The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-07-30 00:00:00

MR. BALFOUR ON IRISH STATISTICS.

Mr. Balfour has addressed the following letter to a
Somersetshire gentleman: "Irish Office, Great Queen-
street, S.W., 21st July, 1887. Dear Sir,—l regret
very much that, through great pressure of Parliamen-
tary and other duties, your letter was overlooked, and
has remained so long unanswered. You were good
enougu to draw my attention to the fact that certain
statistics quoted by Mr. Gladstone during the debate
eeeig extensively circulated
through the country, as illustrations of the results of
English rule in Ireland. The authority which Mr. Glad-
stone gave for these figures was described by him as a
useful work recently published by an eminent statis-
tician.' The figures in question were as follows: Persons
evicted in Ireland in the present reign, 3,668,000;
died of famine, 1,225,000; number of emigrants
from Ireland, 4,186,000. These. statements contain
very grave inaccuracies, to which it is much to be re-
grei tLd. that Mr. Gladstone, by accepting and quoting
them without examination, should have lent the
authority of his name. The first is an exaggeration so
extraordinary that it is hard to understand how it
came about that Mr. Gladstone, familiar as he must
be with the authorised statistics on the subject, should
not have at once detected it. The total number of
evictions recorded in the official returns laid before
Parliament is 113,262; and the total number of per-
sons included in the families of these evicted
tenants 577,553. From these figures we must de-
duct 177,721, being the number of persons who
were immediately readmitted to their hold-
ings, either as tenants or as caretakers thus ob-
taining 399,832 as the actual number of persons
evicted, or less than one -ninth part of the
number stated by Mr. Gladstone. It should be added
that large numbers of these persons subsequently
caine to terms with their landlords, and resumed pos-
session Of their holdings. From the second statement
we are apparently intended to infer that death from
famine has been a characteristic incident of the reign
of Queen Victoria; this is not the case. With tue
exception of the terrible period which followed the
failure of the potato crop in 1847, no part of her
Majesty's reign has been appreciably marked in
Ireland by deaths from privation or want. According
to careful calculations made by the Registrar-General
for Ireland, not very much over one-half of the
numbers stated by Mr. Gladstone died from tau -es
directly or indirectly attributable to the awful
visitation of 1847. Any attempt to connect
the potato disease with a political cause is
evidently absurd, but conjectures may legiti-
mately be made as to the extent to which that.
calamity would have been aggravated but for the
English connection; and it is well to remember that
in order to meet this crisis the Imperial Treasury
advanced £4,700,000 on loan to provide employment
for the labouring poor, and that of this amount over
£4.250,000 was within the year remitted or written
off as a gift. It is not so necessary to consider the
accuracy of the last statement (emigrated from Ire-
land, 4,186,000), for it must surely be admitted to be
at least an open question whether emigration has not
alike benefited those who left and those who remained.
Even now, after an enormous reduction in the
population, parts of the country are known as
the congested districts,' and so lately as 1883
Mr. Gladstone's Government legislated for the pur-
pose of encouraging State-aided emigration. Accord-
ing to Hr. Gladstone's own showing, upon the occa-
sion when he quoted these figures in Parliament,
the 4,000,000 of emigrants are estimated to have
amassed wealth in their adopted countries to the
amount of £655,000,000 sterling, while they had sent
£39,000,000 home to their friends, thus giving evi-
apnea of a state of prosperity to which they could
never have, attained within the narrow limits of Ire-
land. I perceive from the newspaper extract which
you (nclose that Lord Kilcoursie announced to a
public meeting that, regarding the subject of these
statistics as a great Christian question, he had given
instructions to have Mr. Gladstone's figures printed
and sent to every Liberal club in South Somerset. It
is to be hoped that if he has carried out that deter-
mination, he will still further elucidate this Christian
question by circulating corrections, in the absence of
which his original statement cannot be otherwise than
wholly misleading.—l am, yours faithfully (Signed),
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR. To R. H. Hayward Iter-
riott, Esq., Crewkerne."

CUTTING.—At a ball a girl said to her partner, who
adore
r ae
it,
rhy
eproeoprl de
da.n_c eTr
h: e
nDwob
yy oduid
you
koeu wneavl tezi ng P
never learn?
ar—n
she inquired. • -
• TIIE man who robs a clothes-line is not necessarily
laundryman, but he generally "takes in" washing
ind is likely to be ironed if he is caught.
you have no idea, said the landlord, how much i
•sts:to run this hotel.—Oh, yes, I have, replied the
gust; I paktnp my bilit,his morning.
.LooittNo at Your drawing imbues me with an artistic
remarked -.8.419-4:Ao,atulu.,--Ithotight so ;
it's sketching, quietly replied Miss Lulu. •
•;- I'LL beitiiser when I'm moulder, as the moulder's
-apprentice remarked to his employer when chidden
for some mistake he'd made. •
IT has been suggested that one reason why the
communications of spirits are so indistinct is because
they write on "rapping" paper.
I :wolfLuN'r be a fool, if I were you, said Jones to a
friend.—lf you were I, you wouldn't be a 601, was
the reply.
YES, he said, before marriage I thought I could live
on love. But lam now living on my father-in-law.
Somn claim that the pulley is the oldest mechanical
invention, but probably the crowbar has a pryer
claim.

ICts
f) a

Is old times parents brought children up, but now
children bring parents down.