LORD JOHN RUSSELL Prime Minister--He confers important offices on
some Irish Catholics--His address to the electors of London--Its
vagueness--Addresses of some of the other new Ministers--The Irish
difficulty greater than ever--Young and Old Ireland--The _Times_ on
O'Connell and English rule in Ireland--Overtures of the Whig
Government--O'Connell listens to them--The eleven measures--Views of
the advanced Repealers--Lord Miltown's letter to
O'Connell--Dissensions in the Repeal Association--The "Peace
Resolutions"--O'Connell's letters--He censures the _Nation_
newspaper--Debate in the Repeal Association--Thomas Francis
Meagher's "Sword Speech"--The Young Ireland party leave Conciliation
Hall in a body--Description of the scene (_note_)--Reflections--Sir
Robert Peel's Speech after his resignation--Lord John Russell's
speech at Glasgow--His speech on the Irish Coercion Bill--His speech
after becoming Prime Minister--The Potato Blight
re-appears--Accounts from the Provinces--Father Mathew's
letter--Value of the Potato Crop of 1846--Various remedies, theories
and speculations--State of the weather--Mr. Cooper's observations at
Markree Castle--Lord Monteagle's motion in the House of Lords for
employing of the people--Profitable employment the right thing--The
Marquis of Lansdowne replies--It is hard to relieve a poor country
like Ireland--Lord Devon's opinion--The Premier's statement about
relief--The wonderful cargo of Indian meal--Sir R. Peel's
fallacies--Bill for Baronial Sessions--Cessation of Government
Works--The Mallow Relief Committee--Beds of stone! high rents on the
poor--The Social Condition of the Hottentot as compared with that of
Mick Sullivan--Mr. Gibson's views--Mr. Tuke's account of Erris
(_note_)--Close of the Session of Parliament.
Sir Robert Peel's defeat on the Irish Coercion Bill made it a matter of
course that Lord John Russell, the leader of the Opposition, should be
called upon to form a Government. In fulfilling this task his first
anxiety seems to have been to conciliate every section of the Liberals.
Important offices were given to several Irish Catholics. This fact was
accepted by some as a desire on his part to act justly towards Ireland;
while others looked upon it with suspicion; regarding it as an attempt
to buy up independent liberal representatives, corrupt the national
leaders, and thus crush the agitation for a repeal of the Legislative
Union. Richard Lalor Sheil was appointed Master of the Mint; Mr. Thomas
Wyse was made one of the Secretaries of the Board of Control, and Mr.
Redington was sent to Dublin Castle as Under-Secretary. A popular Irish
nobleman, the Earl of Bessborough, accepted the post of Lord Lieutenant;
the Chief Secretaryship was given to an English gentleman, Mr.
Labouchere--a name which at first sounded strangely enough in Irish
ears, but which soon became as familiar to them as the tritest O or Mac
in the country.
There appeared to be in the public mind not only a pre-disposition to
allow the new Government to come in peaceably, but even a desire to
sustain and strengthen it was pretty generally manifested. All those
members who had to seek re-election on account of having accepted
office, were triumphantly returned. Their speeches and addresses to the
various constituencies were, of course, looked to with much interest, as
likely to indicate, or in some way foreshadow their future measures; but
they were much more inclined to be reticent than communicative. Lord
John himself, in his address to the citizens of London, dealt in those
vague generalities under which politicians are accustomed to veil their
intentions, or their want of definite plans. He told them they might
feel assured that he would not desert in office the principles to which
he had adhered when they were less in favour than at the time he was
addressing them. He rejoiced at the removal of commercial restraints,
and those that yet remained, he hoped to see removed without anything
that could be called a conflict. These words were intended chiefly for
the English mind,--his choicest specimen of the political generality he
reserved for Ireland. "Our recent discussions," he writes, "have laid
bare the misery, the discontent, and outrages of Ireland; they are too
clearly authenticated to be denied--too extensive to be treated by any
but the most comprehensive measures." No doubt the miseries of poor
Ireland were laid bare enough; whatever other charges she had to bring
against her English governors, she had not the shadow of a complaint to
make on the score of inquiry,--of the laying-bare system. Countless
volumes of blue books, ponderous with Irish grievances, lay dusty and
moth-eaten on the shelves of Government offices for years; comprehensive
measures to be founded on them were on the lips of statesmen in power,
and expectant statesmen, who were climbing to it--but that was all.
