country as Ireland, is to insult the general understanding. In the first
place, there is an immediate and urgent demand for at least Half a
Million comfortable rain-proof dwellings. The inconceivable wretched
hovels in which nine-tenths of the peasantry endure existence
inevitably engender indolence, filthiness and disease. Generation after
generation grows up ignorant and squalid from never having had a
fireside by which they could sit down to read or study, nor an example
of home comfort and cleanliness in their own class to profit by. In
those narrow, unlighted, earth-floored, straw-thatched cabins, there is
no room for the father and his sons to sit down and enjoy an evening, so
they straggle off to the nearest groggery or other den in search of the
comfort their home denies them. Of course, men who have grown up in this
way have no idea of anything better and are slow to mend; but the
personal influence of their superiors in wealth and station is very
great, and might be ten times greater if the more fortunate class would
make themselves familiar with the wants and woes, the feelings and
aspirations of the poor, and act toward them as friends and wiser
brethren, instead of seeming to regard them only as strange dogs to be
repelled or as sheep to be sheared. But the first practical point to be
struggled for is that of steady employment and just reward for labor. So
long as men's wages (without board) range from fourpence to one and
six-pence per day, and women's from a penny to six-pence (which, so far
as I can learn, are the current rates at present, and nothing to do for
half the year at any price), no radical improvement can be hoped for. A
family with nothing to do, very little to eat and only a hog-pen to live
in, will neither acquire mental expansion, moral integrity, nor habits
of neatness and industry. On the contrary, however deficient they may
originally be in these respects, they are morally certain to grow worse
so long as their circumstances remain unchanged. But draw them out of
their wretched hovel into a neat, dry, glass-lighted, comfortable
dwelling, offer them work at all seasons, and a fair recompense for
doing it, and you will have at least rendered improvement possible. The
feasibility of cleanliness will instill the love of it, at least in the
younger members; the opportunity of earning will awaken the instinct of
saving as well as the desire to maintain a comely appearance in the eyes
of friends and neighbors. The laborer, well paid, will naturally be
adequately fed, and both able and willing to perform thrice the work per
day he now does or can; seeing the more efficient often step above them
to posts better paid and more respected, the dullest workers will aspire
to greater knowledge and skill in order that they too may attain more
eligible positions. "It is the first step that costs"--the others follow
almost of course. If the Aristocracy of Ireland would unitedly resolve
that every individual in the land should henceforth have constant work
and just recompense, the outlay involved need not be great and the
return would be abundant and certain. They have ample water-power for a
thousand factories, machine-shops, foundries, &c., which has run to
waste since creation, and can never bring them a dollar while Irish
Industry remains as rude, ill-paid and inefficient as it now is. Every
dollar wisely spent in improving this power will add two to the value of
their estates. So they have stone-quarries of immense value all over the
island which never produced anything and never will while the millions
live in hovels and confine their attention to growing oats and potatoes
for a subsistence. Agriculture alone and especially such Agriculture,
can never adequately employ the people; when the Oats and Potatoes have
been harvested, the peasant has very little to do but eat them until the
season for planting them returns. But introduce a hundred new arts and
processes--let each village have its mechanics, each county its
manufacturers of the various wares and fabrics really needed in the
country, and the excess of work done over the present aggregate would
speedily transform general poverty into general competence. The Six
Millions of People in Ireland are doing far less work this year than the
Three Millions of New-England, although the Irish in New-England are at
least as industrious and efficient as the natives. They work well
everywhere but at home, because they everywhere else find the more
powerful class ready to employ them, instruct them, pay them. In Ireland
alone are they required to work for six pence to eighteen pence per day,
and even at these rates stand idle half the year for want of anything to
do; so that the rent which they would readily double (for better
tenements) if they were fully employed and fairly paid, now benumbs and
crushes them, and their little patches of land, which ought to be in the
highest degree productive, are often the worst cultivated of any this
side of the Alps. Ignorance, want, and hopelessness have paralysed their
energies, and the consequent decay of the Peasantry has involved most of
the Aristocracy in the general ruin. The Encumbered Estates Commission
is now rapidly passing the soil of Ireland out of the hands of its
bankrupt landlords into those of a new generation. May these be wise
enough to profit by the warning before them, and by uniting to elevate
the condition of the Laboring Millions place their own prosperity on a
solid and lasting foundation!
