(f.) Ireland.
In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First, the main facts of the case.
The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664; in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309; in 1866, to 5½ millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 516 ths of its people.[1]
Table A.
LIVE STOCK.
| Year. | Horses. | Cattle. | |||
| Total Number. | Decrease. | Total Number. | Decrease. | Increase. | |
| 1860 | 619,811 | 3,606,374 | |||
| 1861 | 614,232 | 5,993 | 3,471,688 | 138,316 | |
| 1862 | 602,894 | 11,338 | 3,254,890 | 216,798 | |
| 1863 | 579,978 | 22,916 | 3,144,231 | 110,695 | |
| 1864 | 562,158 | 17,820 | 3,262,294 | 118,063 | |
| 1865 | 647,867 | 14,291 | 3,493,414 | 231,120 | |
- ↑ Population of Ireland, 1801, 5,319,867 persons; 1811, 6,084,996; 1821, 6,860,544; 1881, 7,828,347; 1841, 8,222,664.
ployers, under threats of being themselves discharged, to be taken to work at an age when . . . school attendance . . . would be manifestly to their greater advantage. . . . All that time and strength wasted; all the suffering from extra and unprofitable fatigue produced to the labourer and to his children; every instance in which the parent may have traced the moral ruin of his child to the undermining of delicacy by the overcrowding of cottages, or to the contaminating influences of the public gang, must have been so many incentives to feelings in the minds of the labouring poor which can be well understood, and which it would be needless to particularise. They must be conscious that much bodily and mental pain has thus been inflicted upon them from causes for which they were in no way answerable; to which, had it been in their power, they would have in no way consented; and against which they were powerless to struggle." (I. c., p. xx., § 82, and xxiii, n. 96.)
