574 Population of Great Britain and Ireland [DEC. 



The view of the Committee, on the subject of the passage of the emi- 

 grants from Europe to Canada, is that that expense would be willingly 

 paid by the parishes or parties interested in their removal. It does not 

 seem to us that, especially as regards the great source from which the 

 emigration would be drawn viz. Ireland the evidence of the witnesses 

 justifies any such confident expectation. 



To begin with Scotland. All the witnesses from Scotland (capitalists 

 and proprietors) are agreed upon the fact of the Surplus Population, and 

 the general distress : but the moment a subscription is mentioned to 

 remove the labourers, they " cannot hold out any prospect of contribution," 

 and " think that any vacuum produced by emigration would soon fill up." 



In England, where the state of the poor laws renders every unemployed 

 labourer a direct charge upon his parish, the case is different ; and the 

 witnesses here think, pretty generally, that, if parishes were allowed to 

 mortgage their rates for the money necessary, they would subscribe for a 

 removal. In the agricultural districts, no difference of opinion exists upon 

 this point; and, in the manufacturing, the only question is which would 

 be the best way to get rid exactly of that quantity of workmen who are 

 chargeable to the poor-rate; and at the same time retain just such a num- 

 ber as will always keep down the price of labour in the market ? 



But, in Ireland, which is the great and productive source of the evil 

 and as to which the Committee declares it would be useless to think of any 

 emigration which did not proceed by carrying off great numbers of the 

 Irish people first we have decided doubts whether any thing will be done 

 in the way of finding money, which is not done entirely at the expense of 

 the legislature. 



For, in the first place, it is in proof, upon the evidence of all the principal 

 witnesses, that by accumulating population upon his estates to the very 

 farthest possible point however the tenantry may be plunged into misery 

 and degradation the Irish proprietor is often decidedly benefited. So 

 long as the population upon the land stops short of that ultra limit of 

 excess, when feeding on potatoes, and lying half naked in huts of mud, 

 they still consume all that the ground can produce ; in which case, of 

 course, nothing remains to pay the landlord ; so long as the population 

 falls short of that point, the enormous competition created by its excess, 

 raises the rent of the proprietors* land three or four times over that 

 which (if the tenants had to earn meat and clothes out of it) would be its 

 value. And, even beyond this, the maintenance of a political interest 

 (under the forty shilling freehold system) frequently makes it worth a pro- 

 prietor's while to sacrifice a portion of his rent and keep up a greater 

 population on his ground, than the land is capable of adequately main- 

 taining. 



Mr. Hugh Dixon says that the peasantry of Ireland pay rents which it is impos- 

 sible for them to raise out of the land. They live upon almost nothing ; and earn 

 part of the money that pays their rent bv working in England. He has no doubt 

 that the system of forty shillings freeholds tends materially to increase the excess 

 of population ; but the best landlords carry that system to the utmost to assist 

 their political objects. (Q. 2551 to 2554). Mr. Dixon's opinion is by no means 

 favourable to the conclusion, that Irish proprietors, generally, would contribute 

 money to carry their poor tenants away ; there are cases, he says, in which it 

 would be contrary to their interest to do so. 



Mr. Daniel Wilson, who states that as much as nine guineas an acre is paid now 

 in some places for land to be made into potatoe garden, though he admits that 

 rents are often lost by the poverty of the population, doubts whether proprietors 