GENERAL ASPECTS.
The South of Ireland is decidedly more fertile and inviting than the
North or West. There is a deeper, richer soil, with far less stone on
the level low lands. The railroad from Dublin to Limerick runs
throughout over a level plain, and though it passes from the valley of
the Liffey across those of the Barrow, the Durrow and the Suir to that
of the Shannon, no perceptible ridge is crossed, no tunnel traversed,
and very little rock-cutting or embankment required. Although the
highways are often carried over the track at an absurd expense, while
the principal depots are made to cost thrice what they should, I still
cannot account for the great outlay on Irish railroads. They would have
been built at one-half the cost in the States, where the wages of labor
are thrice as much as here: who pockets the difference? Of course, there
is stealing in the assessment of land damages; but so there is
everywhere. When I was in Galway, a case was tried in which a
proprietor, whose bog was crossed by the Midland Railroad, sued the
company for more than the Appraisers had awarded him, and it was proved
on the trial that his bog, utterly worthless before, had been partially
drained and considerably increased in value by the railroad. There seems
to be no conscience in exacting damages of those who invest their money,
often most reluctantly, in railroads, of which the main benefits are
universal. In Ireland they have palpably and greatly benefited every
class but the stockholders, and these they have well nigh ruined.
There are fewer remains of dwellings recently "cleared" and thrown down
in the South than in the West of Ireland; though they are not unknown
here; but I saw no new ones going up, save in immediate connection with
the Railroads, in either section. If Government, Society and Ideas are
to remain as they have been, the country may be considered absolutely
finished, with nothing more to do but decay. I trust, however, that a
new leaf is about to be turned over; still, it is mournful to pass
through so fine a country and see how the hand of death has transfixed
it. Even Limerick, at the head of ship navigation on the glorious
estuary of the Shannon, with steamboat navigation through the heart of
this populous kingdom for sixty or eighty miles above it, shows scarcely a
recent building except the Railroad Depot and the Union Poor-House, while
its general aspect is that of stagnation, decline and decay. The smaller
towns between it and Dublin have a like gloomy appearance--Kildare, with
with its deserted "Curragh" and its towering ruins, looking most dreary
of all. Happy is the Irishman who, in a new land and amid the activities
and hopes which it inspires, is spared the daily contemplation of his
country's ruin.
And yet there are brighter shades to the picture. Nature, ever buoyant
and imperative, does her best to remedy the ills created by "Man's
inhumanity to Man." The South of Ireland seems far better wooded than
either the North or West, and thrifty young forests and tree plantations
soften the gloom which unroofed and ruinous cabins would naturally
suggest. Though the Railroad runs wholly through a tame, dull level
sweeping ranges of hills appear at intervals on either side, exhibiting
a lovely alternation of cultivation, grass and forest, to the delighted
traveler. The Hay crop is badly saved so far, and some that has been cut
several days is still under the weather, while a good deal, though long
ripe, remains uncut; the Wheat looks to me thin and uneven; Oats (the
principal grain here) are short and generally poor; but I never saw the
Potato more luxuriant or promising, and the area covered with this noble
root is most extensive. The poor have a fashion of planting in _beds_
three to six feet wide, with narrow alleys between; which, though
involving extra labor, must insure a large yield, and presents a most
luxuriant appearance. Little Rye was sown, but that little is very good;
Barley is suffering from the stormy weather, but is quite thrifty. Yet
there is much arable land either wholly neglected or only yielding a
little grass, while I perceive even less bog undergoing reclamation than
in the West. I did not anticipate a tour of pleasure through Ireland,
but the reality is more painful than I anticipated. Of all I have seen
at work in the fields to-day, cutting and carrying turf, hoeing
potatoes, shaking out Hay, &c., at least one-third were women. If I
could believe that their fathers and husbands were in America, clearing
lands and erecting cabins for their future homes, I should not regret
this. But the probability is that only a few of them are there or
hopefully employed anywhere, while hundreds of neglected, weedy,
unpromising patches of cultivation show that, narrow as the holdings
mainly are, they are yet often unskillfully cultivated. The end of this
is of course ejectment, whence the next stage is the Union Work-House.
