POPULATION OF CONNAUGHT 145 



would yield no return ; with it, probably no other per- 

 manent outlay would be more remunerative. 



I do not disguise from myself the very grave liabi- 

 lity which this country would assume by pledging itself 

 for the safety of the enormous population of the West of 

 Ireland. According to the census of 1841, the popu- 

 lation of Connaught was 1,418,359. The proportion 

 of the people for all Ireland engaged in agriculture was 

 66 percent, and the proportion is very probably greater 

 in Connaught, as there is scarcely any other indus- 

 try in that province. Taking it, however, at 66 per 

 cent, this would give a population of 936,408 persons, 

 or 187,281 families, wholly dependent on the culture of 

 the soil. The total number of acres under crop in 1848, 

 including corn, green crops, meadow and clover, was 

 619,000. Suppose these were cultivated on the most 

 approved system of modern farming, with an expendi- 

 ture of 40s. per acre in labour, (wages lOd. a-day,) they 

 would afford employment to 99,040 labourers, heads of 

 families, representing 495,200 of the population. And 

 assuming that, by such a change of system, the agricul- 

 tural population were to divide itself into employers 

 and labourers, in the same relative proportions as in 

 Scotland, there would remain in Connaught upwards of 



* It is here necessary to point out an apparent inaccuracy in Sir Robert 

 Kane's valuable work on the Industrial Resources of Ireland, p. 312. He 

 there states that Professor Low, in his work on agriculture, gives some 

 estimates, from which it results that a 500-acre farm yields an amount of 

 occupation equivalent to the employment of twenty persons throughout the 

 entire year ; and upon this he founds an argument, showing the inapplica- 

 bility of the large-farm system to Ireland. He overlooks the fact, that these 

 twenty persons are heads of families, and represent one hundred individuals ; 

 and this mistake leads to a conclusion involving an error of 2,880,000 of the 



K 



