Heft II. 1869. VII. Exzerpte aus Michael Thomas Sadler, Ireland; its Evils and their Remedies

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Michael Thomas Sadler. M.P.: Ireland; its Evils and their Remedies. 2nd ed. London. 1829

»A principle of reproduction, which multiplies mankind with considerable rapidity, under certain circumstances, seems necessary to the spread, and indeed, in some instances, to the preservation of the human race; and that it exists, is proved by the peopling of the world originally, or … by the rapid increase which still takes place in planting new countries and colonies.« (XV)

„Men repose no more confidence in God than they would in a broken merchant.“ (XVII)

»The fecundity of human beings is, caeteris paribus, in the inverse ratio of the condensation of their numbers; and … the variation in that fecundity is effectuated, not by the wretchedness and misery, but by the happiness and the prosperity of the species.« (XVIII)

»(Since the times of Hippocrates propounded) … Excluding, of course, cases of extreme distress, a state of labour and privation is that most favourable to human fecundity. A dispersed and scanty population invariably implies that state; but as mankind advance from the hunting to the pastoral, and from thence to the agricultural stages of existence and ultimately rise to the highest condition of civilization, labour becomes divided, and consequently diminished in its duration and intensity, and many are liberated from its drudgeries, so as to devote themselves to other and more intellectual pursuits, or are rendered independent of it altogether; while the means of subsistence become progressively augmented, and ease and luxury more generally diffused. At every step the principle of increase contracts.« (XIX)

Malthus »utter destitution of all claims to originality, either in regard to its principle, or the terms in which it is propounded … it is one of those systems which, as Aristotle observes, the wisdom of preceding ages has examined and rejected, and the ignorance of subsequent ones succeeded for a time in reviving.« (XXI)

In England … 227 inhabitants in the square mile; in China, with her boasted soil and double harvests, there are ninety seven only. (XXIV)

»America … „the Colony of Europe“ … the error of attributing to these accessions ⦗durch Immigration⦘, consisting, as generally speaking they do, of individuals in the prime of life, and principally of young men only, the ordinary rate of increase of an entire population, comprising individuals of all ages.« (XXV)

Malthus says ( Essay, p. 304): „Not more than one half of the prolific power of nature is called into action in this country (England)“, intimating that, if nature were unchecked, „there would be one annual marriage out of sixty persons, instead of one marriage out of 123 persons, as the case is at present.“ This is most strange, especially as he has, in his previous calculation, recollected that it requires two individuals to form one marriage; consequently, upon his supposition, one person would annually marry out of every thirty, whereas there is [in] England only one annual birth in every 37 inhabitants; it follows, therefore, according to that author, that were it not for the operation of his „preventive check“, there would be about ¼ more individuals married in this country than are born! (XXVI)

»The fecundity of human beings under similar circumstances, varies inversely as their numbers on a given space.« (XXVIII.) Diess bewiesen: »by a comparison of the fecundity of marriages in different countries«; (XXVIII) »in the different local divisions of one and the same country« (XXIX); endlich: »the difference in the fecundity of marriages in town is, in like manner, determined by the number of their inhabitants«. (l.c.) »in the same countries and districts compared at different periods, the fecundity of their marriages has diminished as their population has augmented.« (XXX) »On any great and sudden diminution in the inhabitants of any country, city, or district, the fecundity of the remainder has become instantly increased.« (l.c.) »a period of greater mortality is that of greater fecundity, being, at the same time, as invariably one of a diminished proportion of marriages.« (XXXI) »to diminish the number of human beings is to increase the fecundity of the remainder.« (l.c.)

Want promotes reproduction, and repletion retards it. (XXXII) in the dearer years the marriages are the most prolific in conceptions. (XXXIII) Peerage – a class in which … the preventive check does not exist. Stirbt rasch aus. (l.c.)

early marriages are not conducive to a larger increase of population than those contracted at riper years, but to the contrary. The annual prolificness is, in the former case, less, and the proportion of mortality in the offspring is greater – the opinion of antiquity on this subject being thus fully confirmed. ([XXXVI,] XXXVII)

Das true law der population should »multiply human beings rapidly where such increase is necessary and advantageous, keeping up their numbers so as to create and preserve in constant exercise that necessity to which all natural and intellectual superiority is to be traced.« (XLI)

Selbst in Irland: »those districts which were the least peopled were the most prolific; and the most densely-inhabited parts, notwithstanding the comparative sterility of their soil, were invariably the most prosperous.« ([XLV,] XLVI) to diminish the number of people would be to deteriorate the condition of the remainder. (XLVII)

But it is that system which has lately sprung up amongst us; a thing made up of „shreds and patches“; partly of truisms, partly of palpable blunders, but principally of a string of unconnected paradoxes which may be either, and which is self-elevated into the rank of a „science“ in which, such is the temptation, every one is at once a professor, and, under a sort of immediate afflatus, utters oracles. (LI)

Nay, so far has the mercenary doctrine of this school advanced, as to pronounce that the virtues themselves are marketable commodities. ( Malthus . Essay, p. 64) The perfection of this system, therefore, is the abjection of the species. (LIII)

„Mr. Stepney last year had two acres and a half of potatoes, which fattened four bullocks, maintained 18 pigs, produced seed for 4 acres this year, and supplied his own family, consisting of 20 persons.“ ( Wakefield. Account of Ireland , vol. I, p. 450) „One acre of potatoes would feed at least 10 persons the year round.“ ( Curwen: Observations on the State of Ireland , vol. II, p. 122.) According to Arthur Young ( Tour through Ireland, vol. II, part 2, p. 24) Ireland would sustain, by the aid of this plant, about 100 millions of inhabitants. – As to the peculiar adaptation of this root to the universal sustentation of all those animals (including poultry) on which man subsists or depends, see Radcliffe „Agricultural Survey of the Netherlands “ ). (Sadler, p. 3)

Synoptical View of the Estimated Population of Ireland.

By this table, the population of Ireland appears to have doubled about 1 in every 65 years, a great rate of increase, if the emigration which has taken place from thence, for at least a century past, and which was relatively far the largest in the former part of that period, is taken into the account. (5, 6)

Ireland, instead of not producing sufficient for sustenance of its inhabitants, produces far more than they ever consume, exporting a greater quantity of its edible products than probably any other country of equal extent in the whole world. (8)

Die „Statistical Illustrations“ (1825 oder so?) p. 60 sagen: „Whilst an appeal was being made in England to rescue Ireland from famine, and a subscription of 304,181l., in 1822, was raised on that plea (des Ueberschuss der population über ihre Subsistenzmittel) 30,882l. only of which was expended for articles of subsistence, and 9,374l. more in potatoes for seed, the remainder being distributed in money“ (much of which, doubtless, found its way into the pockets of the absentee lords) „Ireland exported articles of subsistence, alone, to no less an amount (at the very reduced value of that year) than 4,518,832l.; and in the 3 years, 1821, 1822, and 1823, to the enormous amount of upwards of 16 millions; whilst nearly the whole of the remaining exports, to the amount of upwards of 10 millions more, in those three years, were composed of the products of the Irish soil.“ (p. 9)

The Irish cultivator has almost universally to provide house and buildings; the proprietor can, therefore, destroy them at pleasure, and without detriment to himself. (p. 14. See Wakefield’s Ireland etc)

they can content themselves, says Petty, with potatoes. (p. 14) (Anat. of Ireland)

Dobbs , friend of Archbishop Boulter in „List of Absentees “ p. 32 says: „our common people are very poorly clothed, go barelegged half the year, and very rarely taste of that flesh meat, with which we so much abound; but are pinched in every article of life.“

Xxx. Swift: „Short View of the State of Ireland.“

Petty assures us that the people of Ireland are not one-fifth employed. Elsewhere, he says, those who were employed were very partially so. (18) (Anat. of Ireland )

Let those who etc … show us the period when the population of that part of it (Ireland) which has been the best peopled has not been the best employed; or, on the other hand, when the districts the thinnest of inhabitants have not been the most destitute of profitable labour. (19)

In Galway we are assured, on the authority of the Report of the Committee on the State of Ireland ( Fourth Report of the Select Committee on the State of Ireland , p. 445), that the men are not more than one third employed, the women one-fifth. Armagh has nearly four-fold the numbers on the same surface; its condition … is tenfold as prosperous.“ (20)

