A chara, - In his wide-ranging memorial address to the Humbert school (The Irish Times, August 24th) John Hume MP is reported as saying of the failure of the 1798 rising: "It gave rise to a form of government - the Union - which not only divided people but also managed the almost unprecedented feat in European history of reducing the population by almost 50 per cent."
It is fascinating to witness such a seminal statesman of modern politics indulge in a little "dancing to history's tune".
Certainly in Ulster, universal depopulation was not experienced. In 1841 Belfast's population was 70,447, a third of Dublin's [232,726]. By 1891, Belfast's figure was 276,114 compared with Dublin's 269,716. Belfast grew faster than any other urban centre in the British Isles in the second half of the 19th century.
If it was the Union that was responsible for de-population in Ireland, why did it not have this effect in the north-eastern part of the island? And why, after leaving the Union, did the cycle of emigration not stop, but actually increase under independence?
Neither was impoverishment the experience of Ireland under the Union. In 1910, Ireland's level of gross national product per capita was above that of Norway, Sweden, Italy and Finland. By 1970, after nearly 50 years of slow growth under independence, every country beneath Ireland in 1910 had closed the gap or overtaken Ireland.
Ironically, the Republic was only to recover from post-independence impoverishment when it finally gave up its independence in the 1970s, this time not to the "Brits" but to Brussels. - Is mise, Robert Lyle,
Clifton Road,
Bangor,
Co Down.