Note 41 — MR. GLADSTONE AND THE IRISH FARMERS.

"In the number of farms, from one to five acres, the decrease has been 24,147; from five to fifteen acres, 27,379; from fifteen to thirty acres, 4274; while of farms above thirty acres, the increase has been 3670. Seventy thousand occupiers with their families, numbering about three hundred thousand, were rooted out of the land. In Leinster, the decrease in the number of holdings not exceeding one acre, as compared with the decrease of 1847, was 3749; above one and not exceeding five, was 4026; of five and not exceeding fifteen, was 2546; of fifteen to thirty, 391; making a total of 10,617. In Munster, the decrease in the holdings under thirty acres is stated at 18,814; the increase over thirty acres, 1399. In Ulster, the decrease was 1502; the increase, 1134. In Connaught, where the labor of extermination was least, the clearance has been most extensive. There in particular the roots of holders of the soil were never planted deep beneath the surface, and consequently were exposed to every exterminator's hand. There were in 1847, 35,634 holders of from one to five acres. In the following year there were less by 9703; there were 76,707 holders of from five to fifteen acres, less in one year by 12,891; those of from fifteen to thirty acres were reduced by 2121; a total depopulation of 26,499 holders of land, exclusive of their families, was effected in Connaught in one year."—Captain Larcom's report for 1848, as quoted in Mitchel's Last Conquest of Ireland, (Perhaps.) Dublin, 1861.