus, in Scotland the increase between the years 1801 and

1811 was fourteen per cent., viz. from 1,599,068 to 1,805,688; between 1811 and 1821, sixteen per cent; between 1821 and 1831 thirteen per cent.; and between 1831 and 1841 ten per cent. And let it be observed that Scotland has only 2,620,601 inhabitants on an area nearly as large as Ireland. In many of the Scotch counties there has been, during the last ten years, an actual decrease on the population; but no Scotch demagogue thinks of saying they were "slaughtered by the Union with England.”

In Argyleshire the decrease was nearly four per cent.; in Dumfries and Haddington, Nairn and Peebles, one; in Kinross, Perth, and Sutherland, three per cent. from 1831 to 1841.

In England we find the same law manifested. The increase between 1801 and 1811 was fourteen and-a-half per cent.; between 1811 and 1821, seventeen and-a-half; between 1821 and 1831, sixteen, and between 1831 and 1841 fourteen per cent. In Wales, for the same periods, the rates of increase respectively were, 13, 17, 12, and 13 per cent.

Probably, no country in the world, (excepting the United States, where there is a vast extent of unoccupied and fertile land,) has increased its population so rapidly as Ireland since the Union.

The Population Returns for 1821 and 1831, represent a very large increase between those two periods; in some counties as much as one in five; in others, nearly one to four. The increase was in

It would be tedious to particularise further: suffice it to say, that the extraordinary increase which has taken place in the population of Ireland since 1800-namely, from four to more than eight millions, (independent of extensive emigrations to Great Britain, the United States, and the Colonies, amounting to at least three millions, during forty years,) most amply refutes the allegation contained in the "Address of the Loyal National Repeal Association to the Inhabitants of Countries subject to the British Crown," dated 13th September, 1843, wherein it is stated that "One great proof of increasing prosperity

is found in the due augmentation of the people: whilst the most decisive evidence of human misery is found in the fact of a retrograding population. In Ireland that misery is evinced to the extent of an ANNUAL retrocession of more than seven hundred thousand souls.”

And at the great Repeal Meeting at Tara-hill, the author of the preceding-named address, and leader of the Repeal agitation, thus reiterated the assertion,-" Thus had seven hundred thousand Irishmen been slaughtered by the Union, and by the tyranny of the "Government which administered it." An impartial public will now be able to estimate the truth of these gross allegations of the WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND! Three recent censuses of the Irish population and houses are as follow:

The augmentation of houses and population in Ulster province, where there was tranquillity during the period under consideration, is a striking feature in the country. Ireland contained, in 1792, only 701,102 houses, and the increase of the number of houses from 1821 to 1841 is upwards of 241,758*, while it is a pleasing circumstance to be enabled to state, that the new buildings are all of the better class of habitations. Even in Dublin, the decay of which has been so loudly lamented, the improvement has been truly remarkable. Since the Union, more than one hundred handsome streets and squares have been added to Dublin; and from 1821 to 1831, the number of new houses built have been 2,374. Building is now extending in every direction in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, &c., and the houses are well built, slated, and neat, in architectural style.

• The valuation of the houses in Dublin, inside the Circular Road, in 1831, was 704,7477.