The new Chief Secretary threw the Irish portion of his speech into a
pretty antithesis. "I go to Ireland," he said, to support the law--that
it may be respected, and to amend the law--that it may be beloved."
Lord Palmerston, of course, was a man not to be beaten in the
vague-generalities line. In fact it was a line in which he quite
surpassed his chief. When speaking of Ireland to the electors of
Tiverton, the new Foreign Secretary said, with a dignified and generous
philosophy,--"Ireland must present itself to the mind of all men as a
subject which required an enlarged, an enlightened view; the most
anxious and sincere desire to do equal justice to all; which requires
energy of purpose, firmness of spirit, and zealous co-operation on the
part of those upon whose support the Government must found its
existence."
Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his speech at Edinburgh, showed a more
real anxiety for the welfare of this country than any of his colleagues.
In his peroration he said: "If the present Government did not exert
itself to elevate the condition of the people of Ireland socially as
well as politically, and above all, if it did not endeavour to
ameliorate the relations between landlord and tenant, that Government
will deserve to be expelled from office with public contempt." These
manly words were uttered in the presence of an audience hostile to
Ireland, and hostile to himself, on account of his sympathy for her: an
audience, which at a former election, drove him from the representation
of their city, because he had supported the endowment of Maynooth in
Parliament.
Ireland is generally regarded as one of the chief difficulties of
English Cabinets, but at no period was it a greater difficulty than on
the day Lord John Russell accepted the seals of office, as First
Minister of the Crown. Nine millions of people were passing through the
terrible ordeal of a famine year; a far more awful year of famine was
before them; the Repeal of the Union was still regarded by them as the
only true remedy for their grievances; the hopes awakened by the great
public meetings of Clifden, Mullaghmast, and Tara were still clung to
and fostered; whilst the fierce indignation resulting from the sudden,
and therefore treacherous suppression of the projected meeting at
Clontarf; and above all, the prosecution and unjust imprisonment of
O'Connell and his compatriots, caused the Irish people to turn a deaf
ear to every promised concession short of complete legislative
independence. But, like the keen-eyed warrior of classic story, the
English minister detected a flaw in the armour of this bold, defiant
nation,--it was the old and fatal one of disunion. The men whose
influence, lofty patriotism, and burning eloquence, had marshalled the
whole people into one mighty phalanx, began to differ among themselves.
The Liberator, who had been long proclaiming himself the apostle of a
new doctrine, namely, that "no political amelioration was worth one drop
of blood," now began to insist upon it more frequently than ever;
probably on account of the warlike tone assumed by some of the young
fiery spirits who followed, but hardly obeyed him. Thomas Francis
Meagher, as their mouthpiece, proclaimed his conviction that there were
political ameliorations worth many drops of blood; and adhesion to one
or the other of these principles cleft in two the great Irish Repeal
party, namely, into Old and Young Ireland. Of the former O'Connell was
of course the leader, and William Smith O'Brien allowed himself to be
placed at the head of the latter.
No English Government could hope to win or seduce to its side the Young
Ireland party--the soul of that party being its opposition to every
Government that would not concede a Repeal of the Legislative Union; but
to the Old Ireland section of Repealers Lord John Russell's Cabinet
looked with hopefulness for support, both in the House of Commons and
with the country. It was only through O'Connell this party could be
reached; the Government, therefore, and the Government press, were not
slow in making advances to him. The _Times_, which can always see what
is right, and just, and true, when it is useful to English interests to
do so, commenced praising O'Connell; and that journal, which for years
had heaped upon him every epithet of insolence and contempt, now
condescends to call him "Liberator," and warns the Government to
coalesce with him: "Assisted by him," it says, "but not crouching to
him--it [the Government] may enlist the sympathies of the majority on
its side, and thus be able to do real good."[102] In its next issue it
follows up the subject, saying, "O'Connell is to be supported, if
possible, by the Government, but at least by the feeling and sympathies
of the English people, against agitation of the worst kind--convulsive
civil war." "Hitherto," it continues, "no Government had come into
immediate contact with the sympathies of the people. _The power of the
Executive has been felt in acts of harshness, seldom of beneficial or
parental interference_.[103] A Government which should employ itself in
improving the material and social condition of the Irish people would
awaken sentiments of gratitude, affection and joy, such as no people
hitherto had shown to their rulers. But a Government beginning to act
thus would need an interpreter between itself and the people. Such an
interpreter would O'Connell be, if he would consent to prefer the
prosperity and happiness of his country, to hopeless struggle for an
ideal advantage." There can be little doubt that the foregoing passages
are from what are termed "inspired" articles,--inspired if not actually
written by some member of the Government. They contain a bold bid for
the support of O'Connell and his adherents.
