further the number of the land-occupying class who have taken part in emigration, and who probably with their families have never amounted to one-fourth of the entire number.[1]
This moderate share taken by the tenantry in the emigration from Ireland has greatly decreased during the last ten or twelve years. Between 1853 and 1862 the number of farms in the country actually increased under the alleged exterminating policy of the landlords, and if within the last four years there has been a slight diminution, it is to be accounted for by the three successive wet seasons, which signalized the period during which the decrease has taken place. Even so it is probable that for the last twelve or thirteen
- ↑ I am happy to find that exactly the same proportion as that noted above has been arrived at by a writer hi the Home and Foreign Review, with whose calculations I was unacquainted at the time I published my own conclusions.
"These figures seem to prove very clearly that the largest proportion of those whose emigration can be even indirectly traced to their having, either voluntarily or under compulsion, given up their land in Ireland is, roughly speaking, as one to four. But if we leave statistics aside for the moment, and found our observations on the personal experience of those well acquainted with the emigration movement, we shall find that the great majority of emigrants who leave Ireland for America, or for the manufacturing districts of England or Scotland, consists of unmarried men and women—the junior members of small farmers' and cottiers' families, who are unable to find remunerative employment at home, and set out to seek it in other countries." H. & F. Review, Ap. 1864, p. 343.
category of those below 5 acres or below 15 acres, a new one has been added to the class of farms of 15 acres and upwards.
