HISTORIC NOTES ON THE IRISH CENSUS. THE mass of the people are little aware of the practical value of a Census. Some consider it a useless waste of money; others look upon it in the nature of an inquisitorial proceeding, inconsistent with the principles of British freedom; while the more thoughtless turn it into ridicule, and throw obstacles in the way of its inquiries, in their ignorance of the object for which it has been instituted. The progress of time has done much for the investigation of truth. Every succeeding periodic enumeration has been attended with less difficulty, and this has arisen not merely from the spread of civilisation and education, or from improvements in the machinery of the Census itself, but from the fact, that the people are becoming more and more habituated to inquiries of the sort. The Irish Census taken on the 30th of last March has justly claimed an amount of public interest and consideration, which no previous investiga tion of a similar kind, either in this or any other country, ever demanded— simply because neither general nor statistical history can supply results of anything like the same kind. We imagined, when we commenced to consider this subject, that we might have been enabled to find some parallel to that which has taken place in Ireland within the last four years-such, for instance, as the effect produced by the great war in North-Western Europe. The means of comparison are not of that nature to enable us to speak with accuracy; but there can be little doubt that the destruction of human life during the continuance of that eventful conflict fell short of the loss the Irish people sustained from the year 1846 to the present time. The gross result of the last Census has just been published. So far the general mind has been satisfied, and its curiosity appeased. Those who are ignorant of the advantages derived from statistical science, and who are unaware that in a correct knowledge of the status of a country is to be found the only sure basis for legislation, suppose that the mere enumeration of a people is the sole duty of a Census, and that the investigation about which there was so much anxiety a few months ago is all over. This is not the case; the real business has but commenced. The arrangement, compilation, and reduction into order of the collected materials must occupy a considerable time, and then a voluminous publication, extending to every point to which inquiry has been directed, and containing re ports upon every section into which the Census has been divided, will be presented to parliament. When this information shall be completed and made public, we shall be in a better condition to see in what precise manner the country and its inhabitants have been affected by the events of the preceding decade. Pending the production of this document by the Census Commissioners, we have turned our attention to the various attempts which have been made to compute the population of Ireland, and, by way of preface to future articles, present our readers with "Historic Notes on the Irish Census." Previous to the year 1813, when the first authentic enumeration of the poo ple of Ireland was taken under the authority of Parliament, the amount of the population was computed chiefly by individuals who, from time to time, had applied their zeal and industry to the consideration of the subject. The statistical materials, from whence they obtained their results, were, for the most part, of an uncertain and unsatisfactory kind, and consequently the estimates we have of our numbers and progressive increase up to the date to which we have alluded, must be considered more conjectural than accurate. To these calculations, however, in the absence of authorised inquiry by governmental machinery, there was much importance attached at the period when they were respectively published, and they now supply the science of political arithmetic with historic data not less interesting than instructive. It is remarkable that from the year 1185, when Gerald Barry, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis, visited Ireland, and found it, as he says, "without roads and almost uninhabited," up to the period when Lord Deputy Mount joy's Secretary, Fynes Morrison, calculated, that after the termination of the war of 1602, but 700,000 Irish subjects remained to Queen Elizabeth, there should be such utter silence by historians or other writers, as to the number of inhabitants in the country. This silence may be said to have been maintained up to the commencement of the seventeenth century, when, through the laborious researches of a learned doctor of medicine, named Petty, who settled in Ireland in 1652, and was subsequently appointed one of the surveyors to value the forfeited estates instituted during the Protectorate, we were supplied with the first computation to which any degree of faith may be attached. Petty was regarded as one of the ablest statists of his time, and all writers have adopted his estimates of the population in 1652 and 1672, as the sources from whence calculations of our numerical progress should be derived. "He was," says Ware, "a person of an admirable invention, of