the nature and resources of the country which has been the subject
of our long and strange correspondence. There were returned, as I
have before observed, to the hearth tax in 1791, 701,102 houses,
which Mr. Newenham shows from unquestionable documents to be nearly
80,000 below the real number of houses in that country. There are
27,457 square English miles in Ireland, and more than five millions
of people.

By the last survey it appears that the inhabited houses in England
and Wales amount to 1,574,902, and the population to 9,343,578,
which gives an average of 5.875 to each house, in a country where
the density of population is certainly less considerable than in
Ireland. It is commonly supposed that two-fifths of the army and
navy are Irishmen, at periods when political disaffection does not
avert the Catholics from the service. The current value of Irish
exports in 1807 was 9,314,854 pounds 17s. 7d.; a state of commerce
about equal to the commerce of England in the middle of the reign of
George II. The tonnage of ships entered inward and cleared outward
in the trade of Ireland, in 1807, amounted to 1,567,430 tons. The
quantity of home spirits exported amounted to 10,284 gallons in
1796, and to 930,800 gallons in 1804. Of the exports which I have
stated, provisions amounted to four millions, and linen to about
four millions and a half. There was exported from Ireland, upon an
average of two years ending in January, 1804, 591,274 barrels of
barley, oats, and wheat; and by weight 910,848 cwts. of flour,
oatmeal, barley, oats, and wheat. The amount of butter exported in
1804, from Ireland, was worth, in money, 1,704,680 pounds sterling.
The importation of ale and beer, from the immense manufactures now
carrying on of these articles, was diminished to 3,209 barrels, in
the year 1804, from 111,920 barrels, which was the average