On this last point, the committee remark—“It is almost impossible in theory to estimate the mischiefs attendant on a redundant, a growing and unemployed population, converting that which ought to be the strength into the peril of the state.” It is obvious, they say, that the tendency of such a population to general misery, and the boundless multiplication of human beings satisfied with the lowest condition of existence, must be rapid in proportion to the facility of procuring human sustenance; and it is declared—“that such a population, excessive in proportion to the market for labour, exists and is growing in Ireland, a fact that demands the most serious attention of the legislature, and makes it not merely a matter of humanity, but of state policy, to give every reasonable encouragement to industry in that quarter of the empire.” The non-residence of a great portion of the proprietors, and their spending their incomes in England, is then adverted to, as being a circumstance which “enhances the claim of Ireland on the generous consideration of parliament.”
No one better knew the state of Ireland than the chairman of this committee, the substance of whose Report is here given. We may therefore rely upon the correctness of the statement, that there was then, twenty years after the Union, a redundant, an increasing, and unemployed population in Ireland, subsisting on food obtained with peculiar facility, (the potato) and consequently “leading to the boundless multiplication of human beings satisfied with the lowest condition of existence.” Yet the land was fertile, the sea-coasts abounded in fish, and the bogs and mountain districts solicited improvement. It will probably be said that there must be something wrong in the character, habits, or social position of a people, where such circumstances existed. The Report points to want of capital, and the non-residence of proprietors, as being the cause or causes of what was wrong; and no doubt both circumstances may have been influential in the matter. But capital we are told is the accumulation of savings, which are the fruits of industry, which again is nourished and supported by its own progeny; so that a want of industry may have lain at the root of the evil as regards the mass of the population, whilst the proprietors through absence, or want of sympathy with the other classes, probably failed in their duty of originating and urging forward improvement. With the proprietor class indeed, as with the others, the capital arising from savings and applicable to objects of improvement, was of slender amount; and the committee appear to rely more upon “the generous consideration of parliament,” than upon native energy or resource, for supplying the deficiencies and remedying the evils of which they complain.