--The London
News, in explanation of the disgust with the "
Ould country" which seems to have seized on the Irish population, says:
‘
A succession of bad seasons have reduced the farmers' capital to the amount of many millions, the fortunes of the landowners being reduced in consequence, land let out of cultivation, and stock reduced.
With this year the decline is believed to have stopped, and the growth of capital to have begun again.
The anxious question is, whether the capital deposited in banks or used in speculation will not be applied to the land as soon as genial seasons remove the dread of a doom of perdition by weather.
This is the main question in regard to capital.
’
Lastly — what of the labor?
The prodigious emigration now going on leaves little doubt of the entire removal of the old evil of a ruinous competition of laborers.
The fear takes the opposite direction now. There is a ant; and not a superfluity, of hands.
But the fact is hot owing wholly or mainly, to the inability of the laborers to live.-- Wages are now nearly double what they were twenty years ago, while the price of provisions is moderate, and the quantity of food is much varied and improved.
The want of employment is very partial.
It is not true that evictions drive the taborers to emigrate; on the contrary, the reduction of their numbers has given them, generally speaking, the upper hand of the small farmers — The effect of the bad seasons has been more disastrous to the farmers than to the laborers, and the latter class might stay at home with good prospect of comfort if they were as wise in the management of their affairs as causes of long standing have prevented them from being.
Under their circumstances they are wise to go elsewhere.
Looking at the whole case, the true ground of lamentation seems to be, not that they are going, but that there should not be sufficient inducements at home to countervail the very strong temptation to remove.
The emigration was determined by circumstances before the present generation of Englishmen was born; recent events have perhaps enlarged and precipitated it; but no wisdom or power of our time could have prevented it, or can now stop it at will.
It is argued further, that unless speedy improvements be made in the system of tenantry, and the growth of a middle class encouraged — a class of manufacturers and traders — bearing some proportion to the agricultural population, such as is favored just now by the increased culture of flex, then
Ireland will be more and more emptied of the Irish, and the only remaining question will be how long before it shall be occupied by immigrants from other lands.
The London
Times speaks of the condition and prospects as follows:
Neither the drain which followed the great famine nor the improvements introduced by recent legislation have sufficed to prevent a new exodus.
It might have been thought that the reduction of the population from eight millions to six combined with some development of the resources of the country, would have rendered
Ireland sufficiently productive for those who remained behind; but such has not been the case.
Owing partly to the increased demand for men in
America, partly to the facilities of communication, and partly to assistance provided by earlier emigrants, the flood is now setting across the
Atlantic in a larger volume than ever.
Nor can there be any doubt about the natural character of the movement.
It is purity an equalization of demand and supply, and an Irishman leaves his own country simply because he expects to better himself elsewhere.
In order to retard emigration the condition of Irishmen should be improved at home, and that conclusion, we need hardly say, has been very willingly drawn on the other side of St. George's Channel.