It is the misfortune of the Irish not to be able to afford themselves anything more palatable than potatoes; this is charged upon them as an evidence of their voluntary barbarism; they cannot obtain labour … this is to brand them with the crime of idleness. It is false! In our harvest fields, or before our furnaces; in the bowels of the earth, or on the loftiest buildings, wherever labour can be obtained, no matter how dangerous or severe, there are the Irish. The same is precisely the fact across the Atlantic. (21)

Referring to the population of Ireland a century ago and to the letters of the Lord Primate and Justice, Archbishop Boulter … „If our crop fails (Archbishop Boulter’s Letters, vol. I, p. 222) or yields indifferently, our poor have not money to buy bread. This was the case in 1725, and last year; and, without a prodigious crop, will be more so this year.“ (p. 23) Derselbe: „When I went my visitation last year, barley, in some inland places, sold at 6sh. the bushel, to make bread of; and oatmeal, the bread of the north, sold for twice or thrice its usual price. We met all the roads full of whole families, that had left their homes to beg abroad, since their neighbours had nothing to relieve them with. And as the winter subsistence of the poor is chiefly potatoes, this scarcity drove the poor to begin with potatoes before they were full grown, so that they have lost half the benefit of them, and have spent their stock two months sooner than usual; and oatmeal is, at this distance from harvest, in many parts of the kingdom, three times the customary price: so that this summer will be more fatal to us than the last, when I fear, Many hundreds perished of famine .“ (l.c.) The calamity continued, so he states under date May, 1728. In November following, after another harvest, he writes in the same strain to the Duke of Newcastle. He represents Ireland as „suffering less than a famine every other year.“ (Boulter’s Letters, vol. I, p. 241)

1734, 1740 and 1741, the horrors of scarcity returned, thousands perished through absolute want. ( Concise View of Irish Society , p. 107. Commercial Restraints , p. 47, Smith’s Kerry , p. 77. (p. 24)) There were then however at least 50 acres of land to each family throughout the whole island, supposing every soul had been an agriculturist. ([24,] 25) Distress 1753, 1757, 1758, 1765, 1766, 1770, 1771, (then » 40 acres of land to every family in the country.«) (p. 25, 26) The Groans of Ireland, 1741 rechnet an 400,000, die vom famine perished. („a loss too great for this illpeopled country“ (heisst es daselbst.)

We have seen, in less than half a century in the former period at least 13 years, or more than 1 in 4 … of famine; the highest population little exceeding 2½ million.

Auch damals as to emigration, a still greater number … in proportion to the entire population had then to abandon their ancient homes, and seek an uncertain subsistence in distant climes and countries, than it is proposed to send on that errand at present. So redundant they have always been in every period of their history. (p. 27)

Im 17 und 18t Jh. Damals die evils of Ireland attributed to the fewness of its population. See Sir William Temple , Works, vol. III , p. 7, Lord Clarendon ( Letters, vol. II , p. 13 „Scarcity of people is the greatest want of this people at present“) Petty , (Anatomy of Ireland), Dean Swift etc. (p. 31)

Petty sagt in Political Anatomy of Ireland , Tracts p. 388: „The greatest and most fundamental defect of this kingdom is, the want of people“. Half a century afterwards Arthur Dobbs , the improvement of the land depended upon „the increase of the people“. (Dobbs: Essay on the Trade of Ireland , vol. II, p. 105. (1731).

The production of corn kept pace with the increase of the population. In the 17th century Ireland imported grain. ( Newenham, Statistical Inquiry, p. 7) (p. 35) „Great provisions, both of meat and drink, went daily out of the kingdom into Ireland“ ( Townsend. Historical Collections , p. 197) »A century ago (vor 1827) grain as well as other necessaries of life, were imported in large quantities. The average amount of what Dobbs classes under the heads of imports for meat and drink, and materials for drinking (including medicine) was 344,550 l., annually. Some exports of grain of different kinds, he notices, but not such as by any means to balance the imports. This sum was on the average of 8 years, ending 1726, and consequently exclusive of the years of scarcity previously alluded to, when we are informed there were from 100,000l. to 200,000l. in grain only, brought in.« (p. 36) (Dobbs: Essay on the Trade of Ireland , p. 25) Dean Swift says (1724): „one 10 000 pounds have been paid, several years past, for corn sent hither from England.“ ( Humble Address etc. In Prior’s „List of the absentees“ (1729), it is asserted that the Irish were „under the necessity of bringing in corn for their subsistence, to the value of between 1 and 200,000l.“ (p. 79) ⦗bei Sadler Note, p. 36.⦘

Ireland. Dobbs ’ Quelle für 1725.

When Ireland, in 1725, only numbered 71 inhabitants on a square mile, she imported grain, in ordinary times, to the amount of 20 or 30 000 qrs annually ( Dobbs: Essay on the Trade etc of Ireland , p. 25); but when her population, on the same space, became trebled, she not only (of necessity) subsisted that number, and certainly not worse than at the former period, but actually exported a surplus of much above a million quarters. (p. 37)

Should it be said that Ireland was, in the former period, a grazing country, in consequence of the impediments which landlords threw in the way of tillage, on whose impolicy and cruelty Archbishop Boulter dwells ( Letters, vol. I, p. 223, 241 etc.) »till the evil was at length partly remedied by a legislative interference« (p. 38) so vergleich Cattleexport in den 2 periods und remark that »at the former period … export of cattle constituted the bulk of her returns«. (38)

Ireland.

»Midway between these two dates (1777), the population having considerably advanced, there was nearly a balance between the imports and exports of grain, or in other words, Ireland about grew its own bread. Since then, the population has rather more than doubled, how has the constant tendency which our theorists perpetually assert been manifested? By sextupling the agricultural produce.« ( Colquhoun: Wealth, Power, and Resources of the Empire, p. 14 note.) (p. 39)

A century ago, the population then being but a little more than 2 millions, could not supply itself with grain; but … now, with its (Ireland’s) inhabitants trebled, it is not only enabled so to do, but to export at least 10 millions of bushels, as well as 6 times the amount in cattle (perhaps about thrice as many head) as at the former period. (40) think about preventing the undue emigration of corn, and cattle, and pigs, rather than promoting that of the people. (41)

Besserung der Zustände während der kurzen Periode von 1782–1797. „Can those who now hear me, deny,“ said Foster to a sufficient number of … the representatives of Ireland, that, since the period of 1782, Ireland has risen in civilization, in wealth, in manufactures, in a greater proportion, and with a more rapid progress, than any other country of Europe?“ ( Speech in the H.o.C. 17 Feb 1800) „The improvement of Ireland is as rapid as any country ever experienced.“ ( Lord Sheffield, Observations on the Trade etc of Ireland , p. 6) „We may complete with pleasure the progress of Irish prosperity.“ ( Bushe: Essay on the Population of Ireland. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. III, p. 151) Endlich Major Newenham: „they evince ⦗mit Bezug auf a series of tables he gives relative to the population and condition of Ireland⦘, beyond the possibility of a doubt, a most rapid increase of people in Ireland; and at the same time exhibit in a clear light this interesting fact, that, within these last 25 years, or thereabout, the food in that country has not been merely commensurate with, but has greatly surpassed the rapid and well-authenticated increase of its population.“ (Newenham, Statistical Inquiry etc. p. 197). (Sadler p. [43,] 44)

„The price of labour is very low“ ( Prior in seinem anonymen „List of Absentees“ p. 71. „The low labour of Ireland ( Carey on Trade , p. p. 61, 196, 197 (1729) „The pay of labour, by the smallness of the demand, is, beyond all due proportion, low .“ ( Gordon’s History of Ireland , vol. II, p.p. 240, 241.) „The low rate of wages for labour.“ ( Bishop Woodward’s Argument for the Poor , p. 16. (1768) ⦗Sadler, p. 20⦘

See an account of the Increase of absenteeism since 1797 in Drs. Baker and Cheyne’s work , vol. I, p. 12.

