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ART. IV.-The Industrial Resources of Ireland.

SEPARATED from Great Britain by an irregular channel, which varies from thirty to one hundred and thirty miles in width, a channel now bridged by the finest steam-packet service in the world, lies the island once known as the isle of saints.' Pushing its headlands four degrees of longtitude to the westward of the Land's End and of the Mull of Cantyre, Ireland acts as a breakwater for the western coast of Britain, from the lastnamed promontory as far south as St. David's Head. Although not more exposed to the Atlantic gales and mists than are western Cornwall, western Devon, and the broken and indented western coast of Scotland, Ireland is yet characterized by a climate special to herself. No instance can be cited of two countries separated from one another by barriers which are at once so subtle and so impassable. The geographer, the hydrographer, the meteorologist, and the naturalist, alike fail to detect the cause of those differences which they yet instinctively feel to exist. This very incertitude augments the permanent efficacy of these barriers, by causing them to be overlooked or disregarded. Thus it has come to pass that educated Englishmen know more of France or of Italy, of Egypt or even of Assyria, than they do of Ireland. For in the case of the more distant countries they are aware that a certain degree of study is necessary in order to obtain any acquaintance with their physical or moral aspect. For a locality so near, called a part of the United Kingdom, and in which the English tongue is spoken, it rarely occurs to the mind that any very special study is necessary.

But such study is not only necessary, it is also extremely difficult. When we have measured the area, and counted the population, and tabulated the produce of Ireland, we have made but very little advance towards a true knowledge of that country. Personal experience, and that of a more extended character than can be acquired by the tourist, is indispensable It may sound almost wild, to those who do not know Ireland, to say that any person very susceptible to the influences of climate, if transported unconsciously to that island, would become aware on rising in the morning, without any guidance from the scenery visible from his window, that he was neither in England, in France, in Italy, nor in other known parts of Europe. But it is certainly the case that the atmosphere of Ireland, although differing in different regions, is, on the whole, as peculiar to that island as either the exquisite verdure of its

vegetation, or the violet eyes to be found among its daughters. Combining with this subtle physical change of air, the visitor will find, the longer he remains, the wider will be his departure from his previous ordinary surroundings. Beneath an external face of society, which at first would strike him (we now speak of Ireland as it was some years ago) chiefly by the greater grace, decorum, and mutual consideration shown in the intercourse of the middle and higher classes as compared with those common in corresponding grades of society in England, the stranger gradually becomes aware of the existence of a different code of morality and a different temper of intelligence. Even the mixture of wit and of humour-of the self-evident and of the impossible, which is known by the name of the Irish bull-is as unknown as it is inimitable in any other national speech or literature.

The area of Ireland is stated by Sir Robert Kane, in his valuable work entitled The Industrial Resources of Ireland,' as 20,808,271 statute acres. According to the Board of Trade returns, it is 20,819,947 acres. The Preliminary Report of the Census of Ireland for 1881, in glaring contrast with the careful returns of acreage contained in the corresponding Report for England, reduces its own utility to a minimum by taking no heed of acreage whatever. The Statistical Abstract returns 15,357,856 acres as cultivated in 1880, being 416,862 acres, or 2 per cent., less than the area cultivated in 1875. Of this area, however, some 10,000 acres is permanent pasture, which kind of land probably is of a much wilder description than that which is so called in Great Britain. far as it is safe to rely on the details of the census of 1871, the tenant farmers of Ireland are now under 400,000 in number, cultivating an average of 13 acres of arable land each, and having the run of 25 acres of untilled pasture. They employ about a man and a half, and 0.94 of a horse, for each of their farms, which occupy, under tillage, little more than one-fourth of the area of Ireland. Sir Robert Kane (p. 287) divides the surface of the island as follows

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The uncultivated land here stated includes bogs and mountains. The area of bog is given by the same careful inquirer at 2,833,000 acres, of which almost all is capable of reclama

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tion, and of being adapted to productive husbandry, if not required as repositories of fuel. It has been calculated, Sir Robert adds, that of the land at present waste 4,600,000 acres are really available for agriculture; and from my own investigations,' he adds, I am inclined to consider that estimate as certainly not exaggerated.' Taking that estimate as our guide, and deducting the town lands and the area of lakes and rivers, we have a total of 18 millions of acres of arable land awaiting the agricultural industry of man in Ireland.

The distribution of the surface of Ireland which is most important for industrial inquiry is that of the river basins, as divided by hills and mountain chains. But the statistical division usually adopted is into provinces. This division has been adopted in the census, without adding, as before remarked, the necessary information of the acreage of the provinces in question.

