1851 - Census in Annaghdown

TAKING THE CENSUS - COUNTING THE SLAIN.

After famine and its formidable auxiliaries, fever, cholera and extermination, have been five years slaying the people of this country, it is only [?] that the Whigs should set about numbering the dead and taking stock of the living, in order that they may the better ascertain the point where political economy, in the fullness of its wisdom, may step in and bid depopulation cease. The government have been employed, for some months past, in taking the census, but, as it is more than probable that the inhabitants of Ireland have decreased by one half, withing the last few years, it would be more appropriate to say that it was a counting of the dead rather than the numbering of the living that occupied the Census Commissioners.

As the muster roll of every regiment is called over after an engagement, that the extent of its loss may be ascertained and the number of killed wounded and missing discovered, so has the Census of every district in Ireland been taken that the government may learn what reduction has been effected in the rank and file of the people - and a fearful falling off will most decidedly be exhibited.

Through the kindness of Mr. Clancy, of Lough George, we have just been informed that the decrease of population in the parish of Annadown, as evinced by the returns of the present Census, is frightful in the extreme. In the year `41, the population of that rural parish amounted to 7108; in `51, it is reduced to 3662, leaving a decrease of 3445 souls; so that one half of the good people of Annadown, minus 109, are now among the killed, wounded and missing. In `41, there were 864 families living in Annadown, in `51 there are only 454. It will be therefore seen that the branches were not alone lopped off, but the axe of extermination has been most effectually laid to the very roots of the tree itself. In that single parish 410 homes have been destroyed, but when shall they be replaced - when the staff is disbanded, the regiment can never be recruited; many summers shall pass over before those 410 depopulated homesteads shall be restored to the parish of Annadown.

When the returns shall have been completed, we are certain that many other districts in this province will exhibit a still greater decrease in the population, for Annadown suffered less from the effects of famine than many other portions of Connaught.

Nothing can more truly depict the decay of a nation than a falling off in the number of its inhabitants, and we might therfore infer the condition of Ireland from the facts and figures now before us, even if we had not occular demonstration of the state of wretchedness to which the country is reduced; but the fruitful source of all the evils which now afflict this kingdom may be summed up in three words - mis-government, alien legislation.

Galway Vindicator, and Connaught Advertiser, 17 May 1851.