Between 1841 and 1851 the population of the country fell from
8,200,000 to 6,574,000. The primary causes of this were of course the
famine and the fever which broke out amongst the half-starved people;
but it was also to a large extent caused by emigration. A number
of devoted and noble-hearted men, realizing that it was hopeless to
expect that the potato disease would disappear, and that consequently
the holdings had become "uneconomic" (to use the phrase now so
popular) as no other crop was known which could produce anything
like the same amount of food, saw that the only course to prevent a
continuation of the famine would be to remove a large section of the
people to a happier country. In this good work the Quakers, who had
been untiring in their efforts to relieve distress during the famine,
took a prominent part; and the Government gave assistance. At the
time no one regarded this as anything but a beneficent course; for the
emigrants found better openings in new and rising countries than
they ever could have had at home, and the reduced population, earning
larger wages, were able to live in greater comfort. One evidence of
this has been that mud cabins, which in 1841 had numbered 491,000
had in 1901 been reduced to 9,000; whilst the best class of houses
increased from 304,000 to 596,000. In 1883 the Roman Catholic bishops
came to the conclusion that matters had gone far enough, and that in
future migration from the poorer to the more favoured districts was
better than emigration from the country; but they did not say anything
against the work that had been done up to that time. Yet a recent
Nationalist writer, wishing to bring every possible charge against the
landlords, has hinted that the total loss of population from 1841 to
1901 was caused by the brutality of the landlords after the famine,
who drove the people out of the country! To show the fallacy of this,
it is sufficient to point out that the powers of the landlords for
good or evil were considerably reduced by the Land Act of 1870, and