It is not probable that the population of Ireland was ever so dense as to have necessitated such extreme efforts to eke out the arable land; or that the people were ever so crowded as to have been compelled, as it were, like the Chinese, to Terrace the hill-sides to grow food. Mr. Thom has collected, in his admirable "Statistics of Ireland," all the authentic accounts of Irish census returns. Taking these in their inverse order, we find that the 8,175,124 of 1841 was only 6,801,827 in 1821; 5,937,856 in 1814; 4,088,226 in 1792; 2,544,276 in 1767; 2,309,106 in 1726; 1,034,102 in 1695; and 1,300,000 in 1672. These latter early returns were merely the estimates of the hearth-money collectors, and are generally deemed to be unreliable. Newenham, in his Enquiry, expresses his disbelief in them, and shows from the statements of Arthur Young, and from official returns, that they were clearly under the truth. Yet the returns recently found by Mr. Hardinge, of the Landed Estates Record Office, among the papers of Sir William Petty, in the library of the Marquis of Lansdowne, would reduce the population to a [{554}] much lower figure still at an epoch only a little earlier than the date last enumerated above. Mr. Hardinge shows that the Petty returns must have been made in 1658 or 1659; and, supplying a proportional computation for some omitted counties and baronies, he finds that the total population of Ireland at that date was only half a million! It is true that this was immediately after the close of the long and desolating civil war which commenced in 1641; and at a time when, as Mr. Hardinge observes, one province had been so utterly depopulated as to leave its lands vacant for the transplanted remnants of the people of two other provinces; yet, even under all the circumstances, the number is incredibly small.
Going further back, we may conclude that the population could not have been considerable during the constant civil wars which wasted the entire country throughout the long reign of Elizabeth; nor was there any time from the Anglo-Norman invasion to that period in which the circumstances of the country were favorable to the social or numerical development of the population; while in earlier times matters can hardly be said to have been a whit better. There is no period of ancient Irish history in which the native annalists do not record almost an annual recurrence of internecine wars in all the provinces--wars equally inveterate and sanguinary, whether the country was infested by foreign foes, or not (vide the Four Masters passim)--while, on the other hand, we know that the population of a country never multiplies excessively except in long intervals of peace. It may be urged that the remains of the innumerable raths and cahirs, or caishels, which cover the land, and of the abbeys and small churches which dot the country, indicate periods of very dense population: but this is a mistaken notion; for at the time when the raths were inhabited, it can scarcely be said there were any towns in Ireland; and even when the monasteries were built, the population was almost wholly rural, and scattered; while a great many of the very small religious edifices through the country were only the isolated oratories of hermits.
The poet, Spenser, writing about A.D. 1596, would seem to give us the best clue to the time in which those mountain wildernesses we have been referring to were subjected to a kind of cultivation. In his "View of the State of Ireland," he makes Irenaeus relate how the most part of the Irish fled from the power of Henry II. "into deserts and mountains, leaving the wyde countrey to the conquerour, who in their stead eftsoones placed English men, who possessed all their lands, and did quite shut out the Irish, or the most part of them:" and how "they [the Irish] continued in that lowlinesse untill the time that the division betweene the two houses of Lancaster and York arose for the crowne of England; at which time all the great English lords and gentlemen, which had great possessions in Ireland, repaired over hither into England. . . . . . Then the Irish whom before they had banished into the mountains, where they only lived on white meates, as it is recorded, seeing now their lands so dispeopled and weakened, came downe into all the plaines adjoyning, and thence expelling those few English that remained, repossessed them againe, since which they have remained in them," etc.
It is most probable, then, that it was during that early period of refuge in the mountains that the wild tracts we have alluded to were cultivated by the Irish; and it is worth remarking that when, in Spenser's own time, the English recovered a portion of the plain at the foot of Slieve Bloom, in the O'Moore's country, of which the Irish had been for several years in quiet possession, they were surprised at the high state of cultivation in which they found it.
The ancient Irish ploughed with oxen, as appears from many unquestionable authorities--among others, from a reference to the subject in the volume of "Brehon Laws" recently published by Government, page 123; but in subsequent times they were brought so low, that in some places, and among the poorest sort, the barbarous practice prevailed of yoking the plough to a horse's tail! It is a mistake to suppose, on the one hand, that this was a mere groundless calumny on the people; or, on the other, that it was anything like a general national custom. The preamble to the Act of the Irish Parliament (10 and 11 Charles I., chap. 15) passed in 1635, to prohibit the practice, says: "Whereas in many places of this kingdome there hath been a long time used a barbarous custome of ploughing. . . . and working horses, mares, etc, by the taile, whereby (besides the cruelty used to the beasts) the breed of horses is much impaired in this kingdome, to the great prejudice thereof; and whereas also divers have and yet do use the like barbarous custom of pulling off the wool yearly from living sheep, instead of clipping or shearing of them, be it therefore enacted," etc., etc.
That this Act, as well as the subsequent Act, chap. 15, "to prevent the unprofitable custom of burning of corne in the straw," instead of threshing out the grain, was regarded as a popular grievance, appears from the fact, that the repeal of these Acts was made one of the points of negotiation with the Marquis of Ormond during the Civil War; but they remained on the Statute Book until repealed, as obsolete, in 1828, by 9 Geo. IV. c. 53.
Boate, writing about Ireland, more than two hundred years ago, labors to show that the soil and climate are better suited for grazing than for tillage. "Although Ireland," he quaintly observes, "almost in every part bringeth good corn plentifully, nevertheless hath it a more naturall aptness for grass, the which in most places it produceth very good and plentiful! of itself, or with little help; the which also hath been well observed by Giraldus, who of this matter writeth--'This iland is fruitfuller in grass and pastures than in corn and graines." And farther on he continues: "The abundance and greatness of pastures in Ireland doth appear by the numberless number of all sorts of cattell, especially kine and sheep, wherewith this country in time of peace doth swarm on all sides." He remarks, that, although the Irish kine, sheep, and horses were of a small size, that did not arise from the nature of the grass, as was fully demonstrated by the fact that the breed of large cattle brought out of England did not deteriorate in point of size or excellence.
Sir William Petty states that the cattle and other grazing stock of Ireland were worth above £4,000,000 in 1641, at the outbreak of the civil war; and that in 1652 the whole was not worth £500,000.
John Lord Sheffield, in "Observations on the Manufactures, etc., of Ireland," Dublin, 1785, writes that Ireland, "which had so abounded in cattle and provisions, was, after Cromwell's settlement of it, obliged to import provisions from Wales. However, it was sufficiently recovered soon after the Restoration to alarm the grazing counties of England; and in the year 1666 the importation of live cattle, sheep, swine, etc, from Ireland was prohibited. . . . . Ireland turned to sheep, to the dairy, and fattening of cattle, and to tillage; and she shortly exported much beef and butter, and has since supplanted England in those beneficial branches of trade. She was forced to seek a foreign market; and England had no more than one fourth of her trade, although before that time she had almost the whole of it."