Alas! unhappy Ireland!
XLIII.
PROSPECTS OF IRELAND.
DUBLIN, Tuesday, August 5, 1851.
Of Irish stagnation, Irish unthrift, Irish destitution, Irish misery,
the world has heard enough. I could not wholly avoid them without giving
an essentially false and deceptive account of what must be painfully
obvious to every traveler in Ireland; yet I have chosen to pass them
over lightly and hurriedly, and shall not recur to them. They are in the
main sufficiently well known to the civilized world, and, apart from
suggestions of amendment, their contemplation can neither be pleasant
nor profitable. I will only add here that though, in spite of Poor Laws
and Union Poor-Houses, there are still much actual want, suffering and
beggary in Ireland, yet the beggars here are by no means so numerous nor
so importunate as in Italy, though the excuses for mendicity are far
greater. What I propose now to bring under hasty review are the
principal plans for the removal of Ireland's woes and the conversion of
her myriads of paupers into independent and comfortable laborers. I
shall speak of these in succession, beginning with the oldest and
closing with the newest that has come under my observation. And first,
then, of
REPEAL.
The hope of obtaining from the British Crown and Parliament the
concession of a separate Legislature of their own seems nearly to have
died out of the hearts of the Irish millions. The death of O'Connell
deprived the measure of its mightiest advocate; Famine and other
disasters followed; and fresher projects of amelioration have since to a
great extent supplanted it in the popular mind. Yet it is to-day most
palpable that such a Legislature is of the highest moment to the
National well-being, and that its concession would work the greatest
good to Ireland without injury to England. Nay; I see fresh reasons for
my hope that such concession is far nearer than is generally imagined.
On all hands it is perceived and conceded that the amount of legislation
required by the vast, widely scattered and diversely constituted
portions of the British Empire is too great to be properly affected by
any deliberative body. Parliament is just closing a long session, yet
leaving very much of its proper business untouched for want of time, and
that pertaining to Ireland is especially neglected. Then it has just
passed a most unwise and irritating act with regard to the titles of the
Catholic Prelates, which, because every act of Parliament must extend to
Ireland unless that country is expressly excluded, is allowed to operate
there, though the bad reasons given for its enactment at all have no
application to that country, while the mischiefs it will do there are
ten times greater than all it can effect in Great Britain. Had Ireland a
separate Parliament, no British Minister would have been mad enough to
propose the extension of this act over that country, where it is certain
to excite disaffection and disloyalty, arouse slumbering hatreds, and
impede the march of National and Social improvement. An Irish
Parliament, with specified powers and duties akin to those of an
American State Legislature, would be a great relief to a British
Parliament and Ministry, a great support to Irish loyalty and Irish
improvement, and no harm to anybody. These truths seem to me so palpable
that I think they cannot long be disregarded, but that some one of the
Political changes frequently occurring in Great Britain will secure to
Ireland a restoration of her domestic Legislature. Neither Canada,
Jamaica nor any other British colony can show half so good reasons for a
domestic Legislature.
TENANT-RIGHT.