According to Sir Robert Kane, this is as follows

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These figures do not, however, quite agree with the total previously cited from the same writer. The figures of the Emigration Committee, which are quoted by Mr. M. P. Sadler, M.P., in Ireland' (p. 413), in Irish square miles, again give a different result. The following is the acreage given in the General Abstract of Agricultural Statistics, Ireland,' for the present year—

Leinster
Munster
Ulster

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This includes 133,035 acres under water, but excludes 494,726 acres under the larger rivers, lakes, and tide-ways, in the grand total of 20,327,764 statute acres.

The want of absolute accord in the figures given by equally respectable authorities makes the omission of acreage from the census a subject for the more regret.

As to the physical division of Ireland into drainage and outfall basins, the last work dealing with the subject-the "Water and Water Supply' of the late Professor Ansted—is

yet more unsatisfactory, as it only accounts for a little more than 25,000 square miles out of the 32,000 which form, in round numbers, the area of the island.

When King Henry the Fourth of France, aided by the able services of Sully, bent his powerful mind to the patriotic object of the removal of the miseries under which the population of his country were groaning, the maxim which he laid down for the guidance of his policy was thus expressed-' Que le labourage et le pâturage estoient les deux mamelles dont la France estoit alimentée, et les vraies mines et trésors du Pérou.' Since the close of the sixteenth century a new source of national wealth has been discovered. The production of mechanical power by the consumption of coal, and its application by the intervention of the steam-engine to the textile and other great manufactures of the time, was a fountain of wealth undreamed of in the gay and profligate times of the House of Valois, or in the more serious and provident years of the reign of the first king of the House of Bourbon. The magnitude attained by this source of wealth is now an important element in the revenues of any civilized country. And not only have we to regard agriculture, manufacture, and commerce as the three main divisions of productive industry, but we have applied the service of coal and of steam-power to each of the three. The farmer now has called in to his aid the drudging goblin' of the steam-engine, if later, yet with almost as good result as in the case of the manufacturer and of the merchant. The steam-power of the United Kingdom has been estimated as capable of performing the work of seven millions of horses.

Notwithstanding this great addition to the physical power wielded by man, an addition which goes far to obviate the necessity of the performance of brute drudgery by human muscles, the prime element in the wealth of a nation is to be found in the number of its citizens. The problem of the economical maximum of population on a given area is one that is as yet not only unsolved but unexamined. We know some of the elements of this problem, but it is another thing to weave them into a perfect theorem. Over the vast area of the United States-before the last census-the mean popu lation was estimated at eleven souls per square English mile. This wide district presents a sort of economical vacuum, into which the spare population of Ireland, Germany, and other European countries has rushed with a speed that is almost that of a vortex. In the empire of Turkey, once the teeming cradle of the human race, war, famine, pestilence, and ill

government have reduced the population to a density of 120 souls per square English mile. As we approach the civilized countries of Europe we find both greater density of population and, in most cases, rapid yearly increase of that density. In France there are 180 inhabitants to the square mile; in Italy, 225; in Belgium, 421; in Flanders, 718. In the United Kingdom the mean density is now 293 souls per square raile; in Great Britain it is 333, the number being reduced in consequence of the barren and mountainous character of so much of Scotland, which has but 124 inhabitants per square mile of total area. England and Wales, on the other hand, have no fewer than 442 souls per square mile. In Middlesex, exclusive of London, the density now attains to 1,364 souls per square mile. In Lancashire it is almost three times as much, that industrious county containing 1,831 souls per square mile according to the last census. London-the 122 square miles covered by which capital form little more than the onethousandth part of the area of the United Kingdom-now contains a population of 31,267 souls per square mile, or 48 souls per acre. The densest and poorest parts of LondonSt. Giles's, Whitechapel, and Shoreditch-have four times this great density; the inhabitants of these several districts being respectively, at the date of the last census, 184, 178, and 194 souls per acre, in each case showing a slight reduction from the density of 1871. But even the fashionable and easy neighbourhood of St. George's, Hanover Square, contains 130 inhabitants per acre, or 73,000 souls per square mile.

It is thus obvious that in actual fact the wealth of a given locality increases up to a certain point-as yet undetermined -with the increase in the density of population. As matter of rental, or yield of the area to its proprietors, the limit, if we have yet attained it, must be put far higher than that which corresponds to such a maximum density of the population as is consistent with their comfort and welfare. But the dense population of such a district as St. George's, Hanover Square, is very striking. And Middlesex with its 22, and Lancashire with its 28, souls per acre must be pointed out as at once the richest and the most densely populated of any localities in England that are not exclusively urban. Let us now turn to look at the density of the population of Ireland.

The earliest reliable census of the population of Ireland is that of 1821, which gives a total of 6,801,827 souls. Mr. M. P. Sadler, M.P., in his book called 'Ireland: its Evils and their Remedies,' of which the second edition was published in

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