of the survival of the unfittest, an artificial selection of the most
malignant kind, which is leaving the old, the infirm, the poor, and the
unadventurous behind to swell the figures of pauperism and to propagate
the race. All the authorities are agreed in attributing to this cause
the lamentable increase of lunacy, which is one of the most terrible
factors in the economy of modern Ireland. The last Census report shows
the total number of lunatics and idiots to have been in 1851 equal to a
ratio of 1 in 637 of the population, and to be in 1901 equal to a ratio
of 1 in 178. The proportion is, as one would expect, highest in the
purely agricultural districts and lowest in the neighbourhood of cities,
such as Dublin and Belfast, where industrial conditions imply better
wages and food, and a less monotonous existence.

It should be remembered that the proportion of imbeciles in Great
Britain has risen in the period of fifty years as it has in
Ireland--partly, no doubt, owing to a better system of registration of
lunacy--but, at the same time, the fact remains that the average in
Ireland is very much greater than in England and Wales, rising in some
Irish counties to a proportion twice, and in another to a ratio thrice,
as high as that of the average of the whole of England and Wales.

If urban industrial conditions militate against an increase of lunacy,
on the other hand it must be remembered that in most Irish towns there
is an appalling amount of overcrowding. The death-rate of Dublin--the
highest of any city in Europe--is, in consequence, no less than 25 per
1,000, as against 16 per 1,000 in Paris and New York, and 17 per 1,000
in London. The percentage of families, consisting on an average of four
persons, living in one room is in London 14.6, in Edinburgh 16.9, in
Glasgow 26.1, in Cork 10.6, in Limerick, 15.8, while in Dublin it
reaches the appalling percentage of 36. In Belfast, which, unlike any