Overpopulation In Ireland

Ireland was an overpopulated, extremely poor country with no sign of improvement in the mid-19th century because of the “cottier” system in agriculture. Its labor class could only rely on potatoes as the main food source and what was worse was that people lacked the motivation to improve this situation. Mills regarded the cottiers system in Ireland as the poorest among all metayer agricultures in Britain and the continental Europe. Peasants in Ireland were deprived of their own work. No matter how hard they worked, they would find themselves the most impoverished across the Europe. The system of cottier disabled the ability for labors to be a permanent tenant. “There was, indeed, a numerous class of labors who (we may presume through the refusal either of proprietors or of tenants in possession to permit any further subdivision) had been unable to obtain even the smallest patch of land as permanent tenants.” (Mills, P352) In addition, the landlords were usually not able to pay the wages in money because the capital is not sufficient enough at that time. Thus, the peasants were paid in land. They were allowed to work on the land for certain period of time, and the output during that time is what they were paid as wages.

(Population)As a supporter for Malthusian theory of population, John Mill believed that population, should be controlled so that the working population to enjoy a better life. This was because in a certain economy, the rate of profit would ultimately fall down due to diminishing returns in agriculture and the rise in population at a Malthusian rate. A very important assumption in Mill’s economic idea is that under the same amount of total investment, the number of population has a negative influence on the average ...

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...n the other hand, the ‘cottiers’ tenancy system was absolutely a hindrance to the improvement of Irish education, as it did not encourage people to be more innovative. To make people better educated, they have to proactive and take a multiple tasks to improve, which was a common practice in European continent. However that was absent in Ireland, cottiers did not have the vigor or spirit to make a change to their life, resulting in a suffocating system. At that time, the importance of compulsory education had not been realized by most countries. Yet the situation could be significantly improved if the Irish cottiers system could be reformed, giving people more chance to control their lives and make progress. The poor condition of education in Ireland was a result of the cottiers tenant system and cottiers could only live in a vicious circle of poverty and ignorance.