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have been a resident minister at the court of St. James's; and if what I have read in the public prints be true, and if you be apprised of my near relationship and family connexion with the late Sir John Temple, you must acknowledge that your interference as resident minister at the court of St. James's, against my being permitted to emigrate to America, is a very curious instance of the caprice of fortune. But let that pass. To what extent I ought to yield to you for talents and information, is not for me to decide. In no other respect, however, do I feel your excessive superiority. My private character and conduct are, I hope, as fair as yours and even in those matters which I consider as trivial, but upon which aristocratic pride is accustomed to stamp a value, I should not be inclined to shrink from competition. My birth certainly will not humble me by the comparison; my paternal fortune was probably much greater than yours; the consideration in which the name I bear was held in my native country, was as great as yours is ever likely to be, before I had an opportunity of contributing to its celebrity. As to the amount of what private fortune I have been able to save from the wreck of calamity, it is unknown to you or to your friends ; but two things I will tell you-I never was indebted, either in the country from which I came, nor in any other in which I have lived, to any man, further than the necesary credit for the current expences of a family; and am not so circumstanced that I should tremble "for my subsistence" at the threatened displeasure of friends. So much for the past and the present-now for the future. Circumstances which cannot be controuled, have decided that my name must be embodied into history. From the manner in which even my political adversaries, and some of my cotemporary historians, unequivocally hostile to my principles, already speak of me, I have the consolation of reflecting, that when the falschoods of the day are withered and rotten, I shall be respected and esteemed. You, sir, will probably be forgotten, when I shall be remembered with honour, or if, perad L12

your

venture

venture, your name should descend to posterity, perhaps you will be known only as the recorded instrument of part of

tions, sufferings, and misfortunes.

my persecu

I am, sir, &c.

New-York, April 9, 1807.

THOMAS ADDIS EMMET.

STATISTICAL

STATISTICAL ESSAY,

ON THE

FOPULATION AND RESOURCES OF IRELAND,

BY WILLIAM J. MAC NEVEN.

I PUBLISHED the following Statistical Essay in the Paris

Argus of December the 17th, 1803, in order to prove how much the population and resources of Ireland exceeded the usual estimate of persons otherwise well informed. It is republished here with some addition, because the facts it contains are not perhaps better known in America than they were in the capital of France, and in order to shew the folly, no less than the injustice of the British government, which has been hazarding every day for the last fifteen years, through the most iniquitous treatment, the loss of so essential a member of its empire.

PERSONS having expressed doubts as to the amount of the population and other resources ascribed to Ireland, in the essay copied from the Moniteur into the Argus of November the 16th, the following details are offered in order to shew the grounds of some of the opinions set forth in that paper.

The

The tax imposed until lately in Ireland on every hearth, commonly known by the name of the hearth-money tax, gives very correctly the number of inhabited houses, of which returns were made to the commissioners of the revenue. One of these, Mr. Jervis Bushe, found, by a calculation taken from the revenue books, that the houses paying the duty amounted in 1788 to 650,000, without including barracks, hospitals, school-houses, or public buildings. But as it was a common practice with collectors to return houses as waste which paid the duty, for the purpose of sinking the money in their own pockets, Mr. Bushe, aided by his official situation, instituted different other researches, and these left him of opinion that 60,000 houses more should be added to the official returns, making in all 710,000 inhabited houses. From the mass of those, in which the inhabitants had been counted, there were taken indiscriminately 14,108, and the population was 87,895; which gives somewhat more than 6 1-4 to each house. Consequently the population of the whole must by the same ratio have been in 1788, 4,437,506. The authors of the Encyclopædia Britannica, article Ireland, compute the number of inhabitants to be 4,500,000. The interesting paper of Mr. Bushe on this subject, is inserted in the 3d volume of the transactions of the Irish Academy. The same gentleman found by the revenue books that the increase of houses from 1777 to 1788, was 173,058. The increase of houses from 1788 to 1799, was greater still; but this result was not in either case owing altogether to the building of new ones: it is to be in part ascribed to a greater accuracy obtained in the new returns. In order, however, to be within the most scru pulous bounds, we will take the increase of houses from 1788 down to the present time to be no more than 173,058, what it was found by enumeration to have been in the eleven years preceding 1788. The amount of houses will be then 883,000, and this, multiplied by 6 1-4, gives 5,518,750 for the actual population of the whole island,

Another

Another computation, though formed on different principles, will be found to give a similar result. The superficial contents of Ireland are to those of England and Wales as 27,457 is to 49,450; but the former country, on account of containing less waste land in proportion to its area,* has a somewhat denser po pulation. Now, as that of England and Wales, according to the last enumeration made two years ago, is 9,444,950, Ireland should have half that amount, and as much more as Ireland exceeds the one half of England and Wales in extent. This is 2,732 square miles, which, multiplied by 200, the population of eyery Irish square mile gives 546,400 souls, and these, added to 4,722,475, the half of the population of England, make that of Ireland equal to 5,268,875. The county of Wexford alone furnished 40,000 fighting men in the insurrection of 1798, and if the proportion of that county to the rest of the island be considered, the amount of the population resulting from this estimate likewise cannot be less than 5,500,000.

There is so near a coincidence between all these results, that we cannot reasonably deny their general correctness. As printed authorities will, however, be required in a case of this kind by strangers, much satisfaction will be received on the subject from the calculations of Chalmers, and from an excellent essay pub. lished by a member of the late Irish Parliament.

As to the advantages which England derives from Ireland in point of revenue, they were rated much too low in the essay given to the Moniteur; for their real amount would, it was feared, seem almost incredible to those who had not attentively considered that generally neglected country. Yet from official documents it appears that the amount of the receipts of the treasury in Ireland for the year ending the 5th of January, 1801, was £.9,435,896 11s. 8d.†

* Vide Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland.

+ Vide Monthly Magazine, for April, 1802.

In

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