an
extensive plan of emigration shall or shall not be adopted, appears to
your Committee to resolve itself into the simple point, whether the
wheat-fed population of Great Britain shall or shall not be supplanted
by the potato-fed population of Ireland?"[278]

The same reasons are given by the same Committee in 1827, and they are
again repeated in 1830, by another Committee, whose duty it was to
inquire into the state of the Irish poor.

The famous Devon Land Commission, which was called into existence in
1842, presented its voluminous report to Parliament in 1845, which was
founded on the examination of eleven hundred witnesses, whose evidence
was taken on the spot in every county in Ireland; the Commissioners
having visited more than ninety towns for the purpose;--that Commission
recommended emigration from Ireland, but in a cautious and modified way.
The Commissioners say:--"After considering the recommendations, thus
repeatedly made by Committees of Parliament upon this subject, and the
evidence of Mr. Godley, in which the different views of the subject are
well given, we desire to express our own conviction, that a
well-organized system of emigration may be of very great service, as one
among the measures which the situation of the occupiers of land in
Ireland, at present calls for. We cannot think that either emigration,
or the extension of Public Works, or the reclamation or improvement of
land can, singly, remove the existing evil. All these remedies must be
provided concurrently, according to the circumstances of each case. In
this view, and to this extent only, we wish to direct attention to the
subject of emigration."[279]

A Select Committee of the House of Lords, on the operation of the Poor
Law in Ireland, spoke approvingly of emigration as a relief to the
labour market at home, and it therefore recommended, "that increased
facilities for the emigration of poor persons should be afforded, with
the cooperation of the Government."[280]

One Parliamentary Committee, at least, condemned emigration in terms
both decided and remarkable; it was the Committee of Public Works
appointed in 1835. In its second report this passage occurs:--"It may be
doubted, whether the country does contain a sufficient quantity of
labour to develope its resources; and while the empire is loaded with
taxation to defray the charges of its wars, it appears most politic to
use its internal resources for improving the condition of it