The agitation for Tenant-Right in Ireland is destined to fail--in fact,
has virtually failed already. The Imperial Parliament will never concede
that right, nor will any Legislature similarly constituted. And yet the
demand has the clearest and strongest basis of natural and eternal
justice, as any fair mind must confess. What is that demand? Simply that
the creator of a new value shall be legally entitled to that value, or,
in case he is required to surrender it to another, shall be paid a fair
and just equivalent therefor. Here is a farm, for instance, whereof one
man is recognised by law as the owner, and he lets it for three lives or
a specific term of years to a tenant-cultivator for ten, fifteen or
twenty shillings per acre. The tenant occupies it, cultivates it, pays
the rent and improves it. At the close of his term, he is found to have
built a good house on it instead of the old rookery he found there,
while by fencing, draining, manuring and subsoiling he has doubled its
productive capacity, and consequently its annual value. He wishes to
cultivate it still, and offers to renew the lease for any number of
years, and pay the rent punctually. "But no," says the landlord, "you
must pay twice as much rent as hitherto." "Why so?" "Because the land is
more valuable than it was when you took it." "Certainly it is; but that
value is wholly the fruit of my labor--it has cost you nothing." "Can't
help that, Sir; you improved for your own benefit, and with a full
knowledge that the additional value would revert to me on the
expiration of your lease; so pay my price or clear out!"--Is this right?
The law says Yes; but Justice says No; Public Good says even more
imperatively No. The laws of the land should encourage every occupier to
improve the land he holds, to expend capital and employ labor upon it,
so as to increase its value and productive capacity from year to year;
but the law of the British Empire discourages improvement and impedes
the employment of labor by taking the product from the producer and
giving it arbitrarily to the landlord. Yet the landlord influence in
Parliament is so predominant, so overwhelming, that no repeal, no
mitigation even, of this great wrong is probable; and every demand for
it is overborne by a senseless outcry against Agrarianism. Still, the
agitation for Tenant-Right does good by imbuing the popular mind with
some idea of the monster evil and wrong of the Monopoly of Land--an idea
which will not always remain unfruitful.
EMIGRATION.
Emigration is now proceeding with gigantic strides, and is destined for
some time to continue. I think a full third of the present population of
Ireland are anxious to leave their native land, and will do so if they
shall ever have the means before better prospects are opened to them.
Packet-ships are constantly loading with emigrants at all the principal
ports, while thousands are flocking monthly to Liverpool to find ready
and cheap conveyance to America. But this emigration, however advisable
for the departing, does little for those left behind, and is in the main
detrimental to the country. The energetic, the daring, the high-spirited
go, leaving the residue more abject and nerveless than ever. If Two
Millions more were to leave the country next year, the condition of the
remainder would not be essentially improved. Over population is not a
leading cause of Ireland's present miseries.
EDUCATION.
Rudimental knowledge is being slowly diffused in Ireland, in spite of
the serious impediments interposed by Religious jealousy and bigotry.
But this remedy, as now applied, does not reach the seat of the disease.
They are mainly the better class of poor children who are educated in
the National and other elementary schools; the most depraved, benighted,
degraded, are still below their reach. The destitute, hungry,
unemployed, unclad, despairing, cannot or do not send their children to
school; the wife and mother who must work daily in the turf-bog or
potato-field for a few pence per day must keep her older child at home
to mind the younger ones in her absence. Education, in its larger, truer
meaning, is the great remedy for Ireland's woes; but until the parents
have steadier employment and a juster recompense the general education
of the children is impracticable.
ENCUMBERED ESTATES.
The act authorizing and requiring the sale of irredeemably Encumbered
Estates in Ireland is one of the best which a British Parliament has
passed in many years. Under its operation, a large portion of the soil
is rapidly passing from the nominal ownership of bankrupts wholly unable
and unqualified to improve it into those of new proprietors who, it may
fairly be hoped, will generally be able to improve it, giving employment
to more labor and increasing the annual product. The benefits of this
change, however, can be but slowly realized, and are for the present
hardly perceptible.
IRISH MANUFACTURES.
Within the past few months, a very decided interest has been awakened in
the minds of enlightened and patriotic Irishmen in Dublin and other
places, with regard to the importance and possibility of establishing
various branches of Household Manufactures throughout the country. It is
manifest that the general cheapness of Labor and Food, the facilities
now enjoyed for communication, not only with Great Britain, but with all
Europe and America also, and the extraordinary amount of unemployed and
undeveloped capacity in Ireland, render the introduction of Manufactures
at once eminently desirable and palpably feasible. Even though nothing
could be immediately earned thereby, the simple diffusion of industrial
skill and efficiency which must ensue from such introduction would be an
inestimable gain to the peasantry of Ireland. But allow that all the
idle poor of this island could in six months be taught how to earn six
pence each per day, the aggregate benefit to the Irish and to mankind
would be greater than that of all the gold mines yet discovered. The
Poorhouse Unions could be nearly emptied in a year, and this whole
population comfortably fed, clad and housed within the next three years.
