To contrive a simple compass made of a bowl of sea water with a floating Cross of St Brigid on a beach that looks out on the Blasket islands and then think about the fact of, and the trauma of, and the liberation of, migration seems inescapable.
In 1992 the LODE leaflet contained the following text:
The
Colonial and Emigration Office gives the following return of the
emigration from England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all parts of the
world, from Jan 1, 1847 to June 30, 1852: English 335,330; Scotch
82,610; Irish 1,200,136. "Nine tenths" remarks the Office "of the
emigrants from Liverpool are assumed to be Irish. About three-fourths of
the emigrants from Scotland are Celts, either from the Highlands, or
from Ireland through Glasgow." Nearly four fifths of the whole
emigration are, accordingly, to be regarded as belonging to the Celtic
population of Ireland and of the Highlands and islands of Scotland. The
London ECONOMIST says of this emigration: "It is consequent on the
breaking down of the system of a society founded on small holdings and
potato cultivation"; and adds "The departure of the redundant part of
the population of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland is an
indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement. The revenue in
Ireland has not suffered in any degree from the famine of 1846-47, or
from the emigration that has since taken place. On the contrary, her net
revenue amounted in 1851 to £4,281,999, being about £184,000 greater
than in 1843."
Begin
with pauperising the inhabitants of a country, and when there is no
more profit to be ground out of them, when they have grown a burden on
the revenue, drive them away, and sum up your Net Revenue! Such is the
doctrine laid down by Ricardo in his celebrated work, The Principles of
Political Economy. The annual profits of a capitalist amounting to 2000,
what does it matter to him whether he employs 100 men or 1,000 men? "Is
not," says Ricardo, "the real income of a nation similar?" The net real
income of a nation, rents and profits, remaining the same, it is no
subject of consideration whether it is derived from ten millions of
people or from twelve millions. Sismondi, in his Nouveau Principes
d'Economie Politique, answers that, according to his view of the matter,
the English nation would not be interested at all in the disappearance
of the whole population, the King (at that time it was no Queen, but a
King) remaining alone in the midst of the island, supposing only that
automatic machinery enabled him to procure the amount of Net Revenue now
produced by a population of twenty millions. Indeed, that grammatical
entity, "the national wealth", would in this case not be diminished.
In
a former letter I have given an instance of the clearing of the estates
in the Highlands of Scotland. That emigration continues to be forced
upon Ireland by the same process you may see from the following
quotation from THE GALWAY MERCURY:
"The
people are fast passing away from the land in the West of Ireland. The
landlords of Connaught are tacitly combined to weed out all the smaller
occupiers, against whom a regular systematic war of extermination is
being waged. the most heart-rending cruelties are daily practised in
this province, of which the public are not at all aware."
In
the ancient States, in Greece and Rome, compulsory emigration, assuming
the shape of the periodic establishment of colonies, formed a regular
link in the structure of society. The whole system of those States was
founded on certain limits to the numbers of the population, which could
not be surpassed without endangering the condition of the antique
civilisation itself. To remain civilised they were forced to remain few.
Otherwise they would have had to submit to the bodily drudgery which
transformed the free citizen into a slave. The want of productive power
made citizenship dependent on a certain proportion in numbers not to be
disturbed. But with modern compulsory emigration the case stands quite
the opposite. Here it is not the want of productive power which demands a
diminution of population, and drives away the surplus by famine or
emigration.
It
is not population that presses on productive power; it is productive
power that presses on population. Society is undergoing a silent
revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice
of the human existence it breaks down than an earthquake regards the
house that it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master
the new conditions of life, must give way. On the Continent heaven is
fulminating, but in England the earth itself is trembling. England is
the country where the real revulsion of modern society begins.
Karl Marx, THE NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE, 22 March, 1853
What
Karl Marx sets out so very clearly is that "migration" happens out of
necessity, as much, and if not more than out of a choice, and the
impetus for this exists in the impulsive force of economic power that,
however rational the economic actions of those in power are presented,
the kind of economics that govern here is MADNESS!
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