[Mr. John Redmond speaking on Emigration statistics.]
... In Ireland the population has declined. Since 1841
the population of Ireland has diminished by 50 per
cent. In 1845 Ireland had three times as many people
as Scotland; Ireland had half as many people as England;
Ireland had a third of the population of the whole
United Kingdom. But in sixty years the population of
Ireland has gone down by 4,000,000. Is there in the
whole history of the world a parallel to that awful
tragedy? We in Ireland have emerged within the last
few weeks, I hope for ever, from what the late Lord
Salisbury called twenty years of resolute government.
In those twenty years of resolute government the
population of Ireland went down by almost 1,000,000.
And what is the character of the emigration? That is a
greater tragedy still. Ninety per cent. of those who
emigrated from Ireland were between the ages of ten
and forty-five. That means that all those in the prime
of life are leaving the country, and accounts for the
fact, which English tourists often notice, that there
are more little children and old men and women to be
seen in Ireland than in any other country in Europe.
Of the 90 per cent., how many remain in the Empire at
all? Why, nearly every man who emigrates from Ireland
is a loss to Empire; 87 per cent. of the whole
emigration from Ireland goes to the United States that
is to say, that the young men and young women,
physically and mentally vigorous, not only are lost to
Ireland but are lost to the Empire, and constitute a
power in America, as everyone who is acquainted with
the circumstances knows, which is a danger to this
country and which undoubtedly is the chief bar in the
way of a thorough amicable understanding between
America and England.