Whether it was that he thought Repeal would not be granted, or that the
concession of some measures of substantial benefit, besides being good
in themselves, would strengthen his hands to carry Repeal; or that he
feared the people might be driven into a hopeless rebellion, entailing
disaster upon the country; or that his high spirit was subdued by his
late imprisonment, or his intellect impaired by the incipient inroads of
that malady of which he died within a year; or from all those causes
combined, O'Connell did not by any means turn a deaf ear to the
overtures of the Whigs. The first time he appeared in the Repeal
Association after they had entered upon office, he made a speech which
showed his inclination to support them, provided they would make certain
concessions to Ireland. He, on that occasion, detailed eleven measures
which he required them to pass during the current session. They
consisted of three Acts for enlarging the franchise, and simplifying the
registration of voters; an Act for a full and effective municipal
reform; an Act to secure the perfect freedom of education for all
persuasions in Ireland; one for tenant right; one for giving
compensation for all valuable improvements; one for taking away in
certain cases the power to distrain for rent; one for the abolition of
the fiscal powers of grand juries, substituting instead a County
Board;[104] and finally an Act to tax absentees twenty per cent. The
whole of these could not be even introduced during the remnant of the
session which remained, it being now July. It is noteworthy that the
abolition of the Established Church in Ireland was not called for by
O'Connell on this occasion. Lord John Russell was known to be opposed to
such a measure. As to Repeal, he said, even if he got those eleven
measures, he would not give it up. But the advanced Repealers took a
different view, and believed he was either about to relinquish Repeal,
or at least to put it in abeyance to avoid embarrassing the new
Government. His line of action with regard to the elections was
calculated to increase the suspicion; he said he would not sanction any
factious opposition to the re-election of the liberal Irish members who
had accepted office: if he could find honest Repealers to put forward to
contest the seats he would contest them, but he would be no party to
opposition for opposition sake. Smith O'Brien, the organ of the other
section of Repealers took the opposite view. Writing from Kilkee, under
date of July the 9th, he says, Repeal candidates must be put in
opposition to the Government candidates, no matter how good they might
be.
At this time Lord Miltown, a nobleman who seldom touched politics,
addressed a public letter to O'Connell, which, like the _Times_'
articles, had the appearance of being inspired from higher quarters. The
object of writing the letter is contained in a single sentence of it. It
is this: "Without presuming to ask you to forego your exertions in
favour of Repeal, might I," his lordship writes, "suggest the policy of
your postponing them for a session to give time to form _an Irish
Party_, to assist the Ministry, if willing; to urge them on, if lagging;
in procuring justice for Ireland." O'Connell replied in a letter, rich
with the vigorous trenchant logic of his very best days. He reviews the
many attempts made, at various times, to form an Irish party, all of
which ended in unmitigated failure. His answer to Lord Miltown,
therefore is, that he cannot comply with his request--he cannot consent
to postpone, even for an hour, the agitation for Repeal.
For a considerable time the dissensions in the Repeal Association were
painfully evident to the whole country. O'Connell saw a rupture must be
the result, and he accordingly made preparations for it. On the 13th of
July, he, as chairman of a committee appointed for the purpose, brought
up a Report reiterating the principles on which the Association had been
founded, and in which were embodied the "Peace Resolutions," as they
were called. "There are already upon record," says the Report, "the
following declarations and resolutions of the Repeal Association:--The
basis of the Repeal Association was laid on the 15th of April, 1830. The
following were the three first propositions constituting such
basis:--'1st. Most dutiful and ever inviolate loyalty to our most
gracious and ever-beloved Sovereign, Queen Victoria, and her heirs and
successors for ever.'
"'2nd. The total disclaimer of, and THE TOTAL ABSENCE FROM ALL PHYSICAL
FORCE, VIOLENCE, OR BREACH OF THE LAW; or, in short, any violation of
the laws of man, or the ordinances of the eternal God, whose holy name
be ever blessed.'
"'3rd. The only means to be used are those of peaceable, legal, and
constitutional combinations of all classes, sects, and persuasions of
her Majesty's loyal subjects, and by the power of public opinion,
concentrated upon most salutary and always legal means and objects.'"