Absenteeship,

„the cutpurse of the empire“ früher entschuldigte sich, jetzt boldly avows itself. (p. 46)

In Elisabeth times 3 rebellions placing a great part of the lands of Ireland at the disposal of the crown. Nach Leland (History of Ireland, vol. II) more than one half of Ulster. Edmund Spenser (Spenser, State of Ireland , Works vol. VI) gives a vastly higher proportion. Of the 9000 ploughlands of Ulster, all but 400 or 500 he represents as being escheated to the Queen. Ditto ⅚ of Connaught at least in the same predicament; even in Leinster, exceedingly large tracts, consisting of entire counties, were similarly circumstanced. Of Munster, at the period he wrote, it appears very much of it was already in the hands of her „undertakers“. Indeed, by the single attainder and Death of the Earl of Desmond „enormous domains“, as large as „the possessions of independent princes“, fell to her disposal, besides sundry other minor forfeitures. In the reign of James I , the greatest and most valuable part of Ulster again reverted to the crown in consequence of the treasonable practices of Tyrone, Tyrconnel, and others their adherents. (p. 47) During the interregnum, confiscations to a far greater extent occurred. … At the revolution … upwards of a million acres of land were forfeited at once; more than half of those afterwards restored … Lord Clare says that, of the 12 millions of acres which the island contains, 11½ underwent confiscation, during the one century (17 Jhdt) (p. [47,] 48) Mit diesen confiscations, die stets die Sache in Hand of English proprietors brachten, beginnt Absenteeism, obgleich residency always Bedingung der investiture.

Petty says: „a great part of the estates, both real and personal, in Ireland, are owned by absentees, and such as draw over the profits raised out of Ireland, refunding nothing: so as Ireland, exporting more than it imports, doth yet grow poorer to a paradox.“ ( Political Anatomy of Ireland , p. 33) To this absenteeism (ib. p. 33) he attributes the lamentable want of employment and the idleness of Ireland.

Dobbs , it is believed, published under the name of Prior , in 1729 a „List of Absentees of Ireland“, estimating the general subtraction of wealth, from this cause, at 627,799£., a prodigious sum at that time, and for such a country; the rental of which, it is supposed, did not then exceed 2 millions. Gee , at same time, in his work, „Trade and Navy of Great Britain “ , says p. 19: „it is thought near one third part of the rents of the whole (of Ireland) belong to English noblemen and gentlemen that dwell here.“

In the „List of Absentees“ it is said: „By means of our nobles and gentry deserting their own country, and spending all abroad, our people are left without employment, and are forced to shift to other countries, even to America, to get a livelihood“ (List p. 23) „ʼTis not to be wondered at that we should grow poorer every day, under such an unprofitable issue of money, which all the labour of the people and produce of the country, with every acquisition they can make, are not sufficient to supply.“ (l.c. p. 29) „This is an evil long complained of.“ „There is no country in Europe which produces and exports so great a quantity of beef, butter, tallow, hides, and wool as Ireland does; and yet, our common people are very poorly clothed, go bare legged half the year, and very rarely taste of that fresh meat with which they so much abound. We pinch ourselves of every article of life, and export more than we can well spare, with no other effect or advantage than to enable our gentlemen and ladies to live more luxuriantly abroad.“ „And they are not content to treat us thus, but add insult to ill usage: they reproach us with our poverty, at the same time that they take away our money“ (l.c. p. 33) (Sadler p. 50–52)

Swift says: it „required those great remittances which perpetually drained the country“, that it drove „half the farmers and labourers into beggary and banishment“; in a word, that it was the one great evil of Ireland – „Nostra miseria magna est“ (works, vol. VI, p. 209, p. 180)

Young („Tour through Ireland“) is copious on this subject, and Curwen ( Observations on the State of Ireland , vol. II, p. 255, p. 187, dieser Kerl Malthusian) describes, from oracular proof, the „ruin it inflicts“; and as to misery – speaking of an estate belonging to some absentee, he says, „the waters of oblivion can never wash out the stains which the scenes of woe, witnessed this day, have impressed upon my mind“. (Sadler p. 53)

Statutes have from time to time been passed to suppress this great evil (aber in vain) (p. 53) »It (absenteeism) substitutes, for neglected duties, positive wrongs of the deadliest character. Absent in the body, it is indeed ever present in the spirit of cruelty and oppression. Its very existence implies a train of evils, which have been for centuries past the most cruel scourges of the country: I mean the underletting system.« (p. 55) „Non descript monsters“ Sir R. C. Hoare (Tour in Ireland p. 307) calls them „Undertakers inured to tyranny and extortion“ ( Bishop Woodward, Argument etc p. 17)

The experimental labours of this class are highly beneficial to the whole body of landed proprietors; they can calculate to a nicety how much and how long a little cultivator can endure; and know the precise period when it is best „to drive him“. They thus not only act for the absentee, but are a sort of pioneers for the rest of the landlords, and by constantly exercising their instruments of devastation, have certainly cleared the way for those enormously high rents … extorted from the suffering peasantry of Ireland. (56) „The sorry slaves“, as Bishop Nicholson writes to Archbishop Wake, „plough the ground to the very top of their mountains, for the service of their lords; who spend truly rackrents … in London.“ ( Ellis, Original letters; second series, vol. IV, p. 318) Here, too, is the principal cause of those minute and temporary lettings, so injurious to the soil, and for which such incredibly large sums are exacted; and which contribute to keep so great a number of the peasantry in constant poverty and fluctuation. (p. 56, 57) Und wie wenig das principle of population damit zu thun hat.

Edmund Spenser says: „the landlords there most shamefully rack their tenants“ ( State of Ireland, Works, vol. VI, p. 33)

Dean Swift: „Rents, squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars.“ (View of the State of Ireland.)

Archbishop Boulter: „Here the tenant, I fear, has hardly ever more than ⅓ for his share, and too often but ¼ or ⅕.“ ( Letters, vol. I, p. 292)

Arthur Dobbs : „What was it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to America, but high rents? These keep them poor and low, that they had scarce sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist, or till their ground.“ ( Essay on the Trade of Ireland, vol. II, p. 80)

John Fitzgibbon At. Gen.: „The peasantry are ground down to powder by enormous rents.“ (Speech, 1787 ) „Exorbitant rents“ ( Gordon’s History of Ireland , vol. I, p. 241)

„Exorbitant rents.“ ( Newenham’s Inquiry etc p. 15) „Exorbitant rents“ ( Argument for the support of the Poor; Dr. Woodward , p. 15) Exorbitant rents. ( Curwen l.c. II, p. 32) Exorbitant rents ( First Report on the State of Ireland, 1825, p. 38, 59, 307, 413, 414, 638 etc)

„It is an undoubted fact that, as landlords, they exact more from their tenants, than the same class of men in any other country.“ ( Wakefield, Account etc. vol. II, p. 795)

Cornacres … are generally let up to „ten guineas an acre“. ( Report of the Select Committee on the State of Ireland I, p. 50 etc.

Drs. Baker and Cheyne, Account of the Fever in Ireland (in den 20er Jahren). (1822?) „In the calamitous summer of 1822 … a subscription was made for the relief of the poor of a certain district, by the resident gentry, landowners, and clergy. Application was made to the absentee proprietors, who annually abstracted from that country 83,000l. Their subscriptions altogether amounted to 83 pounds!“ (Bishop of Limerick’s Speech, June 10, 1824) (p. 67)

Ireland … is not only deprived of the produce which its suffering population too often stands in absolute need of, but of that profitable labour which the consumption of it by the landlord in his own country would necessarily call into action. (69, 70) ( Sieh Büsch über Polen)

Even were the absentees to return and become residents, still retaining their unnatural predilection for articles of foreign industry, that part of the revenues expended upon such would, I contend, be lost in a great measure to such a country as Ireland, which, having little or nothing to export but provisions, with a half-fed and less than than half-employed population, would be starved, as well as impoverished, just so far as this practice prevailed. The Dublin Society proved (Spirit of Legislation, p. 248), by an exact calculation, that they might maintain 20 poor families for a whole year, with the quantity of beef and mutton which they exported for buying a lady’s head-dress. (p. 70, 71)

The ownership of landed property, in almost all cases, practically resolves itself into the right of receiving annually a certain share of the produce of lands cultivated by others. (p. 72)

Newenham says ( An Inquiry into the Progress etc p. 170, 171): „But if capitals sufficient to establish or extend manufactures, be not accumulated, which can scarcely be expected during the continuance of so great a drain of money; if the demand for labour do not keep pace with the increase of the people, which in such case it may not, if industry be overstocked; there will undoubtedly be reason to apprehend a recurrence of those disturbances which have already proved so injurious to Ireland.“

Prolificness of a State of poverty and privation. Dr. Watkinson expressly attributes the fecundity of the Irish to this cause. ( Phil. Survey of the South of Ireland. p. 147) (p. 76)

Emigration.

