which bring them over were suddenly to founder, and carry every creature on board into the depths of the ocean, they would have a better chance of salvation than they have after they have lived for some time in this country. So entirely convinced am I of the fearful havoc of souls, which is the result of coming here, that were Almighty God to give me the power of building a wall of fire around Ireland, to prevent its people from leaving it, it should be built before the ink with which I write this line would dry. For the love of Jesus try to keep your people at home. For every individual you keep you snatch a soul from hell. "Thanks be to that Divine Master whose sacred livery I am permitted to wear, my congregation here is as moral and exemplary as perhaps any other of the same size in the United States, and still my opinions are as above given. "Asking your kind prayer and remembrance at the Holy Sacrifice, I am, Rev. dear Sir, your obedient servant, "THOMAS REARDON." If the people are to be banished a system ought to be organized which would transport them in groups of families and parishes, together with their parish clergy, and enable them to settle down as regular colonists on townships of their own. They would thus at once assume a position of comfort, respectability, and independence, and be rescued from the degradations, miseries, and perils, incident to the lives of isolated drudges. The next consideration is, where are they to be located? We for years looked to the United States. But it is obvious that Know-Nothingism will make the States inconvenient for Irish Catholics. The States also prove very unhealthy for natives of this country. We know numbers who went away in the prime of life, and died prematurely. Some Yankee physicians, with whom we have conversed, have ventured an opinion that there appears to be something in the climate or soil injurious to the European races, and that if immigration' were to cease, and the Red Indians were to condescend to pick up a little civilization, they would in the course of a few centuries recover the whole of the continent. The Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, seem also unsuited to the natives of this country. A few thrive there, but the great bulk descend prematurely to the grave. Newfoundland was in the last century the place of exile, by process of law, for many an Irishman. It is now chiefly inhabited by persons of Irish descent, but it is too small for any large scheme of emigration, Australia seems for the present the best location, but we have doubts of its permanent prosperity. It seems subject to the plagues of flies, torrid sands, and bad or no water. The condition of the indigenous race has always been very wretched. Most of them are afflicted with ophthalmia, and the difficulty of procuring the means of subsistence has been so great, that they have been, and are in the habit of procuring abortion, and rearing only very few of their male children. We had seen this stated many years back in a work on the colony, and meeting a few months ago a gentleman who had just returned thence, we learned that it is still known, or rather believed, to be the habit of the natives, and that certainly somehow or other, the greater part of the young males disappear. When the natives have been for years resorting to such unnatural practices, it is an indication that food is not very abundant, and we fear that when the gold mines are exhausted, the settlers there will begin to think it is not the most desirable of quarters. What shall we say of Spain? About four years ago we saw in a country paper the following announcement: "The Spanish Government have conceded a grant of 250 square miles of country on the banks of the Guadalquiver, in the provinces of Andalusia and Estremadura, containing 160,000 acres of land, of the richest quality, to be colonized by Irish settlers, and exempt from taxation for twenty-five years. The district in question, depopulated by the expulsion of the Moors, has never since been fully occupied." Spain, of all countries, can best appreciate the loss or gain of inhabitants. In the time of the Moors it is said to have had a population of 30,000,000. At the close of the Moorish wars 2,400,000 Moors were obliged to leave en masse, and soon afterwards more than half a million of Jews were driven out; altogether just about the numbers lost to Ireland by and through the famine. On the discovery of America and its golden treasures, the people rushed in such numbers across the Atlantic, that the government was obliged to pass severe laws against emigration. But they were of no avail. The people fled to the El Dorado of the west, and left the plains of Spain to entailed and incumbered landlords and oppressive tax gatherers; and when the colonies which they formed became independent, the mother country found herself reduced almost to her original limits, with a scanty, discontented, tax-burthened population of ten or twelve millions. The Spanish government would no doubt treat with a small colony from this country, but it could not spare land enough for all who are disposed to go in quest of new settlements. The county of Clare alone has just as much waste land improveable for cultivation and pasture, (besides 136,000 altogether "irreclaimable," as all Andalusia and Estremadura can spare to us. If the government could