ILLUSTRATIVE of their INFLUENCE ON THE PHYSICAL, SOCIAL, AND MORAL CONDITION Founded on the "Statistical Illustrations of the British Empire." Published by J. Miller, BY JOHN POWELL. "The people are destroyed for lack of knowlege." HOSEA iv, 6. CORK IBRAR A thousand stories which the ignorant hear and believe, die away 4 Had the Author been happy enough to have met with any thing in the publications of the day calculated to lead to the conclusion, that the interesting, involved, and vastly important subject of the following work was understood by the writers, he would not have imposed on himself the onerous labor he has performed. Could any conceive the difficulties of such a labor to an uneducated man, dependent on mechanical occupation, unassisted and unencouraged (save that the most intelligent and opposed, whom he has met, have never been able to controvert his conclusions) they would rather wonder it should have been performed at all, than find fault with its defects. It never would have been performed by him, had not the ardor of his desire to aid in obviating the calamities which ignorance entails, and the anguish of feelings they excite, been commensurate to the clearness and force with which the subject has impressed his own mind. Truth is the great object he has labored to establish; if he has succeeded in that object, it will be the people's own fault, should such calamities as have lately and still agitate the public mind be continued, as they inevitably will, unless the causes are removed by them to whom the labor of removing them belongs. |