If it (Ireland’s evil) had to be cured by such a remedy as this, it would have been removed long since. See Archbishop Boulter’s letters , written a century ago, Dobbs, Essay on the Trade and Improvement of Ireland, part II, „Newenham’s Inquiry concerning the Population of Ireland“, for evidence of the extensive emigrations that formerly took place. (p. 79) It will be fully seen that, were the remedy desirable, we have no chance whatever of applying it, in reference to the relative numbers, in a degree equal to that in which it was tried above a 100 years ago, and thenceforward for at least half a century. (l.c.)

»The „scattering of mankind over the face of the earth“ may be distinctly traced to their animal propensities, to their sloth and ignorance, operated upon by necessity; their numbers having increased … that necessity called forth their intellectual faculties, rendered them stationary, introduced the institutions and arts of social existence; and in a word, created the immeasurable distance between savage and civilized man.« (82)

»Nothing can be more clear than that the great work of planting the nations was performed, not when the earth was full of inhabitants, but, on the contrary, when it was comparatively void: not by nations whose numbers were the greatest, but the fewest and most scattered; in a word, not by those who had a real necessity to migrate, but by those whose ignorance taught them so to suppose, and whose barbarism made them fit instruments for the purpose.« (83)

Malthus boldly assures the honourable committee, that putting out of existence a thousand labourers here and there would, nationally speaking, be an advantage. ( Third Emigration report p. 324, § 3246)

This is the case even in Ireland; where the population is the thinnest, the demand for labour is the least, and is, of course, the worst remunerated. (See Report on the State of Ireland, Part IV, p. 445 sqq.) p. 90. Our old fashioned national economists calculated the wealth of the country as principally consisting of the numbers of its inhabitants. (Petty. Political Arithmetic) (l.c.)

In every stage of civilization, from the first rudiments of society to its most perfect state, mankind have been ever found necessary to each other, and, consequently not personally only, but relatively valuable. (90, 91)

Mr. Malthus has told … that Greece was surcharged with inhabitants. Never, however, did its citizens regard the lowest, and infinitely the most numerous class among them, „redundant“, excepting when they conceived them to be, on particular emergencies, too formidable for their safety. On the contrary, they were constantly making predatory expeditions, one principal object of which was the seizure of men, who were a profitable article of sale amongst them. Xenophon, in his Economics, recommends an addition of 20,000 slaves at once to those already in the state of Athens (See Boeckh), who, it is calculated by some, outnumbered the freemen about 20 : 1. (See Hume: Essay on the populousness of Ancient nations , and Boeckh estimates the number of the slaves, compared with that of the citizens, including the whole free population, as 100 : 27. (vol. I, p. 52) (91)

Der bloss historische Charakter des s.g. Populationsgesetzes zeigt sich am besten wenn man die moderne kapitalistische Gesellschaft vergleicht, sei es mit der antiken Welt, sei es mit modernen Sklavenstaaten. Was hier „redundant“ ist, ist die freie Bevölkerung, während die arbeitende Sklavenbevölkerung nie genügt. Bei uns umgekehrt. Die Lohnarbeiter werden „redundant“ erklärt (die Arbeitsbienen), niemals die Drohnen.

Rome, in like manner, imported men from different parts of the world in vast numbers, at the very time when, were we to believe the theory (des Pfaffen Malthus), she was already overwhelmed with people. (See Montesquieu, Causes of the Rise and Fall etc ch. VIII (p. 91)) »In England likewise, during the feudal system, when men were personal property, vastum hominum et rerum on an estate, was, in the celebrated instrument Magna Charta, regarded as an equal injury to its owner … As to the negroes in our sugar islands … they are regarded … as valuable property. In Barbadoes there were, in 1820, 78,345 slaves, the island containing, it is said, 106,470 acres of land, giving a population, exclusively of the whites, far more twice as dense as that of Ireland.« (92) In no age or country of the world in which mankind has been held in bondage, and been the property of others, have they ever been deemed valueless … does the condition of the labouring classes deteriorate as society advances in improvement? Do they sink in actual and individual value as they rise in the social scale? (94) Our moderns … would have to believe … that day which makes a man a freeman takes all his worth away, nay, actually reduces him in his value to make him less than nothing, and makes it a national object to get rid of him. (94)

M. Malthus , indeed, talks that the prudential restraint, if generally adopted, „by narrowing the supply of human labour in the market, would, in the natural course of things, soon raise its price“ … self-contradiction … would not the market of demand be narrowed in precisely the same ratio as the market of labour? (97, Note)

The experiment of transporting (the poor) them … long since recommended by a class of writers, the political economists of their day, and deemed, like ours, wise in their generation. Gee , upwards of a century ago, calculating the unemployed British poor at more than a million, forestalled the wisdom of our present projectors, by strenuously recommending them to be sent to the colonies; on which the benevolent Hanway observes, „whether his bad policy or his inhumanity is most to be execrated, must be a question“. (98, 99) (See on the one side: Gee’s Trade and Navigation , ch. XVII, and Sadler: XXVIII , and Carey: Discourse on Trade ; on the other Hanway: Defects of Police etc and Gents. Mag. 1734, p. 198 „Send a cargo or two off to Nova Scotia .“ (99, Note a und b.)

Let the 30 millions of uncultivated acres, out of the 77 which these islands comprise, as well as those boundless unimproved „wastes of the ocean“ by which they are surrounded to use Lord Bacon’s expression, finally answer this question. If you want food, therefore, here it is to be obtained in supplies that defy calculation; if you want labour, here it presents itself to an unlimited extent, and of the most practical as well as beneficial kind. But our political economists, disgusted with proposals so obvious and natural, turn from them, as Naaman did from the prophet, in contempt; and require some great and imposing remedies to be applied, some mysterious incantations to be pronounced, and cruel rites to be performed, in order to the relief of our country. (100, 101)

the capitalists are they who ought to emigrate, if they are so disposed, and not the industrious labourers, who, under proper encouragement, may subsist anywhere. (102) the ablebodied, the young, and the healthful … are to be starved, bribed, and conveyed out of the Country. (101)

Clearing:

The rage is for „clearing“ estates in Ireland from these human vermin, as a meritorious sort of act, and the chief means of relieving the country. (104)

An ancient expedient … To say nothing about those wholesale „clearances“which the vast and successive forfeitures occasioned in remoter periods, does not Dobbs inform us a century ago, and when surely a redundant population could not be alleged, that it was the practice to „dismiss whole villages of native Irish at once“ and turn the poor wretches „adrift“. ( Dobbs Essay on the Trade and Import of Ireland part. II, p. 7) Half a century after, we find, from Bishop Woodward, that his unnatural and inhuman custom was still continued. (Bishop Woodward, Argument for the Poor, p. 15) That it is vigourously pursued at the present day, we need no proof; the only novelty in the case is, that conduct which establishes a revolting compound of the basest, most selfish and most unfeeling motives, is now often represented as a meritorious deed, at least by the Emigration Committee and some of its witnesses. (105) »Unlike all others, whatever be their industrious pursuits, he (the little agricultural tenant) is virtually at the mercy of one individual, his landlord; and if that fails him, he is at once bereft of the means of subsistance, of his daily labour, and of the house that shelters him and his family – which, if he be an Irish tenant, in 99 cases out of a 100, he built himself – ⦗„The houses are built, not by the landlord, but by the tenant.“ T. P. Bushe, transactions Royal Irish Academy vol. III, p. 153. See also Right Hon. Charles Grant’s Speech of the State of Ireland, April 22, 1822. Hansard, vol. VI, p. 1507.)⦘ –; in a word deprived at once of the benefits of his past exertions, and of all his future hopes.« (105, 106)