be induced to promote the real welfare of the people, there would be no need to emigrate. We have land enough at home for at least five times our present population; some think for fifty millions; Sir Robert Kane thinks for 20,000,000; and the late ambassador of the French Republic, A. De Beaumont, thinks for 25,000,000. O'Driscoll shows that the population was far greater in the eighth and ninth centuries than it is at present. He says "If we are struck with the number of schools and colleges, the names of which, and of the teachers, and the numbers of the students, are in many instances handed down to us, all which appear in our age to be very astonishing, we shall be equally surprised if we consider the vast number of bishoprics, or we should now call them rectories or parishes, into which the country was divided, and which proves beyond a doubt a high degree of national prosperity, and a population greatly exceeding what we consider to be an excess at the present day. A single parish of our time, in most parts of Ireland, and which is considered as affording only an extent of space and population adequate to the maintenance of one clergyman, in the ancient times we refer to, supported three, four, five, or six bishops or rectors, and was divided into as many parishes, having each its parish church. There is no doubt of this fact, for the names of the ancient parishes, so grouped together to form one modern parish, are on record, and in many instances the ruins of the churches may still be traced." In short, is there any sober thinker who would maintain that our population is excessive if our material resources were to be developed? A glance at the following figures will set all doubt at rest. *Ilist. of Ireland, vol. i. p. 28. In 1841 there was no separate return made of the land in tillage. Returns of this kind commenced in 1847; those for 1854, show that all the land then in tillage, (strictly so-called,) comprised only 4,310,659 acres. Namely, In the return meadow and clover are put down together under the head of crops, but this is a great oversight, as most of the best meadow land in the country never has been tilled, and cannot be tilled, and what is desirable to be known is the amount of land actually undergoing the process of culture. This, we hope, will be remedied in the next returns. However" meadow and clover" covered only 1,257,717 acres, thus leaving altogether under "crops" only 5,568,376 acres, the residue in pasture being 7,895,924 acres. Of the pasture lands of this country there are probably from one million to a million and a half so naturally fertile as to require no culture or attention of any kind, beyond fencing and keeping the cattle off them during the wet seasons of the year. Suppose these lands to amount to even 1,895,924 acres, there remains 6,000,000 acres of ordinary pasture, which require irrigation, manuring, and other artificial modes of amendment." The comparative unproductiveness of this class of pasture land is a matter of notoriety. Colonel Blacker estimated that in Armagh, which has undoubtedly the best cultivation and smallest farms in the country, half the land was "nominally in grazing, but in reality producing nothing," and that 66 one acre, which in pasturage scarcely afforded one cow a sufficiency of food for more than half the year, would, if tilled and planted with turnips, fatten four head of ordinary sized cattle. So the Rev. Mr. Hickey, and Cobbett, show that an acre of ground, which in grass could not feed one cow through the year, could, being tilled on the green crop system, support four. This is the common estimate of all agriculturists. Hence it appears that more than 6,000,000 acres nominally cultivated are little better than waste, while considerably more than 6,000,000 are avowedly waste. The folly of leaving so much land not only unproductive, but actually injurious to society, has been long apparent to our rulers. So far back as 1772, when "Papists" could not take a lease of any other land, a statute was passed empowering them to take, and landlords with limited estates, to give leases for sixty-one years of bogs and wastes, with half an acre of dry land adjoining, to delve for gravel. In 1809 an act was passed appointing a commission to inquire into the nature and extent of these wastes, and their reclaimability, and this commission made four reports. Select committees of the House of Commons in 1819, 1823, and 1835, recommended the reclamation of these wastes. The Devon Commission urged the importance of it, and the Irish Waste Lands Improvement Company thought to convert them into an El Dorado, but failed. The Devon Commissioners obtained from Mr. Griffith, the government engineer, and General Valuation Commissioner, " a return of the probable extent of waste lands in every county in Ireland. This return is a most instruc tive commentary on the outcry about a "surplus." We lay it before our readers with elisions and additions. First we strike out two columns specifying the acres 800 feet above the level of the sea, and those below that level, and we substitute for them two columns, one of the total area in *An Essay on the Improvement to be made in the cultivation of small farms by the introduction of green crops, and house feeding the stock thereon. By William Blacker, Esq., Dublin, 1834. † Hints to Small Farmers. By Martin Doyle. |