If these pages should find readers who cherish the tradition of Protection, they will doubtless regard this statement as a concession fraught with discredit to the doctrine of commercial freedom. Here, it will be urged, is the admission of a Free-trader that free. trade has, in one instance at least, involved, if not accomplished, the destruction of a nation's industry. At whatever cost of odium to the doctrine in question, I am bound to accept the inference as substantially fair. It is, I hold, indubitably true that the cultivation of cereals in Ireland on the scale on which it prevailed anterior to 1846 depended upon Ireland's being secured in the monopoly of the English markets; and this condition free trade forbade. Whether England was on this account bound to exclude her own people from procuring their food where they could get it cheapest-bound to set limits to her own development in order to find a market for products unsuitable to the Irish soil-is the question which Free-traders have to meet. For my part I meet it by denying the obligation. Further, it is a part involved would have

of my case that the sacrifice it been not less injurious to the country in whose behalf it was made than to that which was called to undergo it.

I regard it as a truth placed now beyond the reach of controversy that the population of Ireland in 1846 was excessive to a most injurious degree, excessivelooking to the actually available resources of the country to maintain its people-beyond any example afforded by history. Opinions to the contrary effect have indeed frequently been hazarded, sometimes

even by writers of distinction. M. Gustave de Beaumont, for example, in his work on Ireland, expressed the deliberate opinion that population in that country has never been excessive, and that there is no reason in the economic conditions of the case that Ireland should not contain 25,000,000 of inhabitants. Had M. de Beaumont reflected that, on this view of the relation of population to territory, France, whose industrial capabilities are certainly in proportion to her area not inferior to those of Ireland, ought to contain 186,000,000 people-nearly five persons, that is to say, for every one who now inhabits that country-he possibly would have paused before giving utterance to so extravagant an opinion. Speculations which lead to such results, and which rest neither on experience, nor on any recognized principles of economic science, may, I think, be left to find their proper place in the judgments of unprejudiced men. As a matter of fact, Ireland in 1846 contained a population denser than that of most countries in Europe-denser, for example, than that of France, than that of Italy, than that of the average of the United Kingdom, and than that of the great majority of the states of Germany. In three countries only in Europe has the density of population ever decidedly exceeded that of Ireland in 1846 and these are England, Saxony, and Belgium, each commanding, besides a remarkably fertile soil, manufacturing resources far in excess of any that Ireland can yet lay claim to.*

* "Histoire de l'Émigration," par M. Jules Duval, Paris, 1862, pp. 21, 64, 156. Belgium, it seems, is the most densely populated country in Europe, and in Belgium pauperism claims one out of every five of the inhabitants. (Ibid., pp. 115, 116.)

And what was the condition of the multitudes thus crowded together upon Irish soil? The answer is to be found in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission; but it would be idle now to adduce evidence of a state of things that was long a standing reproach to the British name. Suffice it to say that the great majority of this immense population were existing in the last stage of human wretchedness. In this condition they were found by the potato famine, and the long-pending collapse occurred.

Well, what was the cure for the state of things thus brought about? How was this excess of people to be remedied? The school of politicians who adopt M. de Beaumont's view on this subject would probably reply, by a suitable development of the industrial resources of the country; and this brings us to the inevitable dilemma in the Irish case. The resources of the country had already been developed, but developed in a wrong direction. An erroneous fiscal code had given encouragement to a system of agriculture wholly unsuited to the country, but which gave an impulse to population far beyond what a natural system could support. Was her industry to be urged still further in this direction? Was the principle of Protection to be again appealed to, and England to be invited to close her markets still more completely against foreign supplies? Either this, or it became necessary to abandon the policy that had brought her to the present pass. Started on a wrong course, she had reached the inevitable goal-the-cul-de-sac of Protection escape could only be found in retreat. Free trade was thus scarcely a choice. But free trade

once adopted, all the consequences which have since been realized followed with the certainty of the results of a physical law.

Let us glance at a few of these consequences. And first, and most important of all, free trade imperatively prescribed a large reduction in the numbers of the Irish people; for it struck at the root of the large cereal cultivation by which those numbers were sustained. An agriculture of tillage differs from one of pasture amongst other things in this, that the capital which supports it is, for the most part, circulatingexists mainly in the form of food. Consumed every year, it is every year reproduced, and is thus available as a constant fund for the support of population to nearly the full extent of its actual amount. The capital of a pasture system, on the other hand, exists to a large extent in a certain condition of the soil which yields revenue without any or with little human exertion. It is not yearly consumed to be yearly reproduced, and consequently, so far as it takes this form, it is incapable of supporting population. Now, it was a system of this kind that over a large part of Ireland was rendered inevitable by the adoption of a freetrade policy. The effect, indeed, was not felt at once. So long as the process of conversion from tillage to pasture was in operation, the demand for labour, and with it the circulating capital of the country, would be maintained unimpaired but the conversion once effected the land once brought into the condition in which it was destined permanently to remain-both the need for labourers and the means for their subsistence would together suffer decline. Free trade in Ireland,

thus, of necessity-throwing the country back, as it did, on its natural capabilities, which were favourable to pasture-involved as its consequence a diminution in the number of its people. But other causes, founded no less than free trade in the irresistible tendencies of modern civilization, were at this time acting powerfully in the same direction.

2. THE EMIGRATION.

Within a quarter of a century following 1846, more than two million Irishmen have left the shores of Ireland never to return. The population of Ireland. under the drain, aggravated by famine and pestilence, has declined from over eight to considerably under six millions of people. And yet, despite the lowering of the head-water, the efflux continues, and, though in later years partially checked for a season, shows as yet but few signs of abatement. The phenomenon in its actual dimensions is, I believe, unique in history. Passion and prejudice apart, let us endeavour to determine the causes and probable results on the fortunes of Ireland of this momentous movement.

On approaching the problem, the solution which most naturally suggests itself is misgovernment. "When the inhabitants of a country," says Mr. Mill, "quit the country en masse, because its government will not make it a place fit for them to live in, the government is judged and condemned." I have no