» The difference, therefore, between emigrations and these clearances is, that the latter exhibit a far more summary and unfeeling method of effectuating the same purpose. In the former case „the simple folk“ are to be solicited, and in some sort bribed out of the country; means of escape are placed within their reach; allotments in a land flowing with milk and honey are proffered (though, alas! many of those who have gone forth have perished in the wilderness;) but in these drivings, „clearances“ … , the exile is involuntary. Whatever be the nature of the crime in the eyes of those who hold that „they have no business to be where they are“ (Malthus, Essay, p. 531), and who act upon that opinion, the punishment is, in fact, a severer form of that which is in most cases awarded as a sentence upon felony.« (p. 107) Most of them have to seek refuge elsewhere, some in this country (England), some across the Atlantic; whither they were conveyed in vessels more crowded than slave-ships, in which many of them constantly expired, till even the humanity of strangers was excited, and the legislature of America interfered in their behalf, to protect them on their passage, and succour the survivors on their arrival. These became the slaves and drudges of America, till premature death, in some form or other, and generally in its most appalling one, poverty and desolation, terminates their hapless story … melancholy picture of the fate of the less fortunate exiles of Erin, whom, for at least a century past, these clearances have expelled from her shore. (108)

Sir Thomas More: „Therefore is it that one covetous and unsatiable cormorant, and very plague of his native country, may compass about and enclose many 1000 acres of ground within one pale or hedge; or by wrongs or injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all. By one means, therefore, or by other, either by hook or by crook, they must needs depart away, – poor, silly, wretched souls! men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woful mothers with their young babes, and the whole household, small in substance, and much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in; all their household stuff which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale, yet being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it as a thing of nought. And when they have wandered abroad till that be spent, what can they do but to steal, and then justly, pardie, be hanged, or else go about a begging? And yet then also they be cast into prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not; whom no man will set at work, though they never so willingly prefer themselves thereto.“ (109, 110) (Utopia, vol. I, p. 59–61.) So far the authority of More on the effects of „clearing“ in England in his time which was before other and sufficient sources of employment were developed. (110) Of these poor fugitives, who, as he tells us, were necessitated to become purloiners, we learn that „72,000 great and petty thieves were put to death in the reign of Henry VIII“. (Hollingshed, Description of England, vol. I, p. 186)

In Elizabeth’s time „rogues were trussed up apace, and there was not a year commonly, wherein 3 or 400 of them were not devoured or eaten up by the gallows in one place or another“. ( Strype, Annals, vol. IV). Strype , speaking of one county only, Somersetshire, says: „40 persons have been there executed, in a year, for robberies, thefts, and other felonies; 35 burnt in the hand; 37 whipped; 183 discharged, and those that were discharged were wicked and desperate persons. Notwithstanding this great number of indictments, ⅕ of the felonies commited in the county were not brought to trial, – owing to the remissness of the magistrates, or the foolish lenity of the people. The rapines commited by the infinite number of the wicked, wandering, idle people were intolerable to the poor countrymen, and obliged them to a perpetual watch of their sheepfolds, pastures, woods, and cornfields. The other counties in England were in no better condition than Somersetshire, and many of them were even in a worse; there were at least 3 or 400 ablebodied vagabonds in every county, who lived by theft and rapine; and who sometimes met in troops to the number of 60, and committed spoil on the inhabitants: if all the felons of this kind were reduced to subjection, they would form a strong army: the magistrates were awed, by the association and threats of the confederates, from executing justice on the offenders.“ (Strype Annals, vol. IV, p. 290) (p. 111) Sir F. M. Eden quotes this passage, as exhibiting the state of the kingdom at large, and plainly attributes it to want of employment for „the superfluous hands which were not required in agriculture“ ( Eden, vol. I, p. 110, 111), owing to the „engrossments“ Lord Bacon alludes to. (111, 112)

Agrarian and Public Outrages in Ireland.

Irish Landlords and their apologists, have very dexterously attributed these outrages to the tithing system, as if any body upon earth could believe that such landlords as the generally are, in respect of  9/10 of the produce, would be kinder than ecclesiastical ones, were they put into possession of the remaining  1/10 . Disturbance in Munster, in 1760, originated in the oppressive treatment of many landed proprietors, especially in their turning adrift vast numbers of the old tenantry of the province, „in order to throw many farms into one“, to obtain, if possible, a greater „surplus produce“. Numbers were thus at once deprived of their ancient holdings, probably the possessions of their forefathers; they were called levellers; and several years elapsed before they were put down. Gordon (History of Ireland, vol. II, p. 240, 241) thus describes this insurrection:

„It was occasioned by the expulsion of great numbers of labouring peasants, destitute of any regular means of subsistence by any other species of industry; while those who remained unexpelled, or procured small plots of ground, had no means of paying the exorbitant rents, even by labour, the pay of which was, by the smallness of the demand, beyond all due proportion low. The misery of these cottagers was completed when they were, by inclosures, deprived of commonage, which to many had been at first allowed. Numbers of them secretely assembled in the night, and vented their fury on objects ignorantly conceived to be the causes of their misery.“ (p. 113)

Insurrection of White Boys; its cause the intolerable oppression of the landed proprietors. ( Campbell, Philosophical Survey of Ireland , p. 304, Wakefield vol. II, p. 9)

Hearts of Steel, in 1763 and 1764: likewise excited by the cruelty of the same class, through the medium of their subordinate agents, who demanded excessive fines, and racked the old tenants to an extent utterly beyond their power to pay. They were cleared . „The hapless peasants being thus abandoned, gave way to the impulse of their ungovernable passions, and vented their fury on those whom they considered as their oppressors. These commotions … arose from causes unconnected with public measures.“ ( Wakefield , vol. II, 9, 10)

Right Boys appeared in about 1786, and marched in hostile bodies of hundreds and sometimes thousands … The Attorney General Fitz-Gibbon declared in his place in the Irish Commons on that accasion, that though tithes had been mentioned as the cause of it … it arose from „the peasants being ground down to powder by exorbitant rents, who were so far from being able to pay their dues to the clergy, that they possessed not food or raiment for themselves“. (p. 114, 115) These were again cleared and put down. (115)

1821–22 (oder 1822) … the tenantry on the estates of a great Irish absentee in the county of Limerick … Disturbances which have but lately terminated. 20,000 tenantry were thrown in a state of furious agitation. ( Speech of R. Hon. Charles Grant, H.o.C., April 22, 1822 ) (p. 115)

Der Hass gegen den Protestantismus und Gvt. sehr einfach zu explain: they „are the religion and government, supported by  9/10, perhaps, of the great proprietors of Ireland. Not another word is necessary.“ (116)

Large and small farms.

Supposing they can make it out clearly that ½ of the hands now employed in cultivating the land, would, if the moiety were turned adrift, leave rather more surplus produce than is now obtained, it is obvious that that moiety must take refuge somewhere; the manufacturing districts must receive them, most of which, it is alleged, and I fear truly, are overpeopled at present, and from the operation of this very cause. (117)

»With the exception, perhaps, of the better preservation of game, in all other respects they (the large farmers) have been prejudicial to the owners.« (119)

Smaller rents are invariably paid for the larger farms. (119) (Complete English Farmer; Winifrey: Rural Improvements; Dr. MacCulloch, Highlands .)

The poorrates in the agricultural districts where they (large farmes) prevail infinitely outweighs the paltry saving of keeping a few farmhouses in repair. (120) (Report on Labourer’s Wages. 1824) (ordered to be printed 4 June 1824)

Little State of Lucca the most densely populated independent district in the civilised world. (bereits in Addisons day, see his Italy , p. 308, the most thickly peopled state in Italy). Cf.

Simond, Travels in Italy, p. 574; Forsyth, Remarks on Italy. (Letztrer sagt p. 32: „Every state in the Peninsula is productive, or otherwise, in proportion to the number of farmers on a given space of land, equally good.“ (125)

Piedmont. (222 people on □ mile, in Great Britain 162) see: Chateauvieux: Description of the Rural Manners and Economy of Italy. (p. 126)

Tuscany. (Chateauvieux.)

Netherlands. Abbé Mann, On the Husbandry of the Netherlands in Communication to the Board of Agriculture ; Dr. Harte, Essays on Husbandry. Jacob, Travels in Holland , Radcliff, Report on the Agriculture of FIanders. Baron Poederle, Communications etc.

