The armies of insurgents stationed at the same time within the county of Wexford, at the posts of Three-rocks, Lacken, Vinegar-hill, and Gorey, cannot be supposed, at the lowest estimation, to have consisted of less than forty thousand men ; indeed in the opinion of many who had an oppor tunity of seeing them, fifty thousand. From the strictest inquiries which I have been able to make, I am convinced that almost all of these were Wexfordians, or inhabitants of the county of Wexford. The numbers mixed with them from other parts, doubtless not exceeding a few hundreds, were hardly discernible in the general mass except that perhaps a thousand or more of those inhabitants of the county of Wicklow, who co-operated in the attack of Arklow, retired with the Wexfordians, after their defeat to the station at Gorey.

Since the county of Wexford furnished at least, in this rebellion, forty thousand insurgents, and at the same time a considerable number of loyalists fit to bear arms, of whom not all were embodied or employed as they might, we cannot on probable grounds, estimate the number of males in this county, of the military age, at much less than fity thousand; whence we must infer a population of little less than two hundred and fifty thousand of both sexes, and all ages. Doubtless this county, naturally of so poor a soil as to be unfit for grazing, and consequently

inhabited mostly by a people who draw their subsistence from agriculture, is one of the mostpopulous, but far from one of the most extensive in the south of Ireland. Dr. Duigenan, in his excellent pamphlet, stiled The present politieal State of Ireland, combats the calculation of Chalmers concerning the population of this kingdom, and declares his opinion "that the "whole inhabitants of Ireland do not amount "to more than three millions, if to so many; which allows not a hundred thousand souls to each of the thirty-two counties on an average. But, while Chalmers' estimate is founded on substantial grounds, the Doctor's arguments appear to be little better than airy conceptions. From the same grounds as Mr. Chalmers, (documents furnished by Mr. Bushe) I some years ago, availing myself of some observations of my own, calculated the inhabitants of this island at four millions, and have stated it so in another work. I have since made further observations, and have found the number of persons in what towns and districts I have been enabled to examine, much greater than they should be on the principles of the above calculation. I am therefore of opinion that the number of people in this kingdom would be found, if

*See his Appendix, No. 1.

* See Gordon's Terraquea, vol. iii. p. 269.

completely ascertained, much nearer to five than to four millions. *

In the relative magnitudes of the two great British Islands, either the Doctor is widely mistaken, or I have made an erroneous representation of them from a careful mensuration of the best, maps of these islands, the larger of which I have supposed to bear to the other a proportion not so great as that of three to one.† That the latter contains less waste land in proportion to its area, is a well known truth, observed particularly by

* Sir R. Musgrave's reasoning (Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland, p. 523, 524) would tend to prove the population of Ireland to be prodigious. He calculates that forty-nine thousand men, inhabitants of the county of Wexford, were at once in arms against government; that these fall short by twenty thousand of the whole number of men in the county (for he could not have reckoned women and children as fighting men) and that the county of Wexford contains about a thirtyfourth part of the whole population of Ireland. By this calculation there should be considerably above two millions of men in Ireland, of the military age, and consequently above ten millions of people of both sexes and all ages. A most absurd calculation! + See Gordon's Terraquea, vol. iii. p. 74, 268.

The ingenious and learned narrater of transactions at Killala, hereafter to be quoted, says in one place, (p. 12.) that the wild district of Erris, a frightful tract of bog and mountain, is tolerably well peopled. And in another, (p. 106) "the popu"lation in the mountainous parts of the county of Mayo much "exceeds what the country, from its haggard appearance, would

be thought capable of sustaining." This is the case in all the wild tracts throughout Ireland.

Arthur Young; and the counties in the north of Ireland are in general much more populous than that of Wexford. As I have had ample opportunity of observing the manners and habits of the Irish peasantry, I should not think the matter altogether miraculous, nor even be much surprised, if this island should be found to have more than quadrupled its population since the year 1677, supposing Sir William Petty, (who then stated the number of its inhabitants at eleven hundred thousand) to have committed no error in his computation.*-Poverty prevents not marriage among the peasants of this kingdom. They almost all enter young into the ties of matrimony, apparently with an uncommon trust in Providence for the maintenance of their children, contenting themselves with such houses, accommodations, and food, as would be quite inadequate to the support of life in English people of the same class. In such circumstances of existence, apparently inimical to the increase of the human species, they seldom fail of a numerous offspring, who grow to maturity with a hardiness of constitution seldom elsewhere surpassed.

* The population of the Russian Empire is found to be doubled every forty nine years (W. Tooke's view of the Russian Empire, book 3. sect. 1.) and I can hardly conceive the Russians to be more prolific than the Irish peasantry.

T

With the learned Doctor I fully agree another position, that, whatever may be the population of this kingdom, or the proportion of protestant and Romanist inhabitants, with respect to number, the protestant government of Ireland is completely adequate to the support of its authority against all internal enemies, without any assistance from the great sister island, Britain. But this must be on supposition that the Irish government was a stable administration, not fluctuating by the erroneous policy or caprice of British ministers, nor shackled or counteracted in its operations by their influence. On this proviso I should not doubt of the efficiency of the Irish administration for the above purpose, with even a mere pageant of state at its head; but against a powerful army of invading enemies, aided by the disaffected at home, it could not, without British assistance, be supposed able to maintain its ground, more than the British government against a proportionally powerful invading force, if Britain were in like manner stocked with a starving peasantry, oppressed with enormous rents, unable by the nature of their tenures to acquire a secure property for their families by any labour, and unfortunately habituated to regard foreign powers as their friends, and the protectors of their religion, in prejudice to their own government. The same learned writer scems to insinuate that the rebel