It is to escape the responsibility mentioned by Mr. King, as well as to avoid the payment of poor-rates, that the landlords resort to the desolating process of eviction. To show the destructive nature of the tyrannical system that has so long prevailed in Ireland, we will take an abstract of the census of 1841 and 1851.
Or, 286,030 souls fewer than in 1821, thirty years ago.
"We shall impress the disastrous importance of the reduction in the number of the people on our readers, by placing before them a brief account of the previous progress of the population. There is good reason to suppose, that, prior to the middle of the last century, the people continually, though slowly, increased; but from that time something like authentic but imperfect records give the following as their numbers at successive periods:—
| 1754 | 2,372,634 | ||
| 1767 | 2,544,276 | Increase per cent. | 7·2 |
| 1777 | 2,690,556 | " | 5·7 |
| 1785 | 2,845,932 | " | 5·8 |
| 1805 | 5,359,456 | " | 84·0 |
| 1813 | 5,937,858 | " | 10·8 |
| 1821 | 6,801,829 | " | 14·6 |
| 1831 | 7,767,401 | " | 14·9 |
| 1841 | 8,175,124 | " | 5·3 |
| 1851 | 6,515,794 | Decrease | 20·0 |
"Though there are some discrepancies in these figures, and probably the number assigned to 1785 is too small, and that assigned to 1805 too large, they testify uniformly to a continual increase of the people for eighty-seven years, from 1754 to 1841. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, a complete change has set in, and the population has decreased in the last ten years 20 per cent. It is 1,659,330 less than in 1841, and less by 286,033 than in 1821.
"But this is not quite all. The census of 1851 was taken 68 days earlier than the census of 1841; and it is obvious, if the same rate of decrease continued through those 68 days, as has prevailed on the average through the ten years, that the whole amount of decrease would be so much greater. Sixty-eight days is about the 54th part of ten years—say the 50th part; and the 50th part of the deficiency is 33,000 odd—say 30,000. We must add 30,000, therefore, to the 1,659,330, making 1,689,330, to get the true amount of the diminution of the people in ten years.
"Instead of the population increasing in a healthy manner, implying an increase in marriages, in families, and in all the affections connected with them, and implying an increase in general prosperity, as for nearly a century before, and now amounting, as we might expect, to 8,600,000, it is 2,000,000 less. This is a disastrous change in the life of the Irish. At this downward rate, decreasing 20 per cent. in ten years, five such periods would suffice to exterminate the whole population more effectually than the Indians have been exterminated from North America. Fifty years of this new career would annihilate the whole population of Ireland, and turn the land into an uninhabited waste. This is a terrible reverse in the condition of a people, and is the more remarkable because in the same period the population of Great Britain has increased 12 per cent., and because there is no other example of a similar decay in any part of Europe in the same time, throughout which the population has continued to increase, though not everywhere equally, nor so fast as in Great Britain. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the annals of mankind can supply, in a season of peace—when no earthquakes have toppled down cities, no volcanoes have buried them beneath their ashes, and no inroads of the ocean have occurred—such wholesale diminution of the population and desolation of the country.
"The inhabited houses in Ireland have decreased from 1,328,839 in 1841 to 1,047,735 in 1851, or 281,104, (21·2 per cent.,) and consequently more than the population, who are now worse lodged and more crowded in relation to houses than they were in 1841. As the uninhabited houses have increased only 12,951, no less than 268,153 houses must have been destroyed in the ten years. That informs us of the extent of the 'clearances' of which we have heard so much of late; and the 1,659,300 people less in the country is an index to the number of human beings who inhabited the houses destroyed. We must remember, too, that within the period a number of union workhouses have been built in Ireland, capable of accommodating 308,885 persons, and that, besides the actual diminution of the number of the people, there has been a change in their habits, about 300,000 having become denizens of workhouses, who, prior to 1841, lived in their own separate huts. With distress and destruction pauperism has also increased.