The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-19 00:00:00

A FEW WORDS ABOUT IRELAND.

Several of our ablest contemporaries, and
particularly the Pall Mall Gazette and Times,
have entered on a discussion of the state of
Ireland since his Eminence, Cardinal Cullen,
published, in his recent Pastoral, some statis-
tics regarding the real condition of the sister
island. His Eminence states that Ireland
has lost more than three millions of her in-
habitants; and this is so manifest, that no one
dares to question it. Now this one broad fact,
in our mind, speaks trumpet-tongued for the
sinking state of that kingdom ; and with such
a falling off in the population, it would require
very clear figures, and solid proofs, to con-
vince enlightened and impartial men that
Ireland, with a rapidly decaying population,
is advancing in material prosperity—the para-
dox which our contemporaries would fain lead
the world to believe. Love of country is a
natural feeling, implanted by the hand-of God
in the breast of man, and although some may
be of a roving spirit, yet the bulk of mankind
—and none more than the Irish—wish to live
and die in the land of their birth. This being
so, our contemporaries have undertaken a
serious task in trying to persuade reflecting
people, whether at home or abroad, that Ire-
land is prospering whilst her population is
rapidly declining. Indeed, if this alleged
prosperity were true, no man would know it
sooner than Cardinal Cullen, and none would
rejoice more than his Eminence at having it
in his power to proclaim such gladdening in-
telligence.
The vital question for the consideration of
our statesmen at the present day is this :
W hat is the real condition of the people of
Ireland ? Is the material wealth of that
country increasing ? Are the great masses of
her people better off now than they were be-
fore the famine of some twenty years ago ?
The Irish people—and they ought to be good
authority on the subject—declare that they are
not better, but are actually worse off than
they were in 1845, when the Devon Commis-
sion pronounced them to be " the worst fed,
the worst clothed, and the worst housed people
in Europe." The Pall Mall Gazette has pub-
lished some rows of figures, since copied, and
relied on, by the Times, and other of our con-
temporaries, with the object of proving the
prosperity f Ireland. Admitting the correct-
ness of the figures, we wish we could discover
in them any proof of that national prosperity
in allegation of which they are so confidently
put forward, and shall now impartially examine
them, to see if they at all lead to this desirable
conclusion.

Cardinal Cullen states three most important
facts. The first is, that more squalid poverty
is to be seen in Dublin alone than in all the
great cities of France, Austria, or Spain. The
second is, that the number of Ireland's inha-
bitants has decreased about three millions.
And the third, that the number of houses in
Ireland has decreased about four hundred
thousand.

The first of these facts is manifest to all ob-
servant travellers who have gone through
France, Spain, Austria, and Ireland ; for there
is scarcely such a thing as squalid poverty to be
seen in any of these more favoured kingdoms,
and, comparatively speaking, only very little
poverty of any description. The second, as to
the immense reduction in the population of
Ireland within these late years, is not denied
—for no man can gainsay 'this melancholy
truth. And the third, as to the diminution in
the number of the houses of the poor, is not
denied in terms, although the tables published
by the Pall Mall Gazette are well calculated
to confuse and mislead the general reader on
that point. •
Our able'contemporary reduces the houses
of Ireland to four classes, and shows a certain
limited increase in houses of the first and
second class, from which we are asked to infer
the general prosperity of the country. We
need not observe to Irishmen or those ac-
quainted with the real condition of Ireland
that the masses of the people of that country
—the farmers, operatives, and labourers—
do not live in first, neither do they aspire to
second-class houses ; and, therefore, the in-
crease in the number of these houses proves
nothing as to the material comforts of the
masses of the population, which is the real
question at issue. The recent increase in the
number of houses of a superior description in
Ireland is to be traced to two causes, each in-
dependent of any increase in the general
prosperity of that kingdom. Before the pass-
ing of the Emancipation Act the Catholics of
Ireland were crushed in spirit, and although
many of them had previously realized consider-
able sums of money in Mercantile and other
pursuits, yet they continued to live in inferior
houses and in obscure quarters of the several
cities where they carried on their business.
Emancipation first raised the position and spirit
of the professional classes in that country, and
Catholic barristers, physicians, solicitors, and
others, soon after the year 1829, began to
remove to a better class of houses. The next
measure that raised the Irish Catholics was the
Corporation Reform Act, which O'Connell
forced from Parliament in 1841, whereby.
Catholics were enabled for the first time during
the last two or three hundred years to take
their natural position in the civic government
of their country. They rapidly became town
councillors, aldermen, and mayors of their
respective cities. This soon brought them into
contact with the Irish Government. They
began to attend the levees and drawing-rooms
of the Lord-Lieutenant. Many of them on
passing the Civic Chair were raised to the
position of Justices of the Peace ; their wives
and families were no longer satisfied to live in
comparative obscurity ; and first and second-
class houses soon began to spring up for their
accommodation. But if trade and commerce
do not improve beyond what they now are
and have been of late years, a very grave
question remains to be solved, namely, how
long this class of people shall be enabled to
maintain the increased expenditure which their
altered position and new dignities have thus
imposed upon them ?
Another cause of the increase of houses of
a superior class in the cities, large towns, and
sea-bathing places in Ireland, is to be traced,
not to the general prosperity of the country,
but to the fallen circumstances of very many
of the landlord class, who were much injured
in the early years of the Encumbered Estates
Court, when fee-simple estates were sold at
little more than a nominal value. Kingstown,
Rathmines, and other suburbs of the Irish
metropolis—and the same may be said of
other cities and sea-bathing spots along the
coast—have increased rapidly of late years ;
but their increase is owing, principally, to
the number of country gentlemen who have
gone to reside in them for purposes of economy,
being no longer able to keep up their former
expensive country establishments, nor give
lucrative employment to a vast number of
persons, which they formerly did, as com-
pared with those they are now able to em-
ploy. These men found themselves suddenly
reduced in circumstances by the famine,
aggravated by the operation of the Encum-
bered Estates Court. Some of them were
wholly ruined in the first years of its existence.
Others, who saved a remnant of their here-
ditary estates, ashamed to live in the country
where they could no longer maintain the style
to which they had been accustomed, flocked
to the cities, or settled in villas along the coast.
But while this effects a saving in favour of the
class of Irish landlords who have thus become
straitened in circumstances, it is a very heavy
loss to those who were employed by them; and
it is manifest, therefore, that, although the
altered circumstances of Ireland have caused
an increase in the number of first and second-
class houses, yet the change, so far from prov-
ing the general prosperity of the country,
proves but too plainly that the building of
such houses has injured instead of serving the
kingdom at large.
Having now disposed of first and second-
class houses, in which the people of Ireland
do not live, let us examine the admitted facts
as to. the tbizi AZA, fourtia-el houses, in . ,
-

