584 Population of Great Britain find Ireland, [DEC. 



charges and burthens which cramp the industry of the couniry, agricul- 

 tural and manufacturing, and render its exertion too expensive; the 

 adoption of such a system of general commerce, and especially of regulated 

 trade in corn, as may enable our population to command, in the fullest 

 possible extent, the foreign market for their manufactures ; these are 

 courses suited at once to aid the means of subsistence of our existing num- 

 bers, and to increase the amount of population for which we can provide 

 in future. For the scheme of Emigration, that system may be of so much 

 advantage to us : it will not relieve the country ; but it may aid our 

 strength at some period to have command over a population abroad, which 

 could not have remained in existence at home. In the main, however, 

 for the difficulty which it has been the object of the Emigration Com- 

 mittee to treat, we believe there is hut one alternative either want (and 

 the mortality which it causes) must thin a population, or prudence must 

 check its increase : this is an unpopular doctrine, we are aware : but we 

 believe it to be the true one. In aid of that process of restraint, or as a first 

 step towards the chance of approaching it, education is the grand measure 

 on which we should rely. That process which teaches men to think, may 

 sometimes lead them to place their reason as a barrier against their passions : 

 we expect no miraculous results from the expedient ; but it has one recom- 

 mendation it must do some good, and it can by no possibility do mis- 

 chief. There is scarcely any other course that we have seen suggested 

 or that suggests itself to us that is not either pregnant with mischief, or 

 impracticable. There have been systems recommended like this before 

 us, of carrying away twenty thousand people, while we produce a hundred 

 thousand which are of no efficacy or avail. And others, which might be 

 of avail, but which all our feelings of common policy, as well as of morality 

 and decency, unite to hunt out of discussion. And lastly, not least, came 

 the scheme of Mr. Malthus; which the reverend gentleman seems to 

 think feasible even still ! the plan of refusing parochial assistance after a 

 given date to every able bodied labourer thus furnishing the state with an 

 army of thieves and beggars, instead of paupers for that ploughmen out 

 of work would lie down and die (even to affirm Mr. Malthus's theory), 

 can hardly be expected ? What was to be gained by maintaining men in 

 crime rather than in poverty; making the prison the refuge of those who 

 were destitute of employment, instead of the poor house, and their Com- 

 mittee of Emigration the common jury at the Old Bailey, it is not easy 

 to perceive : but it is some proof of the difficulty of treating the real ques- 

 tion, that such a scheme, with all its wildness, was not entirely without 

 supporters. In conclusion, it should be kept in mind distinctly, that the 

 utmost effect of the Report and evidence is to trace the distress existing 

 among the lower classes to the presence of a surplus supply of labour in 

 the country ; not at all to the existence of a surplus population. Lord 

 Clarendon's Letters of 1685 were written when the population of Ireland 

 did not exceed probably half its present amount; and they describe the 

 want and misery of the Irish peasantry, almost in the very same words 

 used by the witnessses before the Committee. 



