Capital Volume I
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Chapter 25
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 over-crowding 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.” (l. c., p. xx., § 82, and xxiii., n. 96.) 119 Population of Ireland, 1801, 5,319,867 persons; 1811, 6,084,996; 1821, 6,869,544; 1831, 7,828,347; 1841, 8,222,664. 120
The result would be found yet more unfavourable if we went further back. Thus: Sheep in 1865, 3,688,742, but in 1856, 3,694,294. Pigs in 1865, 1,299,893, but in 1858, 1,409,883 121 The data of the text are put together from the materials of the “Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, General Abstracts, Dublin,” for the years 1860, et seq., and “Agricultural Statistics, Ireland. Tables showing the estimated average produce, &c., Dublin, 1866.” These statistics are official, and laid before Parliament annually.
in area under cultivation of 134,915 acres. An increase occurred in the cultivation of green crops, turnips, mangold-wurzel, and the like; a decrease in the area under cultivation for wheat of 16,000 acres; oats, 14,000; barley and rye, 4,000; potatoes, 66,632; flax, 34,667; grass, clover, vetches, rape- seed, 30,000. The soil under cultivation for wheat shows for the last 5 years the following stages of decrease: — 1868, 285,000 acres; 1869, 280,000; 1870, 259,000; 1871, 244,000; 1872, 228,000. For 1872 we find, in round numbers, an increase of 2,600 horses, 80,000 horned cattle, 68,609 sheep, and a decrease of 236,000 pigs. 122 The total yearly income under Schedule D. is different in this table from that which appears in the preceding ones, because of certain deductions allowed by law. 123
If the product also diminishes relatively per acre, it must not be forgotten that for a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without as much as allowing its cultivators the means for making up the constituents of the soil that had been exhausted. 124
As Ireland is regarded as the promised land of the “principle of population,” Th. Sadler, before the publication of his work on population, issued his famous book, “Ireland, its Evils and their Remedies.” 2nd edition, London, 1829. Here, by comparison of the statistics of the individual provinces, and of the individual counties in each province, he proves that the misery there is not, as Malthus would have it, in proportion to the number of the population, but in inverse ratio to this. 125
Between 1851 and 1874, the total number of emigrants amounted to 2,325,922. 126
According to a table in Murphy’s “Ireland Industrial, Political and Social,” 1870, 94.6 per cent. of the holdings do not reach 100 acres, 5.4 exceed 100 acres. 127 “Reports from the Poor Law Inspectors on the Wages of Agricultural Labourers in Dublin,” 1870. See also “Agricultural labourers (Ireland). Return, etc.” 8 March, 1861, London, 1862. 128
l. c., pp. 29, 1. 129
l. c., p. 12. 130
l. c., p. 12. 131
l. c., p. 25. 132
l. c., p. 27. 133
l. c., p. 25 505
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134 l. c., p. 1. 135 l. c., pp. 31, 32. 136 l. c., p. 25. 137 l. c., p. 30. 138 l. c., pp. 21, 13. 139 “Rept. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1866,” p. 96. 140 The total area includes also peat, bogs, and waste land. 141 How the famine and its consequences have been deliberately made the most of, both by the individual landlords and by the English legislature, to forcibly carry out the agricultural revolution and to thin the population of Ireland down to the proportion satisfactory to the landlords, I shall show more fully in Vol. III. of this work, in the section on landed property. There also I return to the condition of the small farmers and the agricultural labourers. At present, only one quotation. Nassau W. Senior says, with other things, in his posthumous work, “Journals, Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland.” 2 vols. London, 1868; Vol. II., p. 282. “Well,” said Dr. G., “we have got our Poor Law and it is a great instrument for giving the victory to the landlords. Another, and a still more powerful instrument is emigration.... No friend to Ireland can wish the war to be prolonged [between the landlords and the small Celtic farmers] — still less, that it should end by the victory of the tenants. The sooner it is over — the sooner Ireland becomes a grazing country, with the comparatively thin population which a grazing country requires, the better for all classes.” The English Corn Laws of 1815 secured Ireland the monopoly of the free importation of corn into Great Britain. They favoured artificially, therefore, the cultivation of corn. With the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, this monopoly was suddenly removed. Apart from all other circumstances, this event alone was sufficient to give a great impulse to the turning of Irish arable into pasture land, to the concentration of farms, and to the eviction of small cultivators. After the fruitfulness of the Irish soil had been praised from 1815 to 1846, and proclaimed loudly as by Nature herself destined for the cultivation of wheat, English agronomists, economists, politicians, discover suddenly that it is good for nothing but to produce forage. M. Léonce de Lavergne has hastened to repeat this on the other side of the Channel. It takes a “serious” man, à la Lavergne, to be caught by such childishness. Yüklə 3,3 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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