„The increase of population, says Baron Poederlé, since the peace of 1749, has greatly diminished the size of farms, as well in Hainault as elsewhere. The proprietors, in dividing their estates, have almost doubled their value; and Brabant has no occasion for ordinances to that effect. The states of the province, however, petitioned that the size of farms should be settled.“ »The smaller the farm, the higher the rent.« (139) „In Brabant there is hardly any such thing as tenants; each farmer is a proprietor.“ (Abbé Mann) p. 140. »Low as the produce is in the Netherlands, and heavy as are the rents, still an agriculturist of the new school (Marshall) confesses that a Dutch boor, with 50 or 60 acres, will manage to live as well or better than an English farmer with 200 acres.« (Marshall, Travels through Holland)

Young. Annals of Agriculture.

Radcliff says, Report etc: Speaking of one of the departments „there are 461,695 souls upon 302,235 hectares, which are equal to 746,521 English acres, being about 5 souls to 8 English acres. But the population is much more dense in other districts; in that of Bruges alone, at the rate of 3 souls to 4 acres; and in that of Courtray, at the rate of 1 to 1 English acre. Notwithstanding this, ⅓ of the produce of the land is annually exported“. (p. 145)

In Great Britain about 40 acres to every 10 souls, or 20 acres probably to every family throughout. (145)

Ireland, probably the richest soil of any country of equal extent in Europe, nearly 30 acres for every 10 persons (women and children included): England and Wales have somewhat above. In a word, Ireland, in reference to its productive power, is the worst peopled of any of the grand divisions of the kingdom. (p. 145) And yet our Emigration Committee publish such a question as this, alluding to the small occupiers: – „Are you aware that the greater proportion consists of possessions not greater than an acre of ground?“ To which Malthus replies affirmatively … This is one of the pretended facts on which the scheme of publicly expatriating a part of the people, and privately clearing them, is founded. (145, 146)

Nach last Irish Census (Abstract of the Population of Ireland), usually calculated 5 or 6 persons to a family; and … that much the greater number of the entire population are not employed as agriculturists, meaning by such, I presume, occupiers of land. (146) In the summary of Ireland, placed at the conclusion of the population Returns, the total number of persons employed, exclusive of young children etc 2,836,815; whereof 1,138,069 engaged in agriculture; 1,170,044 in trades, manufactures, and handicrafts; 528,702 in occupations different from the 2 former classes. (146)

In „Statistical Returns, Barony of Rathvilly“, the only part of Ireland, where survey completed, or at least published, by order of H.o.C. in 1825, details more minute than in general census. Danach families average nearly 5½ persons; number of souls 17,359; 48% agriculturists, 52% in other pursuits. Area of barony, in statute acres: 49,745; more than average density of population throughout the island, though there is not what can be called a town in the whole district. Number of farms: 1568, averaging, consequently, above 31 acres each. But their size varies as follows: 573 under 5 acres, 288 between 5 and 10, (or nach English measure between 8 and 16); 341 between 16 and 32; 288 between 32 and 81; 49 between 81 and 162; and 29 upwards of 162 acres each. Also the greater proportion of cultivators not in possession of more than one acre in the first class. Nach dem same document 516 freeholders of 40sh. each, that number also principally composed of those whom the question of the committee points at. Suppose we deduct, for the first 573, 2½ acres of land each, there remains of land in the barony 48,313, to be divided amongst the remaining 995 farmers, leaving nearly 50 acres for each farm; deducting, however, about 8%, which, it appears, is the proportion not at present cultivated. (146–148) That size far larger than that in the better parts of the Netherlands. (148)

Diese Calculations für barony of Rathvilly may be extended to all Ireland. Taking the rural population at 5 millions (too high a proportion), about 455,000 farmers; davon perhaps 166,000 little cultivators (2½ acres); the remainder would have upwards of 40 acres of cultivated land each, independently of a share in the 4,900,000 acres in occupation (though not in a productive state). This would average the farms at nearly 60 acres each. Aber 1) the number of agriculturists exaggerated; und 2) as they have not generally speaking capital enough to cultivate farms of the average extent mentioned, … there must be many farms of a very great size in Ireland; – fact kept out of sight – such the case to a lamentable extent. (149)

There are in Ireland 6,801,821 persons; calculating 5 and 6 persons to every family; and supposing that there were neither town nor city in the whole island – and only agricultural employment – still 10 acres of the most fertile land in the world to each family, one acre of of which, we are assured on all hands, would far more than suffice for the sustenance of each, as they are content to live, and after all only ⅔ of the island is as yet under culture. (150)

In dem Report on the State of Ireland, 1825, First Part , Mr. Hugh Wallace’s (banker and solicitor) Evidence, the farmers, not being manufacturers, of Downshire, (one of the most thickly peopled counties in the country) have 10 acres on the average. Fairly treated by their landlords; eat animal food, build slated houses, many of them save money; labourers regularly employed and paid in money. In the county of Down 367 souls on □ mile (English); in Galway, the most wretched and least populated part of Ireland, just ⅓ of that number. (150)

In several counties „the grazing farms are of extraordinary extent, one occupier frequently holding more than a 1000 acres“. ( Brewer, Beauties of Ireland , vol. I, p. CXXXVII. … To ascribe its evils to a redundant population, is as plain an insult upon truth, as it would be to attribute those felt generations ago, when there were 60 acres to each family. (151)

One of the milder methods to get rid of the superfluous population of Ireland is to impose a tax upon cottages: Malthus is asked whether the legislature would be justified in some distinct measure of that kind; to which he answers in the affirmative. (Emigration Committee, Third Report, p. 321) the loss of a 1000 labourers nach Malthus vor derselben Committee „a gain certainly“. (p. 153)

What is the condition of the ejected Irish tenant? There is no employment for him to resort to, as is happily often the case here; that the absentee proprietors effectually prevent. There are no poorlaws, obliging the man who creates the misery to assist in mitigating it. (158)

One such act suffices to make, a human monster – a multitude of them, a political economist. (159)

Is a system, which can only be supported by brute force, and is kept up by constant blood-shedding, to be perpetuated for ever? Are we still to garrison a defenceless country in behalf of those whose property was, generally speaking, conferred upon the special condition of residence; but whose desertion occasions all the evils, under which she has groaned for centuries? property so treated, that it would not be worth a day’s purchase were the proprietors its sole protectors. But they are aware that their absence is balanced by the presence of a body of military and police, which enables them to conduct themselves with as little apprehension as remorse. (161) Let them urge their own claims and defend their own outrages. (162) »The British soldier … degraded virtually into the exactor of the enormous rents of the absentee … or to „clear“ his estates of human beings, when it may please him to utter the fiat from afar.« (l.c.) (This „has lead to a great deal of misery; lately to murder, burning of houses, and several other outrages; and at Croom there was some difficulty in getting the tenants out, and the military were obliged to be called in“. ( Major General R. Bourk , Third Report , pp. 313, 314). (p. 162 Note)

The circumstances of the country in regard to its exports, both at that period (vor der potatoe) and the present show to what the spare diet of Ireland is owing … the means of comfortable subsistence are withdrawn. (165) »their flour and wheat, their butter, and beef and pork, are demanded by these absentees, to distribute in foreign nations.« ([165,] 166)

Ecclesiastical Confiscation as means of relief for Ireland.