The Report gave rise to a stormy discussion, but in the end it was
adopted all but unanimously, Thomas Francis Meagher alone saying "no" to
it.
A fortnight later, after a fierce debate of two days' duration, the
complete and final separation between Old and Young Ireland occurred on
the 28th of July. Monday, the 27th, was the usual day for the weekly
meeting, and on that day the business commenced by Mr. Ray, the
Secretary, reading a letter from O'Connell, who had gone to London to
attend Parliament, in which he expressed his sorrow at the miserable
dissensions which had arisen amongst them, at a period, too, when
unanimity was most necessary, and most likely to be useful. He, in
substance, repeats the principles contained in the Report adopted a few
days before:--"Here we take our stand," he writes, "peaceable exertions
and none others--no compromise, no equivocation--peaceable exertions and
none others." "Let it, however, be borne in mind that these peaceable
doctrines leave untouched the right of defence against illegal attack or
unconstitutional violence." "It had become," he adds, "more essential
than ever to assent to those peace principles, as the Association was
sought to be involved in proceedings of a most seditious nature, stated
in the _Nation_ newspaper to have been perpetrated in and by the writers
for that publication."
Smith O'Brien was the first to speak. Although he might, he said, be in
error, he conceived that the present discussion had been raised with a
view to call upon the Association to say that there are no
circumstances, in this or any other country, to justify the use of
physical force for the attainment of political amelioration--a doctrine
to which he did not subscribe. He instanced various countries which had
attained their liberty by means of physical force. Then referring to the
period of 1782 in Ireland--"I say," said Mr. O'Brien, "if the Parliament
of England refused to accede to the national demand of the Volunteers to
have a free constitution, that the Volunteers would have been fully
justified in taking up arms in defence of the country." He, however, for
his part, considered the question a merely speculative one, as, so far
as he knew, no one contemplated an appeal to physical force, under the
present circumstances, which would be madness, folly, and wickedness. He
considered it very unwise to be putting those tests when there was no
occasion for them. He declared against permitting those Liberals, who
had taken place under the Whigs, to have a walk over; they should, he
maintained, be opposed by Repeal candidates, as nothing in the Whig
programme called for the anticipative gratitude of Ireland. Finally, he
expressed the hope that no rash attempt would be made to expel certain
members of the Association. "Let nothing," he said, "be done rashly; let
nothing be done to destroy this glorious confederacy, the greatest and
most powerful that ever existed for the preservation and achievement of
the liberties of a people."
Mr. John O'Connell, in a clever speech, replied to Smith O'Brien. He
defended the course his father had taken in not giving immediate
opposition to the Whigs, as several excellent measures might be expected
from them; besides, if they were driven from power they must be
succeeded again by the Tories, and although he was far from becoming the
defender of the Whigs, still they were better than the Tories; "if the
antecedents of the Whigs were bad, the antecedents of the Tories," said
he, "were most criminally bad." With regard to the graver question, the
chief cause of difference in the Association, the Peace Resolutions, he
said, "My honorable friend [Smith O'Brien] has deeply regretted the
resolutions that have passed here this day fortnight. He says he would
have come up here to modify them, if he were aware that they were about
to be brought forward. There may have been, unfortunately, a form
wanting; and I regret that any form of the Association should have been
wanting in any proceeding that he complains of. There may have been a
want of the form of giving notice; but perhaps this may have been an
excuse for the want of that notice--namely, that the resolutions of this
day fortnight were proposed by the founder of this Association, as
simply and entirely the literal and the sole reiteration of the
resolutions upon which he founded this Association. He had no doubt upon
the subject. It is a maxim that all pledges and tests are to be taken in
the sense and in the spirit of the person who gives or proposes the
tests, otherwise they should be refused to be accepted. Now, my father
moved these resolutions this day fortnight, in order to bring back to
men's minds the principles on which this Association is founded--in
order to remove from gentlemen any real ground of complaint, if they
find in this Hall an opposition to their doctrine of physical force, by
shelving them that we don't want to prevent them from expressing such
opinions if they go elsewhere, but that we do object to it in an
Association expressly founded on the exclusion of physical force." Mr.