A beginning must be made with the simplest or household manufactures,
for want of means to establish the more complex, costly and efficient
branches, which require extensive Machinery and aggregation of Laborers;
but if the first step be successfully taken, others are certain to
follow. With abundant water-power and inexhaustible beds of fuel yet
untouched, it is demonstrable that Manufactures of Cotton and Woolen, as
well as Linen, might be prosecuted in Ireland even cheaper than in
England, though the average recompense of Labor should thereby be
doubled.
The first impulse to the Manufacture movement appears to have been given
by Mr. Thomas Mooney, a gentleman well known to his countrymen
throughout the United States, whence he returned some eighteen months
ago. Primarily at his suggestion, a "Parent Board of Irish Manufacture"
was organized in Dublin several months since, funds collected by
voluntary subscription, an office opened, and a central school
established, with a view to the qualification of teachers for the
superintendence of auxiliary schools throughout the country. The
enterprise was proceeding vigorously and with daily increasing momentum
when Dissension, the evil genius of Ireland, broke out among its leading
supporters, which has resulted in the division of the original Society
into two, one of them sustaining Mr. Mooney and the other claiming to
have taken the movement entirely out of his hands. Thus the case stands
at present, but thus I trust it will not long remain. The enterprise is
one of the most feasible and hopeful of the many that have been
undertaken for the benefit of Ireland, and affords ample scope and
occupation for all who may see fit to labor for its success. I trust
that all differences will speedily be harmonized, and that the friends
of the movement, once more united, may urge it forward to a most
complete and beneficent triumph.
PEAT MANUFACTURE.
The Peat Bogs of Ireland cover some Three Millions of Acres of its
surface, mainly in the heart of the country, though extending into every
part of it. Perhaps One Hundred Thousand Acres, chiefly in the
north-east, have been brought into cultivation; of the residue, some
yields a little sour pasturage, but the greater portion is of no use
whatever, save as it supplies a very poor but cheap fuel to the
peasantry. These bogs are of all depths from a few inches to thirty or
forty feet, though the very shallow have generally been reclaimed. This
is effected in some cases by removing the Peat or Turf altogether; but
sometimes, where it is quite deep, by ditching and draining it, and then
cutting and heaping up some six to twelve inches at the top, so that it
can be thoroughly burned, and the ashes spread over the entire surface
for a soil. This is not so deep as could be desired, but the climate is
so uniformly moist and the skies so rarely unclouded that it suffices to
insure very tolerable crops thereafter.
I do not know how the origin of these Bogs is accounted for by the
learned, but I presume the land they cover was originally a dense
forest, and that the Peat commenced growing as a sort of moss or fungus,
carpeting the ground and preventing the germination of any more trees.
In the course of ten or fifteen centuries, the forest trees (mainly of
Oak or Fir) decayed and fell into the Peat, which, dying at the top,
continued to grow at the bottom, while the perpetual moisture of the
climate prevented its destruction by fire. Thus the forest gradually
disappeared, and the Peat alone remained, gaining a foot in depth in the
course of two or three centuries until it slowly reached its present
condition.
Many efforts have been made to render this Peat available as a basis of
Manufacture and Commerce, but hitherto with little success. The
magnificent chemical discoveries heralded some two years ago, whereby
each bog was to be transformed into a mimic California, have not endured
the rough test of practical experience. There is no doubt that Peat
contains all the valuable elements therein set forth--Carbon, Ammonia,
Stearine, Tar, &c., but unfortunately it has hitherto cost more to
extract them than they will sell for in market; so the high-raised
expectations of 1849 have been temporarily blasted, like a great many
predecessors.