Er sagt mit Bezug auf O’Connel’s Catholic Emancipation: »Privileges, however regulated, the exercise of which appertain practically to the few, can never feed a starving population.« (171, 172)

None can be so weak as to suppose, that were the tithes of Ireland abolished to-morrow, and all the glebe lands of the country confiscated, the spoil would be bestowed in the wretched cultivators. … the rent of the land thus exonerated would be advanced to the full amount of the difference; nay … far beyond the amount. (173) A branch of the Irish legislature passed long ago a resolution exonerating all the island from agistment tithe; an act of audacious spoliation … in the advantages of which the little cultivator never did nor ever will share. (173) In the barony of Rathvilly, out of the 49,745 English acres … but 65 acres of glebe; it is reckoned one of the most fertile in the country: the whole appears to be titheable; the total amount of tithes is 3156l. 9s. 7½d., or nearly 15d. farthing per acre, or, as the reports states it in Irish measure, 2sh. ½d. ([173,] 174)

Most of the property of Ireland is of this protestant pedigree (d.h. bestowed for the purpose and on the condition of supporting that religion), though some of it would now, it seems, be very glad to bastardise its ancestry. (175) The church property, were it seized, would inevitably find its way into the possession of the great proprietors; and of these, as certainly, a large proportion would be absentees, – causing another immense sum to be added to that which is at present abstracted from the country, and expended elsewhere. (176)

The system of collecting tithes in kind is but the continuation of the metairie system which once prevailed universally … the landlords in such case had usually the half, the clergymen  1/10 of the produce. (182) Even the revenues of the country, at least some of the most productive ones, continued, till within these few centuries past, to be paid in kind, particularly in wools. (183) the landlord should in all cases pay the value of the tithes to the incumbent. (185) The property possessed by the absentees conferred on the condition of personal residence. Unter Edward III, z.B. 1368 in ordinance regarding Ireland; (p. 188) Richard II , law über diese Residence. (p. 189) Ditto another law of the same period, fining absentees ⅔ of their estates; revived under Henry VIII . (Leland, History of Ireland) Alles evaded. In the time of James I , the entire lands of all absentees were vested in the crown. In 1715 the Irish parliament taxed the pensions, salaries etc, of all absentees 4sh. in the pound, which tax was afterwards repealed … because the dispensing power with which the crown was invested rendered it a nugatory measure. In 1773, even the ministry proposed a tax of 2sh. in the pound on the real estates of all absentees; lost by a small minority. (189)

»The wages of labour have a constant tendency to accommodate themselves to the actual average expenses of those rendering it … the proposal to the working classes, that they should diminish their daily expenditure, in order to save money, would only have the effect, if attended to universally, of decreasing the remuneration of their labour precisely in the same proportion as they had decreased their comforts.« (p. 202)

Malthus Lügen über Schweden. (224, 225 sq.)

»At the very period when, according to Mr. Malthus, the settlers amounted to only 21,200, and were in such favourable circumstances as to „increase with a rapidity“, as he supposes, „almost without parallel in history“, we know that the poor had to be legally sustained.« (238) („Collections of the Massachusettsʼ Historical Society, vol. VI )

Französischer Pauperismus und Malthus (p. 243, 244.) Spain, Italy, Portugal (p. 246–250) Netherlands (p. 253–255) Malthus und English pauperism (p. 257–260)

»There is included in the amount returned (English Paupers), as expended on the relief of the poor, a vast sum, which is, to all intents and purposes, the wages of necessary labour; and amongst the number returned as paupers many are active labourers, in full and constant employment. … it is the result of a conspiracy, against which the poor are utterly powerless, „absorbing“ the whole of the labourers of entire parishes, and extending to many counties, especially those where the poorrates are represented as the highest, and paupers as the most numerous. This pernicious system has grown up principally within the last quarter of a century, or during the period we are examining. (260, 261)

• Jonas Hanway: Importance of the Poor.
• English pauperism (p. 203–272) (p. 273–283)
• Goff (treatise on the Trade and Poor of the country, in the former half of the 17th century (p. 273. Harleian Miscel. vol. IV, p. 366)
• King James I, Works. Kingsʼ Speeches. King James Works, folio, 1616.
• Adam More, Bread for the Poor , 1623.
• Cock, 1651. Summary Survey.
• Proposals for building Workhouses, 1677.
• True English Interest , 1684.
• Lord Hale, On the Poor.
• Filmer, Collection on Tracts;
• Carey, Discourse on Trade, 177;
• A discourse on the benefits of Husbandry, 1700;
• Paxton, Discourse on Trade.
• Braddon, Abstract.
• Samuel Webber, Short Account on the State of our Woolen Manufacturies, 1739.

Religious endowments for the Poor „absorbed“ at one time ⅓ of the whole kingdom. ( Cotton, Abridgement of the Records in the Tower. Camden, Britannia, 1637. Spelman, „De non Temerandis ecclesiis“.) … These, however, Henry VIII seized, and confiscated; promising, as far as the poor were concerned, to establish a better system of their ruins, saying to his obsequious parliament, „ If I should suffer the poor and miserable to be unrelieved, you might well say, that I being put in so special a trust, as I am in this case, were no trusty friend to you, nor charitable to my enne christen.“ He fulfilled his trust by seizing all their permanent funds (many of which are in the possession of those who now inveigh against all national charity,) and put the poor upon the (illegal) Scotch plan, i.e. upon public beggings upon Sundays and holidays. (27, Henry VIII) How well it answered the universal distress – the whippings and cauterizings that ensued – and, above all, the execution of above 70,000 poor wretches, in his reign, principally for thieving, sufficiently attest. (285)

Lord Kaimes argued that the poorlaws have a positive tendency to depopulate the country. (295, 296)

Malthus, the Emigration Committee, about „the poorrates“ that „would very soon absorb all the estates“. ( Emigration Report, part III, p. 31.) (p. 296, 297)

As to the term „absorbing“ rents, now so hackneyed, what, I would ask, is it that Ireland wants, but that some part of its rental should be absorbed? (298)

Bishop: Richard Woodward, L. L. D.: „An Argument in support of the right of the Poor in the Kingdom of Ireland to a National Provision“ (written 1768), third edition 1785. (cf. p. 300, 301, 302, 303)

The want of a Provision for the Poor of Ireland (and I will include those of Scotland also) is a grievous injury to the working classes of Ireland. They are injured by the market of labour being overstocked, and greatly depressed by the multitudes who are annually making this country their asylum; in the harvest-field, in the factory, in short, in every sphere of industry, the English labourer and workman finds himself interfered with, and his remuneration reduced, if not himself thrown actually out of employed, by this constant and vast emigration. (307) (308)

Among the genuine offspring of absenteeism is the system of subletting. (309)

Cultivated etc Land in England, etc, Ireland. p. 317.

The cool proposition of Ricardo … that the poorer lands of the country should go out of culture, involves … loss of labour and destruction of property to multitudes. Such lands confessedly require the most labour; they are the possessions of the smallest proprietors; and are, generally speaking, as inferior in quality as they are limited in extent, compared with the rich abbey lands and ancient inclosures of the great landowners. (321) (322)

Agricultural and not agricultural classes in England. (327) (328) (329) (330, 331) (passim–339, incl.)

» Dearness of Corn … not true. Corn, contrasted with almost every other product of human labour, is far cheaper than it was in past times: I say, of human labour; for the fields are not, as yet, tilled by steam, nor the harvests gathered in by complicated machinery.« (p. 340. Sieh ibid.) (340–342)

In February 1822 schrieb Earl of Liverpool die agricultural distress der overproduction zu, dagegen 1826 sprach er von „famine-price“. Nun war die difference in bushel of wheat von damals und 1822, Unterschied not quite, a penny a bushel. ([322,] 343) (cf. p. 344, 345)

Raleigh’s Works (1751) Cf. on Prices on Corn and Protective Duties p. 350, 351, p. 353.

Schweden und Malthus , p. 357 Note a)

A large and growing population … diminishes the frequency and severity of such calamities (accidental scarcities) … variations in climates, and seasons are, as far as we yet know, the sole causes of variations in the produce of land equally cultivated. And what is it that meliorates climate, and mitigates and equalizes the seasons, but cultivation? Universal cultivation, therefore, is not merely the means of rendering the different countries more salubrious, – but it becomes the best, and indeed the sufficient security which nature affords for an equal, as well as an abundant produce. (358) to throw a portion of our lands out of cultivation would be to render the rest less certainly productive. (359)

A deficient supply enhances prices far beyond a mere arithmetic proportion; and – an excessive one has, inversely, a similar effect. (368)

No doubt: let famine and its concomitant pestilence be free, and it will find its own level, and regulate itself. (368)

To produce a given value in agricultural produce, and corn above all the rest, requires at present a far greater number of hands than to produce the same value, on the general average, in manufactured articles . … in agriculture there have been few inventions for „shortening human labour“, of great practical moment, since the days of Triptolemus. But even before these recent mechanical discoveries had been generally introduced, A. Smith said, „no equal capital puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than that of the farmer“ (book II, ch. 5); or, in other words, employs and rewards more human beings. (371, 372)

Als Grund giebt man »that cheap living is necessary to support manufactures and commerce.« (374) Aber das Gegentheil wahr. Foreign trade immer gross wo living dear. Holland, England. (375, 376) France feeds dearest, with the exception of England, of any manufacturing nation of Europe. (377)

