THE LAW OF POPULATION 161 



The bulk of the emigration from Ireland, especially 

 during the last three decades of the nineteenth 

 century, has been of a different nature, consisting of 

 emigrants who have been compelled by distress to 

 leave their native soil, owing to the enormous de- 

 preciation that has taken place in the pecuniary value 

 of agricultural produce. The margin of profit from 

 the cultivation of the smaller farms has been under- 

 going a process of reduction, until it is no longer 

 sufficient to maintain a family even in the low 

 standard of comfort that satisfies the wants of the 

 Irish peasantry. 



Therefore .thousands of Irish families have been 

 constrained to expatriate themselves every year, and 

 seek the colonies that their countrymen have formed 

 in the United States of America. The result of the 

 large depletion that has taken place in agricultural 

 Ireland has been a continuous redistribution of the 

 soil so as to form larger farms ; for it is obvious that 

 as the holders of farms become fewer, the farms must 

 become larger. It is thus a curious fact in regard to 

 the movement of population that is taking place in 

 Ireland, that the compulsory and therefore distressful 

 removal of so large a number of people from the 

 country is attended with a marked improvement in 

 the standard of comfort of those who remain in it. 

 If emigration had not been available to relieve the 

 distress caused by the decline in the pecuniary value 

 of the produce of the soil, the remedy for the distress 

 of Ireland must have come, and would assuredly 

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