Population of Great Britain and Ireland - [DEC. 



the Third Report of the Committee ; the first having been devoted almost 

 wholly to exhibiting the mass of pauperism that we have to contend with; 

 and containing evidence upon that subject of the most powerful character, if 

 our limits would pern-lit us to refer to it. However, to take the mischief in its 

 least formidable light : Ireland (which forms the root of the evil) to ab- 

 stract from her population of seven millions, half a million instantly, after 

 the evidence which has been given : this certainly would not be too much ! 

 From \\\Q fifteen million, population of En gland /Wales, and Scotland, to 

 remove another half million, would be touching matters almost with too 

 light a hand ! But what is the plan proposed by the Committee ? Is it 

 to carry away this million without loss of time ? Is it to carry away 

 (according to the hint dropped to Mr. Malthus, in speaking of 'Ireland 

 only} live hundred thousand? No; it is neither of these. The plan 

 encumbered with a crowd of details into which we shall not enter is 

 to organize an emigration of ninety-five thousand persons! and this not 

 immediately, but between the present time and the year 1 831 ! 



Now this plan seems something of kindred to the famous project for 

 emptying the river Thames with a tea-spoon. " Flesh, flesh, how art thou 

 fishified !" The abstraction of 95,000 persons from Ireland alone, would 

 produce no sensible effect upon her dense population ; but still less, accord- 

 ing to the very doctrine which the Committee, in their own Report, quote 

 so triumphantly from Mr. Malthus, can it in the slightest degree better 

 the condition of the people who are left behind! If there are 150 per- 

 sons to work this is Mr. Malthus's proposition and if there is work only 

 for 100, the competition for that work will bring down wages, to a price 

 ruinous to the labourer. And, even if, from the 1 50 workmen, we take away 

 25, and the amount of work remains fixed at 100, the competition still con- 

 tinues ; the 25 per cent, of surplus labour acts as mischievously as the 

 50 had done ; and the lowest rate of wages only will be given even to the 

 100 by whom the employment is obtained. This principle, in the outset 

 of their Report, the Committee take great pains to establish. They parade 

 Mr. Malthus's opinion as to the power of a very small quantity of surplus 

 labour to keep down wages in the market ; and for no other purpose one 

 would think looking to what follows than to demonstrate clearly to all the 

 world, that the 95,000 emigrants removed from England are removed purely 

 for their own advantage, and with no view to the benefit of the labouring 

 classes at large ! But, by some strange error, or fatality, which we 

 cannot understand, the anxiety of the Committee that the country 

 should experience no relief- that is to say, obtain no diminution of 

 its existing surplus labour or population by the proposed emigration, does 

 not stop hero. It goes farther; for the plan actually provides that 

 the people who are to emigrate, shall not be removed at any thing like 

 the same rate, that, in the ordinary and current course of population, they 

 will be replaced ! For the 95,000 emigrants, our readers will recollect, 

 when all is provided for them, are not to go away immediately. They 

 are to depart in three shipments; the last removal to take place four 

 years hence, in the year 1 83 1 . Now the fact is, that the present popu- 

 lation of Great Britain and Ireland, being taken at the lowest estimate 

 twenty-three millions and increasing at the lowest supposed ratio that 

 suggested by Mr. Mai thusa rate at which it would double itself in fifty 

 years the increase gained at this rate of augmentation upon our twenty- 

 three millions by the year 1831, will be more than ten times greater than 

 the number which, in the same time, the Committee will have carried 



