ole
country is unmistakable. The average annual value of Irish exports at
the time of the Union was, according to Mr. Chart.[16] L4,000,000. In
1826 they had increased to L8,000,000, a corresponding increase being
recorded in imports. Coming down to the period of the Financial
Relations Commission (1895), that very cautious and painstaking
statistician, the late Sir Robert Giffen,[17] roughly estimated Irish
imports at L25,000,000 and exports at L20,000,000. Since that time the
Irish Agricultural Department has been created, and has undertaken the
collection and tabulation of such statistics. Turning to their latest
report we find that the imports had in 1910 attained the relatively
enormous figure of L65,000,000, and the exports L65,800,000, a total of
over L130,000,000 in place of nine or ten millions, at the very outside,
of the time of the Union. And it is worth noting in addition that, for
the first time in these recorded tables, Ireland's exports exceed her
imports.

But we are assured with triumphant and invincible despondency that
population has decreased alarmingly. The movements of population since
the time of the Union have been, it may be admitted, very remarkable,
but the figures are double-edged and require a more careful handling
than they generally receive. If we are to assume, as the prophets of
gloom will have it, that increase and decrease of population are an
infallible test of a country's growth or decay, then Ireland for nearly
half a century after the Union must have been the most prosperous
country in Europe. The population of Ireland, which in 1792 was
estimated at 4,088,226, had increased in 1814 to 5,937,856, in 1821 to
6,801,827, and in 1841 to 8,196,597. In other words, the population,
like the trade, of the doomed island had more than doubled since the
Union. We doubt if any European country could say as much.

Then came the great disaster, the potato famine of 1846-47, which,
undoubtedly, dealt a stunning blow to Irish agriculture. It was not the
first, nor the worst, of Irish famines--there is evidence that the
famines of 1729 and 1740 were, proportionately, more widespread and more
appalling in their effects. But, occurring as it did, in the middle of
the nineteenth century, with the press of the world as witnesses, it
attracted immense attention, and the nations, whom England, then high
and mighty in the undisputed supremacy of the doctrines of _laissez
faire_ and free trade, were not