3-052-387 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Irish sketches: turf [or peat] market in the south of Ireland, 1880. 'The deplorable condition of large numbers of the peasantry, small tenants of land and cottiers, in the western parts of Ireland, continues to be a matter of grave public anxiety. From Connemara and the shores of the Bay of Galway, round those of Mayo, Sligo, and Donegal, throughout the poorer agricultural districts in the bleak and barren situations not far from the Atlantic, there is real distress among this helpless class of people..."The main reason," says a very competent witness, "of the distress which is chronic in Western Connaught appears to be over-population, and the difference between the present and the former emergency is to be measured by the shrunken census. The country is too poor to support great numbers of people. The climate is detestable, not much worse, perhaps, than Mull or Skye, but with far less capital and energy to counteract it. Absenteeism has done its worst here, but things are so hopeless that the most energetic resident's heart might well fail him. The West will not sustain a great population, but it would feed an enormously greater number of cattle than it does at present. The only real remedy for the perennial misery seems to be emigration".' From "Illustrated London News", 1880.