The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-27 00:00:00

gut eprog.
be New heath WY" TrClDa`s TAD, wed New
Dila nab ap ea the MID alai lid Notable.
...Wvalle Ise a Nara Aerelee. 111111wida, sad aeo trawl
ODD wit he min zecthe eDing et the flit Desentar.
Da Deb Dab ezabbag lose Name. Haymow
• =B. lbw °Dana ere tots 'NA rens
ND awl
as Ise DAD% Jams% bola Ifiwboh
Deepeh PeDak Weet et DWI ad IR breada.
1111Dehom IP. be sae aka
ON ~meet ohs ID
weembee ma be Sanaa Mr" emumb =Da
Drieleabdleb vie Sualhaallem
21= op ea Übe mobs et the Dram.
Dee alb be Oa liera "La Oa Lae Phie,Date Dim D.?.
=PAM ...a's •si "4' ".
The halb hw Win Oporto? Lets, Deoleem OD. sad °Dana
ea he aide as at De Draw et the tth Jewel.
Ifs irisalmi Debi via Meeeeatab tat Nadaerrssess
Web Ogoa. Km& km. iirill be as& ap ca the
dee Jemmy.

110 001IMIPONDC/1111._ ,
Nll* dim
tar "lir Ear..." Loa=
w cid....

HIGH MAHS A T LONDON lIHDOIL
Tau DAr —Homing, $ Ws. AAA ; Munro*, II We. pew
t.
1.11•••••—Altensloc. .. jag ; Ammo" 31 Mr gar I.

