0, and over
8,000,000 in the year of the famine. At the present time it is only
5,000,000. The potato, above all other crops, enables the cultivator to
live from hand to mouth, and coupled with a landlord system which takes
away all above mere subsistence, this "de-moralizing esculent" aided the
apparent overpopulation. Certainly the dependence of an entire people on
a single crop was a most precarious condition.

During the five years, 1846 to 1850, more than a million and a quarter
of Irish emigrants left the ports of the United Kingdom, and during the
ten years, 1845 to 1855, more than a million and a quarter came to the
United States. So great a number could not have found means of
transportation had it not been for the enormous contributions of
government and private societies for assistance. Here began that
exportation of paupers on a large scale against which our country has
protested and finally legislated. Even this enormous migration was not
greatly in excess of the number that actually perished from starvation
or from the diseases incident thereto. The Irish migration since that
time has never reached so high a point, although it made a second great
advance in 1882, succeeding another famine, and it has now fallen far
below that of eastern races of Europe. Altogether the total Irish
immigration of over four million since 1821 places that race second of
the contributors to our foreign-born population, and, compared with its
own numbers, it leads the world, for in sixty years it has sent to us
half as many people as it contained at the time of its greatest
population. Scarcely another country has sent more than one-fifth.

Looking over a period of nearly three centuries, it is probably true
that the Germans have crossed the ocean in larger numbers than any other
race. We have already noted the large migration during the eighteenth
century, and the official records show that since 1820 there have
entered our ports more than 5,200,000 Germans, while Ireland was sending
4,000,000 and Great Britain 3,300,000.

The German migration of the nineteenth century was quite distinct in
character from that of the preceding century. The colonial migration was
largely induced on religious grounds, but that of the past century was
political and economic, with at first a notable prominence of
materialism respecting religion. From the time of the Napoleonic wars to
the revolution of 1848, the governments of Germany were despot