a prodigious working wit, and of so great worth and learning, that as he was fit for, so he was an ornament to the highest preferment." His first estimate is to be found in his tract entitled "The Political Anatomy of Ireland," in which he gives his opinion as to the amount of population in 1652 : "The number of people," says he, being now (1672), about 1,100,000, and anno 1652 about 850,000, because I conceive that 80,000 of them have, in twenty years, increased, by generation, 70,000, by return of banished and expelled English, as also by the access of new ones; 80,000 of new sects, and 20,000 of returned Irish, being in all 250,000." His next computation is contained in a report from the Council of Trade in Ireland to the Lord Lieutenant, in obedience to an order of Council, bearing date the 20th of January, 1675. This report was, as the preface to the tract on Political Anatomy says, "not only drawn but wholly * Clarendon's State Letters, vol. i. p. 6. composed by Sir William Petty, and with which the Council concurred unanimously." His calculation rests chiefly on the number of hearths (or smokes as he calls them) : "The number of people in Ireland in 1672 (says this document), is about 1,100,000, viz., 300,000 English, Scotch, and Welsh Protestants, and 800,000 Papists; whereof one-fourth are children unfit for labour, and 75,000 of the remainder are, by reason of their quality and estates, above the necessity of corporeal labour, so that there remains 750,000 labouring men and women, 500,000 whereof do perform the present work of the nation. "The said 1,100,000 people do live in about 200,000 families or houses, whereof there are about 16,000 which haye more than one chimney in each, and about 24,000 which have but one; all the other houses, being 160,000, are wretched nasty cabins, without chimney, window, or door-shut, even worse than those of the savage Americans, and wholly unfit for the making of merchantieth butter, cheese, or the manufacture of woollen, linen, or leather. "By comparing the extent of the country with the number of people, it appears that Ireland is much underpeopled; forasmuch as there are about ten acres of good land to every head in Ireland, whereas in England and France there are but four, and in Holland scarce one." "Hearth money was one of the oldest duties. By the Doomsday Book it appears that firage was paid to William the Conqueror for every chimney. It was not, however, known in Ireland till after the Restoration, when it was granted by 14 & 15 Car. II. c. 17, and by 17 & 18 Car. II. c. 18, in lieu of the Courts of Wards and Liveries, being a duty of two shillings yearly for each fire hearth, oven, &c., to be paid by the occupier of every dwelling throughout the kingdom, except such as live upon alms and are not able to get their living by work, and also except widows, * cers had been appointed to collect the duty, and after the frauds of several of them had been detected and punished, there were houses suppressed to the number of near two hundred thousand, can I suppose that the lists formed in 1672, under less efficient laws and a more imperfect method of calculation, could have been free from fraud and error?" Petty, even where he speaks about the smokes, is silent as to the source from whence he derives his calculations. Besides, as has been truly observed, the tract on "Political Anatomy" is posthumous, evidently unfinished, and avowedly published in an imperfect state; and consequently these circumstances would combine to make a calculator cautious in forming deductions from such premises. It is agreed, however, that though his computations are open to objection in point of general accuracy, he is not likely to have erred in overrating the numbers, for he was well aware of the effects which war and concomitant pestilence had produced on the population. Sir William Temple, in his letter to Lord Essex, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1677, in describing the state of Ireland, says, "The want of trade proceeds from the want of people; and this is not grown from any ill qualities of the climate or air, but chiefly from the frequent revolutions of so many wars and rebellions, so great slaughters and calamities as have at several intervals of time succeeded the first conquest of the kingdom, in Henry the Second's time, until the year 1653. Two very great plagues followed the two great wars, those of Queen Elizabeth, and those of the last, which helped to drain the current stream of generation in this country." And again, in another passage, he says, "So that had it not been for the numbers of the British which the necessity of the late wars drew over, and of such who, either as adventurers or soldiers, seated themselves here upon account of the satisfaction made them in land, the country had been, by the late war and plague, left in a manner desolate." This letter is dated July 22, 1673, ten years after Petty's Report to the Council of State. In an anonymous pamphlet, published in 1673, entitled "The Present State of Ireland, together with some Remarques upon the critical State thereof," in speaking of the population, the writer observes: "It