In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to discuss the wages question and the condition of the labouring population. Of the actual number of this class I can find no accurate return. But we have already seen that the number of families inhabiting the lowest class of houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the lowest class of labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871 gave the average number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100 families, we may estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied by 507, or 1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may be safely assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now the money wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1_s._ 6_d._ a day in the most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in harvest time the labourers earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a day. A great many labourers have small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is that the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his family can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig, &c.--thereby eking out the actual money payment. The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast, potatoes and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper. The people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the sea that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many of the labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am told that in certain districts there is one day in the year when every family among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of fresh meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish this meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.