MR. W. H. Gladstone ... The only thing for
Parliament to do was to make up its mind as to do
was to make up its mind as to the causes of Irish
discontent, and then do its best to remove them.
Some hon. Members referred to emigration as the
source of hope for Ireland. no doubt emigration
had in some respects been beneficial. It had
relieved the land of its surplus population, and
had partially raised the rate of wages. But could
any hon. Member look upon the great and enormous
emigration of hundreds of thousands of the
population of Ireland - 100,000 in one year - and
consider it as a healthy symptom? An hon. Member,
the other night - he believed it was the hon.
Member for Londonderry for Londonderry, Sir
Frederick William Heygate - said the House must
remember that there had been emigration from
England also, but there was absolutely no
comparison between the two things. He had been
looking back at the statistical tables for 1864,
and he found that the emigration from Ireland,
with a population of 5,500,000, was nearly double
the emigration from England with a population of
20,000,000. Was it true that emigration had
rendered the people of Ireland one bit more happy
and contented? He feared it had not done so. He
even doubted whether it had improved the
condition of the labouring population. In 1849
the acreage devoted to the cultivation of the
potato was 718,000, whereas in 1866 they amounted
to upwards of 1,000,000, which clearly showed
that the great evil of dependence upon one single
crop had been left untouched by emigration. The
truth was, that the causes of Irish discontent
lay too deep to be reached by any good to be
derived from emigration. That discontent resulted
from what he must call the illiberal policy we
had pursued towards the Irish people in general
as regarded the land laws, and to the Roman
Catholics in particular as regarded the
ecclesiastical laws.