O'Brien, he continued to say, called the opinion about physical force a
speculative opinion; he, Mr. O'Connell, denied it to be such; for the
moment the loophole which he seeks to establish is admitted, we place
the Association in danger, and it would be the duty of Government to put
it down. He then clearly indicated that, unless the Young Ireland party
acceded to the Peace Resolutions, they could not continue to be members
of the Association. He said: "It is time now to settle this point once
and for ever. If, in pressing this question to a point now, any of those
talented, warm, enthusiastic and patriotic men, who have hitherto held
out to us the prospect of most able and valuable assistance, should
oppose the Peace Resolutions, so as to render their retirement from the
Association necessary, that would, indeed, be a great calamity. But
Ireland must be saved at any price; on the other hand, if those who
stood by the Peace Resolutions found themselves in a minority, they
would retire--with deep regret, and with fears for the safety of the
Association--they would retire, but not into inaction, they would still
work for the cause, and redeem the pledge they had given their country,
to labour without ceasing, until they succeeded in achieving her
independence."
Several other members addressed the meeting. At its close Mr. O'Brien
suggested that, if both parties wished, everything which had transpired
on that day, regarding the questions in dispute, should be laid aside,
binding neither party to any course of action, and reserving any
measures to be adopted, so as to apply to what might occur at the
meeting of next day. John O'Connell replied that, in his opinion the
Association was in the greatest peril, and it would be therefore
necessary to have "Yea" or "Nay" to the Peace Resolutions.
At the adjourned meeting next day, the Secretary read a letter from Mr.
Charles Gavan Duffy, the proprietor of the _Nation_ newspaper. That
journal had been charged by several members of the Association with
inciting the people to overthrow English rule in Ireland by armed force.
Mr. Duffy's letter was written to explain and defend the articles of the
_Nation_, which were said to have such a tendency. It must be admitted
that, in his earlier days of agitation, O'Connell did not seem to hold
the single-drop-of-blood theory; on the contrary, he often threatened
England, at least indirectly, with the physical strength of the Irish
millions. The Young Ireland party, in defending themselves, referred to
this, but Mr. John O'Connell explained in his speech of the previous
day, that all those allusions to physical force pointed but to a single
case in which it could be used--"the resistance of aggression, and
defence of right." The Liberator himself, in the letter quoted above,
also fully admits this one case, when he says it is to be borne in mind
that those peaceable doctrines leave untouched the right of defence
against illegal attack, or unconstitutional violence. Referring to this
admission, Mr. Duffy, in a postscript to his letter, writes--"Mr.
O'Connell says his threatening language pointed only to defensive
measures. I have not said anything else. I am not aware of any great
popular struggle for liberty that was not defensive."
Mr. John O'Connell again spoke at great length on the second day; his
speech mainly consisting in a bill of indictment against the _Nation_.
He quoted many passages from it to show that its conductors wrote up
physical force. Mr. John Mitchell, in an able speech, interrupted by
cheers, hisses, and confusion, undertook to show that O'Connell was, to
all appearance, formerly for physical force. He was accustomed, he said,
to remind his hearers that they were taller and stronger than
Englishmen, and had hinted, at successive meetings, that he had then
and there at his disposal a force larger than the three armies at
Waterloo. "I cannot," said Mr. Mitchell, "censure those who may have
believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that he did mean to create
in the people a vague idea that they might, after all, have to fight for
their liberties. It is not easy to blame a man who confesses that he,
for his part, thought when Mr. O'Connell spoke of being ready to die for
his country, he meant to suggest the notion of war in some shape; that
when he spoke of 'a battle line,' he meant a line of battle and nothing
else."[105]
Tom Steele having addressed the meeting for some time, Mr. Thomas
Francis Meagher rose and delivered what was subsequently known as "the
sword speech," a name given to it on account of the following passage:
"I do not disclaim the use of arms as immoral, nor do I believe it is
the truth to say that the God of Heaven withholds his sanction from the
use of arms. From the day on which, in the valley of Bethulia, He nerved
the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down
to the hour in which He blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian
priests, His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from His
throne of light, to consecrate the flag of freedom, to bless the
patriot's sword. Be it for the defence, or be it for the assertion of a
nation's liberty, I look upon the sword as a sacred weapon. And if it
has sometimes reddened the shroud of the oppressor; like the anointed
rod of the High Priest it has, at other times, blossomed into flowers to
deck the freeman's brow. Abhor the sword and stigmatize the sword? No;
for in the cragged passes of the Tyrol it cut in pieces the banner of
the Bavarian, and won an immortality for the peasant of Innspruck. Abhor
the sword and stigmatize the sword? No; for at its blow a giant nation
sprung up from the waters of the far Atlantic, and by its redeeming
magic the fettered colony became a daring free Republic. Abhor the
sword and stigmatize the sword? No; for it scourged the Dutch marauders
out of the fine old towns of Belgium back into their own phlegmatic
swamps, and knocked their flag, and laws, and sceptre, and bayonets into
the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. I learned that it was the right of a
nation to govern itself, not in this Hall, but upon the ramparts of
Antwerp. I learned the first article of a nation's creed upon those
ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession
of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. I
admire the Belgians, I honour the Belgians, for their courage and their
daring; and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a
citizen king, a Chamber of Deputies." Here Mr. John O'Connell rose to
order. He said, the language of Mr. Meagher was so dangerous to the
Association, that it must cease to exist, or Mr. Meagher must cease to
be a member of it. Mr. Meagher again essayed to speak, but failed to
obtain a hearing. Mr. John O'Connell continued: Unless, he said, those
who acted with Mr. Meagher stood by the Peace Resolutions, they must
adopt other resolutions and another leader; upon which Mr. O'Brien and
the Young Ireland party abruptly left the Hall, amid much excitement and
confusion. They never returned to it: the rupture was complete.
