+-----+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+------------+ |Year.|Above One Acre|Above Five Acres |Above Fifteen Acres|Above Thirty| | |to Five Acres.|to Fifteen Acres.| to Thirty Acres. | Acres. | +-----+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+------------+ | 1841| 310,436 | 252,800 | 79,342 | 40,625 | | 1851| 88,083 | 191,854 | 141,311 | 149,090 | | 1861| 85,469 | 183,931 | 141,251 | 157,833 | | 1871| 74,809 | 171,383 | 138,647 | 159,303 | | 1881| 67,071 | 164,045 | 135,793 | 159,834 | +-----+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+------------+ Thus it is seen that since Free Trade was adopted, small holdings in Ireland have been diminishing, whereas large holdings have been increasing; and that would be in favour of Lord George Bentinck’s contention, which in 1847 gave the utmost annoyance to Mr. Cobden and his friends, that Free Trade caused the Irish Famine. Perhaps the true view is, that in manufacturing districts, where the mass of the people did not live by selling produce from the soil, the fall in the price of grain which followed Free Trade was a boon. To a country like Ireland, on the other hand, where the mass of the people lived on the profits of tillage on a small scale, Free Trade came as a disaster. Coupled with the failure of the potato crop, it meant famine in 1847. Literally, the great mass of the Irish people were by this time starving. Their savings were gone, and as for economising, it was hopeless. A nation that lives on potatoes alone--the cheapest and worst form of human food the earth can yield--has already lowered its standard of comfort to zero. Beggary is the only alternative to a potato diet: for potato-feeders, as Mr. J. S. Mill has observed, “retrenchment is impossible.” Public works were therefore started for the relief of the people, and to these tottering skeletons dragged themselves in despair, often to die almost as soon as they began their task. A few ounces of oatmeal were reckoned a day’s ration for a family, and those who survived cold and hunger were swept away by typhus. The scenes in the overcrowded workhouses recalled the horrors that are immortalised in Defoe’s “History of the Plague.” In the towns the sufferings of the people were not less keen and cruel. “Daily in the street,” writes Mr. A. M. Sullivan in “New Ireland,” “and on the footway, some poor creature lay down as if to sleep, and presently was still and stark. In one district it was a common occurrence to find, on opening the front door in the early morning, leaning against it the corpse of some victim who in the night had ‘rested’ in its shelter. We raised a public subscription and employed two men with horse and cart to go round each day to gather up the dead. One by one they were taken to Ardrahahair