162 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



have come, from a means of cure as effective, though 

 more painful, viz. by a considerable reduction in the 

 number of marriages. The marriage-rate of Ireland 

 has since the year 1845, which was the first of the 

 famine years, been greatly below that of any European 

 country. Whereas in the years when Ireland was 

 rapidly multiplying its population, its annual propor- 

 tion of marriages in 10,000 persons must have 

 amounted to from 100 to 120, the proportion from 

 1873 to 1883 was only 45 ; from 1883 to 1893, 44 ; 

 from 1893 to 1903, 50. In England in the same 

 periods the proportional numbers were respectively 

 79, 77, 78. 



It must not be imagined that the reduction in 

 the proportional amount of their marriages, from 

 more than 100 marriages in 10,000 persons to 44, 

 was due to a greater exercise of moral restraint on 

 the part of the Irish people a people generally 

 supposed to be less liable to be swayed by prudential 

 motives than most others. The influence of the 

 labour market in determining the marrying power of 

 a community is imperative and must be obeyed. 



Reduced as the marrying power of the Irish people 

 had become, yet, if the field of emigration had been 

 closed to them in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth 

 century, which witnessed the great fall in the prices 

 of agricultural produce, their power to marry would 

 have suffered a much more severe restriction. 



The tenants of the smallest or poorest farms would 

 first have become totally unable to marry, though 



