THE INDUSTRIES OF IRELAND,

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 20, 17 May 1900, Page 10

THE INDUSTRIES OF IRELAND,

with the single exception of the industry of agriculture, may be said to have absolutely disappeared, and agriculture itself has shown of recent times this extraordinary symptom that every year that has passed the area of land going out of cultivation has increased. Our shrunken population is to-day more dependent upon agriculture than it ever was in the past, and yet the most recent figures show that the value of the agricultural output of Ireland is to-day something like eighteen millions less than it was half a century ago. Pauperism, judged by the number of those who are in receipt of public relief, has within the last 50 years fallen by one-half in England ; but in Ireland it has steadily increased year by year, until at thia moment it is double what it was 40 years ago. During the same period the taxation of Ireland per head of the population has increased 50 per cent. ; and although a few years ago a Royal Commission, composed of Englishmen in the main and of England's greatest financial authorities, declared that Ireland was overtaxed every year to the extent of nearly £3,000,000. But while I recall these facts, I desire to remind you that the nineteenth century has not been for us an unbroken record of humiliation or of failure. Our race during this century has increased and multiplied throughout the world. It has carried with it into every land, into every clime,