This, indeed, is a kind of
depletion which no country can bear long; and, as it is, at the moment
we are writing this, progressing at a rate beyond all precedent, it will
not, we trust, be altogether uninteresting to inquire into some of the
causes that have occasioned it. Let not our readers apprehend, however,
that we are about to turn our fictitious narrative into a dissertation
on political economy. Of course the principle cause of emigration is the
poverty and depressed state of the country; and it follows naturally,
that whatever occasions our poverty will necessarily occasion
emigration. The first cause of our poverty then, is Absenteeism, which,
by drawing six or seven millions out of the country, deprives our people
of employment and means of life to that amount. The next is the general
inattention of Irish landlords to the state and condition of their
own property, and an inexcusable want of sympathy with their tenantry,
which, indeed, is only a corollary from the former; for it can hardly
be expected that those who wilfully neglect themselves will feel a
warm interest in others. The next is the evil of subletting, by which
property becomes overloaded with human beings, who, for the most part,
are bound by no ties whatsoever to the owner of the soil. He is
not their landlord, nor are they his tenants; and so far from their
interests being in any way reciprocal, they are actually adversative.
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