Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/56

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payer of wages, I am, above all things, an Irishman, and as an Irishman I rejoice at any circumstance which tends to strengthen the independence of the tenant farmer, or to add to the comforts of the labourer's existence.

But it is said, that though as yet no inconvenient diminution of the agricultural population has occurred, as is proved by the still inadequate rate of wages in the rural districts, emigration is acquiring a momentum which will carry it for beyond all reasonable limits.^[1] This I admit to be a contingency deserving serious attention: but the first precaution to be taken is to fix those classes most exposed to the current, in a position of such comfort and stability as will enable them to resist

↑ "But, these things being as they are—though a judiciously conducted emigration is a most important resource for suddenly lightening the pressure of population by a single effort—and though in such an extraordinary case as that of Ireland, under the threefold operation of the potato failure, the poor law, and the general turning out of tenantry throughout the country, spontaneous emigration may at a particular crisis remove greater multitudes than it was ever proposed to remove at once by any national scheme; it still remains to be shown by experience whether a permanent stream of emigration can be kept up, sufficient to take off, as in America, all that portion of the annual increase (when proceeding at the greatest rapidity) which being in excess of the progress made during the same short period in the arts of life, tends to render living more difficult for every averagely-situated individual in the community. And unless this can be done, emigration cannot, even in an economical point of view, dispense with the necessity of checks to population."—Mill's Polit. Economy, p. 246.

[1] "But, these things being as they are—though a judiciously conducted emigration is a most important resource for suddenly lightening the pressure of population by a single effort—and though in such an extraordinary case as that of Ireland, under the threefold operation of the potato failure, the poor law, and the general turning out of tenantry throughout the country, spontaneous emigration may at a particular crisis remove greater multitudes than it was ever proposed to remove at once by any national scheme; it still remains to be shown by experience whether a permanent stream of emigration can be kept up, sufficient to take off, as in America, all that portion of the annual increase (when proceeding at the greatest rapidity) which being in excess of the progress made during the same short period in the arts of life, tends to render living more difficult for every averagely-situated individual in the community. And unless this can be done, emigration cannot, even in an economical point of view, dispense with the necessity of checks to population."—Mill's Polit. Economy, p. 246.

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