1 
29G = S0 
British Agriculture, 
Checked in 
Ireland by 
potato famine 
in 1846. Its 
results. 
amounting in value to 20Z. per head of our population, enables us 
to add the food resources of other countries to our own. Our 
surplus population, not wedded to the soil by property, emigrate 
to countries of the same language, at the rate of 100,000 a year; 
partly to the United States, and partly to our own colonies. Our 
agriculture is no longer influenced by considerations of the means 
of finding employment for surplus labour, but is now being 
developed on the principle of obtaining the largest produce at 
the least cost, the same principle by which the power-loom has 
supplanted the hand-loom. In this process many ancient ties 
are loosened, and among them that adhesiveness to the soil which 
for generations has more bound the English labourer than the 
owner of the land to the parish of his birth ; the man of most 
ancient known descent being in very many cases the labourer. 
The process is a wholesome one so long as the command to 
multiply and replenish the earth has not been fulfilled. And 
the general rise of wages among the labouring class both in 
town and country, with the diminution of pauperism, in the 
last five years, would seem to be a satisfactory proof that there 
is still room in this country, and no need to check the growth 
of population. 
Such a check, however, took place in Ireland at the time of 
the potato-famine in 1846. The population was then eight' 
millions and a half. Within five years it had fallen to six 
millions and a half, nearly one-fourth of the people having 
either emigrated or died. The deaths from fever and famine 
had ceased in 1850, but the emigration continued, partly to 
Great Britain and the colonies, but chiefly to the United States. 
The population had fallen in 1871 to 5,412,000, and was then 
almost the same as that of 1801, seventy years before. There is 
no darker page than this in the history of our country in the 
present or preceding century. Millions of money were lavishly 
spent by the Government in direct relief, and in relief and im- 
provement works to give employment, with a view to palliate the 
collapse which befell a people who had no resources when the 
potato failed them. The landowners in the more distressed dis- 
tricts were nearly as much broken down as their tenants. They 
had either encouraged or not discouraged the continued sub- 
division of small farms, as well as the rapid increase of the people, 
by which, so long as the potato could be relied on, their rent^ 
were increased. The famine-stricken land was everywhere aban- ' 
doned by the starving occupiers, and thrown tenantless upon thi 
owners' hands, making many t/i them bankrupt. An ' Kncum- 
bercd Estates Act' was passed, to sell off the lands ol thosi 
proprietors whose incumbrances had overwhelmed theiii, an( 
substitute others more capable of fulfilling the duties of land 
