THESE FIGURES TELL THE STORY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 23, 28 September 1883, Page 27

THESE FIGURES TELL THE STORY.

Ok Friday last the following cablegram was received :— London, Aug. 10.— The Standard this morning says that the Government has decided to provide an additional £100,000 to aid Irish emigration, the money to be taken from the British exchequer instead of from the Church Surplus Fund. Another and later report states that 200,000 liish emigrants are to be " assisted " to Canada, and " settled " there on free land. To the outside world, ignorant of the facts, these reports suggest benevolence. To those who see below the surface, they mean murder —murder as deliberate and cowardly as if a strong man seized and held a weak woman by the throat in the darkness of night. Another half million dollars to get rid of the natives of a rich country, the fertile fields of which are allowed to fall back into waste, bog^and desert I It is a story incredible in modern times— impossible if reported of any country but one steeped in national robbery and crime. The official statistics of agriculture in Ireland, just published from the English Press (though professedly of only part of Ireland), show that bog, waste and water have increased by nearly 80,000 acres in Ireland last year, and the area under crops, including meadow and clover, has decreased by not less than 114,039 acres. Take the single item of potatoes. There was an increase of area under potatoes in 3881 of close upon 35,000 acres. In 1882 there was a decrease of more than 17,000 acres. Flax shows a decrease of about 34,000 acres, meadow and clover of about 39,000 acres, and, in fact, green crops all round have decreased in an almost unaccountable manner. The Dublin Freeman's Journal calls special attention to an extraordinary and still more dreadful feature of this state of things, namely, that in the counties in which it is said there is the greatest "congestion " of population there is also the greatest absolute return to waste and bog. The bishops of Ireland in their recent resolutions declared that " in every county in which this state of congestion prevails, there are large tracts of land once cultivated by the people, but from which they were driven in recent times, and which, are now in grass, and in many cases deteriorating, while there are also in the same counties extensive tracts of other lands capable of improvement. These lands would maintain in comfort and happiness the surplus population of the congested districts." The bishops also declared " That State-aided emigration, as a means of curing this evil, is unwise and impolitic, and tends only to promote disaffection amongst the Irish race at home and abroad." The bishops had not these official figures now to hand when they spoke ; but their clear knowledge of the country is illustrated by the report. What intelligeat man, reading these facts, will refuse a verdict of " guilty " against the Government that emigrates the Irish people ?