Law of Population 71 



sarily be the case will be clearly demonstrated in 

 accordance with the universal law which governs the 

 movements of populations, and by means of which 

 Paulin has been able to confute absolutely the theories 

 of Malthus. 



He deals with the case of Ireland and India, which 

 followers of Malthus had adduced as specially sup- 

 porting the dogma that population tends to increase 

 faster than the means of subsistence. They regard the 

 rapid increase of the population of Ireland between 

 1690 and 1846, and the poverty of the people at the 

 close of that period, as exemplifying the operation of 

 the principle of Malthus, whereas a knowledge of the 

 facts would show that the truth lay in the opposite 

 direction. In the course of a century and a half the 

 numerical growth of the Irish people far exceeded that 

 of any other nation in the old world in a similar 

 period of time. In 1846 it was eightfold that of 1690, 

 but abundant evidence can be got to prove that the 

 people were much better off at the end than at the 

 beginning of that period, or indeed at any previous 

 period of Irish history. In 1690 the brief dream of 

 Celtic independence and predominance was for ever 

 dispelled, and the serf was returned to his serfdom and 

 his potato patch ; and the hand of his Saxon master 

 pressed cruelly and heavily upon him ; but the estab- 

 lishment of a settled peace led to the resumption of 

 agricultural industry. There was much agrarian out- 

 rage and disturbance, but the people began to multiply, 

 and continued to do so in an unexampled manner. At 

 the beginning Ireland was, for the most part, waste 

 land, but, as a result of the settled peace, room was 

 constantly being made for new inhabitants by the 

 reclamation of the disused land and the extension of 

 cultivation. Ireland was mainly pastoral to begin 

 with, but when the great natural fertility of the soil 