hath been said of late by some, that the people of England are quadrupled within 400 years, as doubling every 200 years. How true this may be in relation to England, I know not; but I may be persuaded that this observation may be more properly applied to Ireland, which has been within these 400 years highly improved by clearing of grounds from a wilderness, and thereby constantly giving way for the enlargement of people's habitations. Ireland being reported to be greatly overgrown with woods in Giraldus Cambrensis his time. Though Ireland was very popuous before the late wars, and is computed to be half as big as England, yet I dare not say that it contained half as many people as England did, because onefourth part of Ireland is taken up with unprofitable bogs, lakes, and barren mountains; and for the townes and cities of England are far greater and more numerous in population to those of Ireland, inasmuch that the citie of London itself may be thought to contain more people than one-half of the kingdom of Ireland in the best of times. But whether Ireland did in her prime contain two millions of people, I will not take on me to determine, but to submit the decision of so doubtful a matter to more knowing persons." It will be seen, then, from the authorities that we have quoted, that the population was considered greatly decreased, from the time when the country was supposed to be in her prime; wars, plagues, and famines having had nearly uninterrupted sway for a long period of her history, the eleven years from 1641 to 1653 being the most dis astrous. who shall procure a certificate from two justices of the peace yearly, that the house which they inhabit is not of greater value than eight shillings a year, and that they do not occupy land of eight shillings yearly, or have goods and chattles to the value of four pounds. This duty used formerly to be set to farm to the highest bidder, who collected it himself, and paid what he agreed for to the nearest collector of a district. But this practice has been discontinued ever since 1704."-Sketch of the Revenue and Finances of Ireland, p. 17. * Rev. E. Groves's account of the proceedings in 1813 and 1814, to ascertain the population of Ireland, in Mason's Parochial Survey, vol. iii. In the interval between 1672 and 1695, there does not appear to have been any attempt made to compute the number of people. In the latter year, Captain South, a gentleman of high scientific attainments, made a communication to the Royal Society of London, in which he gives "an account of the number of people in the counties of Armagh, Louth, Meath, and city of Dublin, with an estimate of the number of people that were in the kingdom of Ireland the 10th January, 16956." The computation is grounded upon the poll-tax, showing the numbers assessed and exempted for the three counties, as well as the city of Dublin; and the conclusion, as to the number in the whole island, is arrived at according to the first quarter's assessment of the poll, in proportion to the counties, which (as he states) "were very exactly returned." Mr. Newenham, in his valuable treatise on the progress of the population of Ireland, attaches considerable importance to Captain South's computation. He compares it with that made by Sir W. Petty, in 1672, and comments upon the discernible coincidence between both estimates. According to the opinion of the former, he writes, "the increase by generation, under the circumstances affecting the population of Ireland when he wrote, could not have been more than 120,000 souls in twenty-five years, had internal tranquillity prevailed; and consequently the population of that country could not in such a case have amounted in 1695 to more than about 1,220,000. Proceeding, then, to show that, by the wars of the Revolution, and by subsequent political vexations, the population must have sustained a loss of 185,898 souls, he endeavours to show the perfect coincidence between the computations of Sir W. Petty, in 1672, which made the inhabitants of Ireland amount to 1,100,000, and the computation of Captain South, in 1695, which showed the numbers in that year to be 1,034,102. However ingenious this calculation may appear, it is difficult to attach to Captain South's estimate an amount of credit beyond that which a conjectural computation deserves; for though he gives the returns of the poll-tax as the data upon which his calculations were founded, The difference between the computation of 1725 and 1726, showing a decrease in the latter year, is accounted for by the default of the hearth collectors in not making a regular return of the houses of the poor, who, as the writer says, 66 are certified to live upon alms, and do not pay the tax; some, in their abstracts, returning them, and some not at all." Mr. Dobbs's calculations, founded upon the uncertain information supplied by the returns of inefficient and careless officers, must be classed with the previous attempts to ascertain the population, which are open to all the objections inseparable from a system of mere computation. We now come to the year 1731, when another and unsatisfactory effort was made to arrive at the amount of