The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-23 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL PROSPECTS IN

IRELAND.

The letters on Irish agriculture which have ap-
peared in these columns will have been interesting
to people of all pursuits. Agriculture to Ireland
means prosperity—nay, existence. In the other two
kingdoms it is an important—the most important—
branch of industry. But both England and Scotland
have other pursuits, and derive wealth from manu-
facturing the productions of foreign countries, or
digging and working the minerals which nature
has placed beneath their soil, In this part of the
United Kingdom the majority of the population is
no longer dependent upon agriculture, and it has
been found by the last Census that the proportion
of agriculturists to manufacturers and miners and
traders is steadily diminishing. But in Ireland ag-
riculture still rules supreme. Only a small popula-
tion, comparatively, is engaged in the manufactures
of tha North, or in trading pursuits in the large
towns. An agricultural survey means an inquiry
into the condition of the entire people. It means an
examination of all the questions which have arisen
during the present generation. Population, emigra-
tion, religion, crime, political feeling, the relation
between Saxon and Celt, and all sorts of matters des-
tined to historical ethnological importance, depend on
the pig and the potato, the wheatfield and the mea-
dow. Sincere, then, must our congratulations be
when it is announced that in agriculture Ireland
has made wonderful progress during the past ten
years. This progress means not only a better fed
and contented people, but it means tranquillity to
the whole empire—it means the cessation of that
bitter wail which, partly real and partly affected,
raised the pity of the world, and gave our foreign
rivals a never failing subject of invective against us.
In reading the letters of our special correspondent,
and comparing them with our reminiscences of a few
years since, we are impressed with the fact that the
greatest social change of this age has taken place
at our doors. Such revolutions commonly make but
little noise. Mexico or Hayti will be more talked
about and written about in a year than a country
which is reforming all its institutions will be in ten
years. The overthrow of a legitimate despot or the
brilliant career of a military adventurer will engage
public attention, while the movement of a large
population is studied only by a few economists and
politicians.
It now appears clear that the chief evil which
afflicted Ireland in former times was a too great
population. It may be said that other countries,
such as England and Belgium, are able to support a
more dense population in comfort and contentment.
But these are countries where men have other re-
sources than the tilling of the soil. It would be as
useless to compare London, which has its 3,000,000
souls within a few square miles, with a similar ex-
tent of ground in the country,as to compare England,
wealthy from its many varieties of industry and
from its world-wide trade, with Ireland, dependent
only upon what it can raise from a soil fertile
certainly, but checked in its powers of production
by a damp and sunless climate. Twenty years ago,
before famine and emigration had done their work,
the population of Ireland was over 8,000,000 souls.
All but a small proportion of these were dependent
on the coarsest food and the lowest kind of cultiva-
tion for their daily subsistence. They grew little be-
sides potatoes on their miserable holdings, to which
they clung with a tenacity which made conspiracy
and murder familiar instruments to them. The pigs
which they bred almost in their houses were gene-
rally sold to pay the rent, and the cottier seldom
had a taste of bacon to give a relish to the potatoes
of which he consumed such a prodigious bulk. What-
ever may have been the faults of Ireland's social
state, they were all insignificant in comparison with
this. No Catholic Emancipation, no reform of the
Church Establishment, could give these 8,000,000
people enough to eat. We doubt even if the Encum-
bered Estates Act and the transfer of property would
have any effect on their condition. Indeed, it would
have been impossible to tempt men to purchase as
long as these millions of gaunt and hungry Irishmen
were weighing down property, and threatening to
swallow up the whole income of the landlord. ll'or
such a culture as evisted in Ireland 3,000,000 of
people would have been enough, and here were
8,000,000, fighting and struggling for little spots of
the earth's surface insufficient to feed a single
family, or to give an able-bodied man two days'
work in the week. But the famine came, and then
less than 6,000,000,
followed that remarkable emigration, which deserves
grants being
to be recorded in the history of the movements of
was deepest in
races. The population of Ireland was reduced to
of the
.conntr2,-.
of
that n
classearly tehethewhpoealesaonftrtyhNevehmicih-
ss
check on the prtnoigsreery before 1847, and'the greatest
change is now sufficiently cheering.
correspondent gives a number foYfbatetisn,esdon.m
The
others t a Ourkhe
from statistical returns,
own observation. While the
diminished the increase in
numbera inhabi-
tantsolfrnils.4 has 69 greatly