Thus, at a most critical moment, standing between two years of fearful,
withering famine, did the leaders of the Irish people, by their
miserable dissensions, lay that people in hopeless prostration at the
mercy of the British Cabinet, from which, had they remained united, they
might have obtained means of saving the lives of hundreds of thousands
of their countrymen.[106]
It matters but little now which party was in the right and which in the
wrong. Looking back, however, through the cool medium of a quarter of a
century, it would seem that each side had something of right to support
its views. In the earlier part of his career, O'Connell did not disclaim
the use of physical force, nor denounce the employment of it, in the
cause of liberty, as it became his habit to do towards the close of his
life; and if ever he did so, it was usually after telling his audience,
as Mr. Mitchel said, that Ireland contained seven millions of people, as
brave as any upon the face of the earth. Subsequent professions of
loyalty, and assurances of his never intending to have recourse to the
bravery of those millions, were interpreted by the people as nothing
more than a clever touch of legal ability, to keep himself out of the
power of the Crown lawyers, who were ever on the watch to catch him in
his words. O'Connell himself may have never contemplated any effort
beyond legal and constitutional agitation, but the fear that he might
intend something more, founded on his bold allusions to the strength
and courage of those whom he led, gave undoubted force to the demands he
made upon the Government--in a strictly legal and constitutional manner.
When the "single-drop-of-blood" principle became the guiding star of his
political life, his demands had public opinion, and their own inherent
justice only to support them; so that physical force no longer played a
part in Irish politics, except from the fact that, inasmuch as it
undoubtedly still existed, it might some day act without him, or in
spite of him, or act when he should be dead and gone. It is hard to
think that a people who had been resisting English oppression for twenty
generations, with nothing else but physical force, ever believed him in
earnest, when he told them they should win their rights by legal and
constitutional means alone. The more educated may have given some
credence to his words, but I do not think the great bulk of the people
ever did.[107] At any rate, the principle was distasteful to them; and
when the _Nation_ newspaper began to publish what seemed to them the
good old threatening physical force articles, and when a talented band
of young gentlemen, in the Repeal Association, began to pronounce
eulogiums on the physical force patriots of other countries in fervid
eloquence, they soon became the prime favourites of the people; and it
was not long until the _Nation_ surpassed, in circulation, every other
journal in the country. Those enthusiastic young men saw that the
oft-repeated maxim, that "no political amelioration is worth one drop of
human blood," took the strength and manhood out of the agitation; so
they determined to return to the older doctrine of moral force--a
doctrine which neither makes it independent of physical force, nor
antagonistic with it, but rather its threatening shadow. A principle
well expressed by the motto on the cannon of the Volunteers of
'82--"Free Trade, or else."--a motto often quoted by the Liberator
himself, with a disclaimer, to be sure, in order to avoid the law, as
the people believed. Smith O'Brien was right, then, when he said he
could not see the utility of continually assuring England that, under no
circumstances whatever, would Ireland have recourse to any but peaceable
means to right her wrongs, quoting at the same time Davis's happy
definition of moral force--
"When Grattan rose, none dared oppose
The claim he made for freedom;
They knew our swords to back his words
Were ready, did he need them."
