CHAPTER IV. 



OCCUPATIONS OF THE PEOPLE. 



The occupation statistics divide the Irish 

 population into six classes. The first class 

 comprises the liberal professions, &c., and 

 contains 131,035 individuals. To it belong 

 doctors, lawyers, officials, &c. The second class 

 contains household employees, servants, &c.; 

 it comprises 219,418 persons. The third class 

 contains the commercial callings, with 97,889 

 individuals ; agriculture forms the fourth, with 

 876,062 individuals, and industry the fifth class 

 with 639,413. Finally, the sixth class, contain- 

 ing 2,494,958 persons, is composed of those 

 following occupations not more fully specified, 

 and chiefly the great masses of people who have 

 no calling whatever. From the Irish Census we 

 cannot learn much that is valuable from the 

 point of view of political economy ; it supplies a 

 collection of individual economic facts rather 

 than an entire and systematically thought- 

 out view of Irish economic life. At the first 

 glance, the commercial and. industrial classes 

 seem to have almost as much weight as the farming 

 class. But to this latter must also be reckoned 

 some 115,540 more persons generally described 



