But this improvement produced no sensible effect upon the condition of the labouring people.  However brightly the sun of prosperity might gild the eminences of society, the darkness of misery and despair settled upon the masses below.  The commissioners proceed:  ’A reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is still badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour.  Our personal experience and observation during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements; and we cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain.’  It was deeply felt that the well-being of the whole United Kingdom depended upon the removal of the causes of this misery and degradation; for if the Irish people were not elevated, the English working classes must be brought down to their level.  The facility of travelling afforded by railways and steam-boats caused such constant intercourse between England and Ireland, that Irish ignorance, beggary, and disease, with all their contagion, physical and moral, would be found intermingling with the British population.  It would be impossible to prevent the half-starved Irish peasantry from crossing the Channel, and seeking employment, even at low wages, and forming a pestiferous Irish quarter in every town and city.  The question, then, was felt to be one whose settlement would brook no further delay.

It was found that the potato was almost the only food of the Irish millions, and that it formed their chief means of obtaining the other necessaries of life.  A large portion of this crop was grown under the system, to which the poorest of the peasantry were obliged to have recourse, notwithstanding the minute subdivision of land.  There were in 1841, 691,000 farms in Ireland exceeding one acre in extent.  Nearly one half of these were under five acres each.  The number of proprietors in fee was estimated at 8,000—­a smaller number, in proportion to the extent of territory, than in any other country of Western Europe except Spain.  In Connaught, several proprietors had 100,000 acres each, the proportion of small farms being greater there than in the rest of Ireland.  The total number of farms in the province was 155,842, and of these 100,254 consisted of from one to five acres.  If all the proprietors were resident among their tenantry, and were in a position to encourage their industry and care for their welfare, matters would not have been so bad; but most of the large landowners were absentees.  It frequently happened that the large estates were held in strict limitation, and they were nearly all heavily encumbered.