Alipme+
which they do live. Have these houses in-
creased in number, and improvea in condition,
within the last five-and-twenty years, as has
been the case with the corresponding classes
of houses all over England and Scotland ?
We shall not go beyond the figures of our con-
temporary to show that the very reverse is the
fact, for both the third and fourth-class houses
have decreased within that period. The houses
of the third-class, properly described by our
contemporary as being composed of several
rooms, are those occupied by the Irish farmers
who pretend to some sort. of comfort, and these,
so far from increasing, have fallen off from
588,440, in the year 1851, to 553,496 in the
year 1861, being a decrease of no less than
34,944. This wholesale sweeping away of
about 35,000 of the best of the farm-houses
of Ireland is certainly a strange proof to
adduce in favour of the growing prosperity of
that country. Yet such is the reasoning of
many of our leading journals. And this being
so with regard to the third, or better class
of farm-houses, let us see how it fares with
the fourth, or lowest class, occupied by the
poorer farmers and by the labourers of that
country. We again turn to the figures of the
Pall Mall Gazette, and find by them that the
houses, or rather the cabins of • the fourth
class, which, in 1841, numbered 625,356, became
reduced in 1861 to 197,062, being a decrease of
428,294. If it could be shown that, as these
houses or cabins decreased in number, those of
the superior kind, enumerated by our contem-
porary, in the third class, had increased in a
corresponding ratio, we would then readily
admit his conclusion that Ireland was growing
prosperous. But so far from this being the
case—so far from the more comfortable cot-
tages or cabins of the industrial classes improv-
ing, we find them actually swept off the face of
the earth to the number of 34,944, which,
added to the 428,294 of the poorer dwellings,
now proved to have been destroyed, make a
total of 463,238 houses of the industrial classes
that have been tumbled down by Irish land-
lords, without any others having been built in
their stead, and yet we are asked to believe,
with this evidence staring us in the face,
that the condition of the Irish people is im-
proving ! It is worthy of remark, that the
houses of the third class, that is, the more
comfortable and substantial class of farm
houses, increased in Ireland between 1841 and
1851-:—during which period were the severest
years of the Irish famine ; and that this same
class of houses decreased between 1851 and
1861, during which certain public writers, who
profess to enlighten the world on the true
state of Ireland, would fain lead the public to
believe that the sister country has been advan-
cing in agricultural wealth and general pro-
sperity_ As so many of our contemporaries
have begun the discussion of this subject, and
as we deem it one of the most important that
can Dow occupy public attention, we purpose
returning to it, and hope to explain in our
next how this seeming paradox is to be ac-
counted for, of the substantial farm-houses
having increased in Ireland during the ten
years within which that country was afflicted
by a famine unequalled, in modern days, in
any country of the world, either for its severity
or its long duration. Our contemporary has
also set down other figures in alleged proof
of the growing prosperity of Ireland. These,
too, we intend examining carefully, and shall
expose the fallacy that lies concealed beneath
them.