Even then, no attempt was made to regulate emigration by the State. The
ball which was thus set rolling at that date has been in motion ever
since, and that which half a century ago was regarded as the hand of the
_deus ex machina_ setting right a grave economic problem has continued,
so that it has become at this day a problem no less grave, which to an
equal degree presses for solution.

Four million people in the last sixty-five years fled from the country,
and though the figures, as they are published, seem to show a slight
decrease each year, the apparent diminution is to a large extent
fallacious, since the residue of population from which emigrants are
drawn becomes each year less, and an apparent decrease may in truth be a
relative increase.

We heard much a few years ago in England of the evils of immigration
into the British Isles of aliens, whom the Board of Trade returns show
amount to eight thousand per annum--a figure which appears paltry when
compared with the forty thousand people who leave Ireland every year. It
is a cry which one is told should make the thirty-seven million
inhabitants of England and Scotland burn with indignation that this
number of foreigners land on their shores every year. Surely we Irishmen
have a far greater cause of complaint in the fact that out of a
population of four and a half millions, less than is that of London, a
number greater than those of a town of the size of Limerick emigrate
every year. Most of these emigrants are in the prime of life. Their
average age is from twenty to twenty-five, and more than ninety per
cent. are between the ages of ten and forty-five years. Here is the
crucial fact, that it is the young, the active, and the plucky who are
being tempted by promises of success abroad, to which they see no
likelihood of attaining at home, and in this way is established a system