LONDON, MONDAY, DEC. 27.
AssoNto other measures urged upon government,
with a view to the relief of Irish distress, the histo-
rian of " The Irish Crisis," in the Edinbuigh Resifts',
discusses emigration. His remarks are characterised
by, good sense and fairness, and we concur with much
of what he says, though not with all.
Emigration is a natural operation, continual, in
progress in almost every inhabited country. Since
the days of itEltAllAY and LOT, individuals or fa-
milies have constaitly been breaking off from their
went societies to seek their fortune in new lands.
This natural and almost unnoted emigration is in
bodies politic analogous to the incessant, exhalations
of the body physical, by which superfluous particles
are insensibly removed and health preserved.
recom-
mended however, inch as has been
for the relief of Ireland is on a larger scale.
It costs en effort of the public will, and is more
analogous to the process of breathing a vein with a
view to relieve over-charged vessels. This kind of
emigration is also of immemorial antiquity. It is a
custom that has come down to our days from the early
Greek and Phccnician colonies, and the rer sacrum of
primeval Latin nations, through the swarms which
the Teutonic tribes of the west and the Turkish or
Mongol hordes of the east have sent forth from time
to time in search of new homes, to the colonies of
Spaniards and other modern European nations.
Of this kind of emigration, or more properly
eoloaisation, it may be remarkod that it is more avail-
able as a preventative of redundant population than as
a care for its evils. Redundant population, it ou4ht to
be observed, is a comparative, not a positive, term. Of
two countries, that which has the lower proportional
number of inhabitants to a square mile may have a
redundant population, while the other feels rather a
deficiency, even %hen in respect of soil and climate,
of mineral, vegetable, and animal productions, the
two are apon a par. Population is redundant so soon
as the number of a country's inhabitants presses upon
the means of subsistence which, in their then state of
intelligence, stored up wealth, and habits of industry,
they are capable of extracting from it. It does net,
therefore, follow, because there are fewer inhabitants
to the square mile in one country than in another,
which labours under none of the inconveniences of a
surplus population, that the former is not
overcrowded. Lancashire is more densely peopled than
the county of Mayo ; yet Lancashire could support
more inhabitants than it does, and it would have
been well for Mayo bad one-third of its present popu-
lation been shipped off in detachments years ago.
When we maintain, therefore, that an Irish emigra-
tion on a large scale is not the remedy fur the
present distress of Ireland, it is not from any doubt
as to the fact of Ireland's being over-peopled, but
simply because we regard emigration as the preventa-
tive, not the cure, of such misery as the neglect or
blunders of her rulers have brought upon that
country.
The history of British colonisation explains the way
in which that process prevents a country from being
over-peopled. From the time of RALEIGH to the
present moment, this country has been con-
tinually founding new colonies and keeping up its
old ones. We have colonies in northern and tropical
America, at the Cape, and in the Eastern Archipelago
(to say nothing of India, which serves many of the
purposes of a colony), and in Australia and New
Zealand. These settlements have from time to time
drawn off considerable masses of our population at
one time to establish them, and they act as a permanent
drain upon it. Great Britain began to colonise before
its population had attained to a redundant degree of
density. The operation of this colonising process was
twofold—it left the reduced numbers at home a more
tree field for the exertion of their industry; it created
new markets abroad, in which hereditary tastes
occasioned a more than usual demand for British pro-
ducts, .and thus enabled the island ulti-
mately to support a more dense population,
than it could previously have done. Colonization
on a large scale was commenced in Great Britain
timcously, and has prevented the population of the
island from becoming redundant, while it has caused
it to become extremely dense.
In Ireland, on the contrary, emigration on a large
scale, or colonisation, has been begun too late to pro-
duce this effect. Nay, more, while that precaution
was neglected, the Increase of population till it be-
came plethoric has been stimulated by artificial
means. At first the franchise of the forty shilling free-
holders, with the absolute control which landlords exer-
cised over it, tempted the dominant class in Ireland
to encourage the increase of population with a view
to obtain political power. And when the evils of
over-population first began to be felt, measures were
in many places adopted for its relief which in the
long run increased the evil. Arrangements were
made for placing numbers of families in a state of
comfort (according to their notions) on small allot-
ments of land, and these, feeling themselves raised '
above penury, continued to breed on without reflec-
tion ; the second, or at most the third generation, re-
lapsing into a condition of more hopeless poverty
than ever their ancestors had known.
The Irish peasants, especially in the south and
west, are now suffering the consequences of over-
population. The effect of these consequences has
to unfit the great mass of them from succeeding
as emigrants. It is observed in a note to the article
on the "Irish Crisis" in the new number of the Edin-
burgh Reri.to (p. 32) :
An officer of the board of works, observing the emaciated
condition of the labourers, reported that, as an engineer, he
was ashamed of allotting so little task-work for a day's wages,
while, as a man, he wet ashamed of requiring so much. The
exhausted state of the workmen was one canoe of the small
tThe Itufpewornktditzel,cemnpred he
eustamed omr,eoneynex.geromed.;
cowering over his turf fire during the inclement season of
the year; and exposure to the cold and rain on the roads,
without sufficient food or clothing, greatly contributed to the
prevailing sickness.
The account here given of the Irish peasant relates
not merely to his condition in the year of famine, but
to kis normal condition. He is unfitted by habitual
underfeeding, and by the hopeless non-exertion of his
inventive faculties in an industrial direction, to over-
come the difficulties with which a settler in a new
land has to contend. The passage we have quoted
explains why, in Canada and the United States,
Irishmen are found gregariously crouching in con-
tented and squalid poverty in the larger towns, while
independence, and even wealth,are the certain reward
of the enterprising spirts who plunge into the bush.
The formation of new Irish colonies is not the cure for
Irish destitution, as the helpless crowds who have
this year died off in Canada and New Brunswick like
sheep perishing of the rot, attest. When the popula-
tion of Ireland has been, by whatever means, restored
to a healthy condition, emigration on a large scale—
systematic colonisation—may prevent a recurrence of
such awful scenes as we have Jost witnessed ; but to
have recourse to it at the present moment would be
like bleeding a patient reduced to the last stage of
weakness.
On these grounds we agree with the reviewer in think-
ing that ministers judged wisely in refusing at the time
to adopt emigration under government auspices as one
of their Irish remedies. We cannot, however, agree
with him when he asserts that government exercised
sufficient superintendence and control over what he
would have us believe was the spontaneous Irish emi-
gration of 1847.
It is a ridiculous abuse of language to call this
year's emigration from Ireland spontaneous. As well
might we call the flight of a panic-stricken multitude
from a city of the plague spontaneous. Nor was fear
the only inducement to the hundreds of thousands of
Irish who ha"e this year sought refuge ,cross the
Atlantic. Their panic was industriously moaned ,
—the means, not of temporary support in America