Tralee, the county town of County Kerry, was the port of embarkation for thousands of people leaving Ireland for the very reason given above.
Information Wrap
The Colonial Land 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
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