Complaints seit Yarrenton (1677) über our ruin by high price of provisions; ditto Dobbs, Essay on Trade, 1729, Webber , Decker etc. (379 Note a)

Ueber Zusammenhang of high price of provisions and industrial developments. Locke , Sir Will. Temple (Works, vol. I,) Cary , ferner „ Vindication of Commerce and the Arts“, Petty, Child, Gee etc., Franklin. (380–382) „The facility with which food is produced, obstructs the growth of industry and the arts.“ (382. Malte Brun. Geogr. book XXIII, p. 602)

Cheap prices are contended for, in order that low wages may be enforced. (382)

If our foreign trade can only prosper by enabling our workmen to live as cheap , … it can only continue to do so, by necessitating them to live as low as their foreign rivals. (384)

the depression of these would only be the elevation of others, which is just what our political economists by things finding their own level. (387)

In many parts of India the produce of the lands, after the harvesting, collected into a heap, from which the various claimants take their respective shares. This, however disguised by the artificial expedients of money or paper payments, is virtually the case everywhere. (389, 390)

talking about „the forced cultivation of the inferior soils“, – and pray what cultivation is there that is not forced? – it is intimated that they should go out of that state … what is the amount of the „inferior soils“? … Even in the Pays-de-Waes „incontestably the richest part of Flanders“ and consequently of Europe, – „three-eights only are considered good“ ( Radcliff, Report of the Agriculture of Flanders , p. 162), certainly nothing like so large a proportion could be so denominated in England. (394, 395)

the little freeholders of the kingdom … principally owning the worser soils, and the great landed proprietors the richer tracts of country. (396)

Ireland … is almost exclusively agricultural; how she would be „benefited“ by having the present protection of her industry and products withdrawn, and ten times the number of her population admitted as her rivals and competitors in the British market, is not explained.

Authorities rise into notice, not for their solidity and truth, but like Aëronauts, on the principle of levity. (404)

He (der working man) has ever been informed and assured that these things ⦗wie Maschinen etc⦘ were all for his advantage, especially when he has thought otherwise, and been turbulently disposed; but he has been the truer prophet and political economist; his labour has become less and less valuable, till he is at length pronounced, on high authority, to be redundant; and measures are at this instant being projected to send him out of his country. Inventions, which retain the pleasing appellation of „machines for shortening human labour“, are, to all intents and purposes, become machines for supplanting it as far as possible; in one sense, indeed, they are appropriately named, for they have the effect of shortening life. (409, 410) „All the workmen of England would be turned into the street, if the manufacturers could employ steam engines in their place at a saving of five percent.“ (Edinburgh. Encyclopedia, in verb, Political Economy )

Nehmen wir the same county (Lancashire) und vergleichen an agricultural and a manufacturing hundred. The numbers in each, at the ages specified, are calculated at a radix of 10,000 children under 5 years of age, and are proportioned to the census of 1821, as then discriminated into ages:

This table, exhibiting so astonishing a difference in the ratio of mortality, does not include the great town of Manchester … She (nature) has not admitted into her calculations either infant or incessant labour. Man, excited by the inordinate thirst of gain, has, to his disgrace, resorted to both, and begins to be punished … by means of that overproduction which occasions the periodical recurrence of those distresses which, it is to be feared, will be thus increased, if not perpetuated. … the legislature should interfere; not, indeed, by proscribing human ingenuity, or its application, but by prescribing, equally for the advantage of all parties, the proper age and periods of human labour. (Note a, p. 410[, 411].) Things would, indeed, find their own level … the level of universal depresssion. (414)

Unavailing … the present proposition of deporting the people. (416)

Grattan, im H.o.C. für die Cornlaws (1815): „You know that it was the policy of your ancestors to destroy the manufactures of Ireland, and it was the tendency of the Union to direct her capital to gross produce. Have you, then, driven Ireand out of manufacture, and do you now propose to drive her out of tillage?“ (p. 418, note b)

It has been distinctly disproved, that the distresses in Ireland are attributed to excessive numbers, in as much as these distresses existed, and in a still higher degree, when the population was notoriously scanty; and inasmuch as notwithstanding its augmentation, the increase in all the necessaries of life has increased in a far greater ratio, till, in relation to the products and the people of the island, it is the former and not the latter that are redundant. (420)

Vgl. die Tabelle, p. 423; beweist »the fecundity is greatest where the inhabitants are thinnest … und where the population is in the easiest circumstances, the greatest proportion of the children are there preserved … the proportionate fecundity of the towns of England … on the average determined by their size. (424)

Cities and towns of Ireland, Tabelle, p. 425.

Provinces and counties. Tabelle, p. 426.

Even in Ireland that district is the happiest … which is the best peopled. (427) Cf. p. 428, 429.

The provinces … in point of comfort and wellbeing, in precise conformity with the density of their population, and inversely to their prolificness: Ulster – Leinster – Munster – Connaught. (429)

A country is prosperous, or otherwise, in reference to that necessity of exertion which numbers of inhabitants call into action, rather than from natural fertility of soil, or extent of territory. ( Dr. Campbell, Historical Sketch etc, p. 371) Ulster … at the head of the provinces … in regard to inhabitants, though the most affluent, is … „the most mountainous and barren part of the kingdom“. Connaught … the worst peopled, and confessedly the most wretched part of the country, is nevertheless „the sweetest soil of Ireland“. ( Spenser’s View of Ireland. Works vol. VI, p. 116. Dobbs says. „Connaught is, in most places, very fertile“) (p. 430) In Ulster 407 inhabitants on the Irish mile; in Connaught, only 263, or about 20 acres to every family! and where, by the by, we are told, on indubitable authority, that the distress was at least as great as at present, when there were 20 acres to each individual. (Sieh Dr. Smith, Topographical History , p. 75, 76. He exclaims: „Is it not amazing, that the most fertile part of Ireland, washed by so noble a river as the Shannon, cannot support its people with bread.“ (432)

Sieh Table, p. 435, ditto p. 436.

Nach Herrn Malthus : The greater the density of the population, the more the preventive check prevails … (knowing, as he aknowledges, that the „positive“ ones have declined …) he calculates its prevalence by simply dividing the population by the number of the marriages, and if these happen to be in a somewhat smaller apparent proportion than formerly (which, however, is rarely the case), he reckons the point settled: totally leaving out of his consideration the great increase, which has, in the interim, taken place, in the expectation of human life, as it is called, which must occasion a corresponding increase in the co-existing population from the same number of births. Just in the same manner, in calculating the comparative prevalence of this check, in different countries, he has quite forgotten that the duration of human life, which varies so materially (in some of them so much as a third, taking his own authority,) is an essential ingredient in the calculation. (438, 439) Supposing we were to calculate the prevalance of the preventive check for a nation of antediluvians, stationary in numbers, and living to the age of a millennium each, one annual marriage, it is evident, could only take place in every 2000 of the inhabitants; though every soul of them should enter into that state, and, consequently, „moral restraint“, as it is facetiously denominated, should have no existence whatever amongst them. (439)

Cf. p. 440–442 (wo Tabelle.) p. 443, p. 444 (Tabelle), p. 445). p. 446–448.

Malthus and Vaccination. p. 450. p. 451 (Tabelle) p. 453 (Tabelle)

Who are the real, culpable vagrants, ye imperial legislators, about whom ye ought to bestir yourselves? (456)

Surely, Ireland, is the last of all countries upon earth that ought to permit its people to starve from want of food, or suffer for want for employment. As to the former, its surplus produce, even now is probably greater than that of any other country in the world of equal extent; and its surface might, on the very lowest calculations … sustain in plenty far above 10 times the number of inhabitants that it now nearly starves; while „the wastes of the sea“, to repeat Lord Bacon’s expression, by which it is encircled, remain almost totally untouched. (456)

„For this island, it is endowed with so many dowries of nature, considering the fruitfulness of the soil, the ports, the rivers, the fishings, the quarries, the woods, and other materials; and, especially the race and generation of men, valiant, hard, and active, as it is not easy, no, not upon the continent, to find such confluence of commodities, if the hand of man did join with the hand of nature.“ ( Works, vol. III . p. 321).

Prolificness of the U. St. p. 464)

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1. Text nach MEGAdigital (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), MEGA² IV/19, Lizenz CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); der editorische Apparat der MEGA ist nicht wiedergegeben. ↩