the population. The progress of Roman Catholicism in Ireland at that time gave great anxiety to the Government, so much so, that the Lord Lieutenant,t in opening the session of Parliament on the 5th of October, 1731, called the attention of both houses to its increase in the country. "I shall leave it," said his Excellency, "to your consideration whether any further laws may be necessary to prevent the growth of Popery, and to secure you against all dangers from the great number of Papists in the kingdom." In accordance with this recommendation, the Lords appointed a Committee on the 2nd of November, 1731, to inquire into the state of Popery; and an order was made, directing that the archbishops and bishops, the parochial clergy, and the magistrates of the kingdom should Philosophical Society's Transactions," vol. xxii. P. 520. †The Duke of Dorset. VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. CCXXVII. 2 P make a return of the number of inhabitants in each parish, and the number of Romish ecclesiastics and Popish schools. The returns were accordingly made, and the total number of souls was stated to have been 2,010,221. The Select Committee of the Lords stated, in their Report, that the information from the archbishops, bishops, and clergy was fuller and more particular than that received from the magistracy. The object of the inquiry from the Lords was one obviously of an unpopular and distasteful kind, and, therefore, it is not to be wondered that the returns from the magistracy, who must, of course, have sought to obtain the information from the people, turned out to be imperfect and inaccurate. The state of Ireland, too, at this period must also be considered, when, as has been justly remarked, large tracts of the country were not subject to magisterial jurisdiction or the influence of the clergy of the Established Church. This state of things will suggest that the result of an inquiry made by either of them would be far from satisfactory. The hearth-money collectors continuing to make their returns, calculations founded thereon were made as to the amount of the population, extending from the year 1730 to 1775. The Commissioners of Revenue also required these officers to give, in a separate column, the religion of the head of each family. In the year 1736, an anonymous pamphlet was published, entitled, "An Abstract of the Number of Protestant and Popish Families in Ireland, taken from the Returns of the Collectors of the Hearthmoney Office in Dublin, in the years 1732-1733." The number returned in one of these years was 386,902; "and if," says the writer, "we allow five to a family, then those families will contain 1,935,510 souls, and if we add to these the 12,000 soldiers and their families, and all such who live in colleges, hospitals, poor-houses, and the unreturned certified houses above mentioned, none of which are included in the aforesaid number of families returned by the hearth-money collectors, we may very well conclude that there are very nearly two millions of inhabitants in the kingdom." The author then proceeds to calculate the number of Protestant and Popish families. Finding the number of inhabitants, he allows five souls as a proper medium to each family, and then, by ascertaining the religious persuasion of its head, he gets the number of persons of each religion. He thus calculates that, at that time, there were not three Roman Catholics to one Protestant in Ire land. In De Burgho's "Hibernia Dominicana," he estimates that, in 1760, the population was 2,317,384. He does not mention the data from whence he derived his calculations, but it is more than probable that his estimate was grounded upon returns received from the Roman Catholic clergy. We have already stated that the hearth-money collectors' returns formed the basis upon which estimates were made of the population, and the following results were obtained from 1754 to 1785: Mr. Gervais Parker Bushe, who held the office of Commissioner of Revenue, read a paper on the 5th of June, 1790, before the Royal Irish Academy, which he entitled "An Essay towards ascertaining the Population of Ireland." From the peculiar advantages which his official position afforded him, he was the better enabled to correct the errors and frauds which had so long disgraced the returns of the hearth-money collectors, and thus his compilation may be considered as representing the most faithful estimate which had hitherto been made of the population. Mr. Bushe's account gives 4,040,000 as the number of souls in Ireland in 1778. He In 1791, a well-digested return, prepared by Mr. Wray, the Inspector of Hearth-money, was presented_to the Irish House of Commons. showed the number of hearths, and, by an allowance of six persons to each house, the population was estimated to be 4,206,612. In 1792 Dr. Beaufort published an "Ecclesiastical Map of Ireland," and in the memoir which accompanies it, he gives the number of people in each county (save Tyrone), and the number of acres to each inhabitant.* His returns do not agree with those prepared in the same year by Inspector Wray, neither does he state the "Beaufort's Map of Ireland." Postscript, p. 142. |