The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-08-01 00:00:00

SUGGESTED REMEDIES FOR EVILS IN IRELAND.

Emigration is a subject that naturally suggests itself in
the consideration of remedial measures for Ireland. It is
a favourite subject with many writers. It has long been
the custom to say, that the country is over-populated,
and, beyond all doubt, it is so, with reference to the pre-
sent actual produce of the soil ; but that it is over-popu-
lated, with reference to its capacity of production, we
altogether dispute. The produce of the soil is not one-
third what it might be, if the ordinary systems of hus-
bandry, which are familiar, and practised in England and
Scotland, were introduced among us. In the ten years
preceding the census of 1841, the average annual emigra-
tion from Ireland was 40,000. Was this a benefit to the
country ?—what did we gain by it ? The pressure on the
resources of the country was not diminished by one-
hundred-and-sixtieth part; the effect on the competition
of the labour-market was wholly inappreciable ; and for
this inconsiderable advantage we lost very many of the
best of our population, men of industry and enterprise,
and possessed of some little capital. There is a descrip-
tion of local emigration which every one must advocate—
one in which all the expense and difficulties of transit, and
all the other disadvantages of colonial emigration, are ob-
viated—we speak of an emigration to the now waste, but
easily reclaimable, lands of our own country. It would
be impossible to over-estimate the benefit of a well-de-
vised and comprehensive measure for reclaiming the waste
lands of Ireland. Such a measure was recommended by
the Poor :Enquiry Commission of 1836 ; it was urged again
by Lord Devon's Commission, but has never yet been
adopted. The men who have arrogated to themselves the
title, and who have put in their pockets the acknowledg-
ment of Irish patriots, have never been found to urge for-
ward a single measure that could really be of the slightest
substantial service to the country. It is impossible to
deny that if one-tenth part of the exertions which were
exhibited by the late Mr. O'Connell, for the last twenty
years of his life, in agitating for the repeal of the Union—
an agitation which has left us nothing but increased
poverty, heart-burnings, and discontent—had been applied
to forcing on a measure for the reclamation of our waste
lands, that one million of happy, comfortable, and con-
tented people, who would be settled on them, would now
bless his memory, and upwards of three millions and a
half of fertile and luxuriant acres would perpetuate his
fame. But Mr. O'Connell's own property at Derrynane-
beg, the condition of which was revealed to us by Mr.
Foster, the Times Commissioner, states how possible it
is for the most turbulent vapourers on the wrongs of Ire-
land, and the most truculent denouncers of the govern-
ment of the country, to be themselves entirely indifferent
to the realand substantial interests of its people, if, indeed,
we require any evidence on this subject—if we would not
be justifiable in inferring it from the very nature of the
selfish agitation with which Ireland for the last twenty
years has been distracted. The compilers of the digest of
the Devon Commission tell us that, by reclaiming the
waste lands of Ireland, " nearly 200,000 families, com-
prising 1,000,000 of souls, might be permanently and
happily provided for, upon lots of eight acres of good, and
twelve of inferior land • by this 500,000 labourers will be
abstracted from the labour-market, and this, not only
without loss, but with very great gain, raising the pro-
duce of the 3,755,000 acres of waste land, now not averag-
ing four pounds per acre, to a value of at least six pounds
per acre, that is, a new produce of, at least, twenty-two
million pounds.