[Read Wednesday, November 18th, 1863.]
The Statistical Society of Dublin commenced its career in that most disastrous period of the recent history of Ireland—the famine year of 1847. It was the pressure of the social problems then imperatively demanding attention, that led its youthful founder to attempt the establishment of such an institution. He thought that by bringing together earnest-minded Irishmen to discuss these problems in a calm and scientific spirit, he would contribute something towards their satisfactory solution. The gravity of the circumstances which attended the birth and early history of our Society, has given to its proceedings throughout its whole existence a peculiarly real and vital character. It has not occupied itself with dilettante statistics, collected with no special purpose, and tending to no definite conclusion. It has from the first applied itself, in the spirit of earnest inquiry, to the most important questions affecting the condition of the country; and the increasing accession of intelligent Irishmen to its ranks indicates their belief that it has not laboured in vain.
Called by the desire of your Council to address you at the opening of a new session, and thus led to consider more closely the condition of Ireland, I could not but be impressed by the grave character of the crisis. When the task was proposed to me, the country was still labouring under the severest pressure she had experienced since 1847. The gloom has now, indeed, in a great measure dispersed, and we see before us a brightening prospect. But the recollection of these recent trials, and the idea of their possible recurrence, must