Had Mr. O'Brien and his friends stopped here, all would have been well;
but they did not. The two parties in the Repeal Association, having the
same object in view--the good of Ireland--chose different and diverging
routes for arriving at it; and every day saw them further and further
from each other. The Young Ireland party, to the sorrow of their best
friends, and, exposing themselves to the sneers of their enemies,
drifted rapidly into an armed outbreak, feeble and ill-planned, if
planned at all, and ending in miserable disaster. The Old Ireland
agitation went on; but the hand of death was upon the mighty spirit who
alone could sustain it, and it may be said to have expired with him.
Moral force, with physical force in the not too dim perspective behind
it, was a giant power in the hands of O'Connell, and it won
emancipation; physical force by itself, when brought to the test,
eventuated in ridiculous failure.
English parties, instead of legislating for Ireland as an integral part
of the Empire, have been in the habit of using her for the promotion of
their own ambitious views. The party out of place seeks her aid to help
to reinstate it in power; whilst those in power, profuse of promises
before they had attained to it, forget, or postpone the measures which,
in opposition, they had pronounced essential to her welfare.
When Sir Robert Peel was resigning, he took especial care to lay down
the doctrine, that Ireland was fully entitled to all the rights and
privileges of Great Britain. His successor, Lord John Russell, expressed
the same view only a short time before he was summoned to the Councils
of his Sovereign. A few days after his unsuccessful attempt to form a
government, at the close of 1845, he was invited by the people of
Glasgow to accept the freedom of their city. In the speech which he
addressed to them, on that occasion, he said, "My opinion is, that
Scotchmen should have the same privileges as Englishmen, and that
Irishmen ought to have the same privileges as both Englishmen and
Scotchmen." The sentiment was received with cheers. He further said: "I
consider that the Union was but a parchment and unsubstantial union, if
Ireland is not to be treated, in the hour of difficulty and distress, as
an integral part of the United Kingdom; and unless we are prepared to
show, that we are ready to grant to Irishmen a participation in all our
rights and privileges, and to treat them exactly as if they were
inhabitants of the same island. I, therefore, could never listen to, or
agree with the assertion, that they ought to be considered as aliens.
Nor could I consent to any laws which were founded on this unjust
presumption." These sentiments were received by his audience with
repeated applause. During the absorbing debate on the Irish Coercion
Bill, in June, he not only opposed that measure, but, in some sense,
became the apologist of those outrages, which the Government alleged had
made it necessary. After quoting, very fully, from the evidence given
before the Devon Commission, he goes on to say: "This, sir, differs from
the account given by the noble lord, the Secretary for Ireland; and it
is evidence which, I think, this House can hardly neglect or deny.
However ignorant many of us may be of the state of Ireland, we have the
best evidence that can be produced--the evidence of persons best
acquainted with that country--of magistrates for many years, of farmers,
of those who have been employed by the Crown; and all tell you, that the
possession of land is that which makes the difference between existing
and starving amongst the peasantry, and that, therefore, ejections out
of their holdings are the cause of violence and crime in Ireland. In
fact, it is no other than the cause which the great master of human
nature describes, when he makes an oppressed nature violate the law:--
"Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it."
This quotation was received by the House with a "hear, hear." "Such,"
continued the noble Lord, "is the incentive which is given to the poor
Irish peasant to break the law, which, he considers, deprives him of the
means, not of being rich, but of the means of obtaining a subsistence."
Having pointed out the difficulties of giving out-door relief under the
Poor Law, he goes on to suggest what seemed to him to be, and what
undoubtedly was, a far better remedy for Irish poverty and Irish famine:
"There is," said he, "another source of benefit--namely, the cultivation
of the waste lands. On that subject I do not see the difficulties which
beset the propositions with regard to the Poor Laws. It seems to me some
great scheme, with regard to the cultivation, preparation, and tillage
of the waste lands, would somewhat abate the severe competition for
land, and diminish the cause of crime." Repeated cheers greeted these
observations.
Lord John met Parliament as Prime Minister on the 16th of July; on
which occasion he gave a brief outline of the Government business for
the remainder of the session. He said they would take up, and endeavour
to pass some of the measures of the late Administration. As to Irish
bills, he postponed the most important one, the Tenants' Compensation
Bill, which, he said, was complicated, and was therefore reserved for
further consideration. Referring to the waste lands, the reclamation of
which he had, a short time before, put so prominently forward, he said
he would make preparation for the introduction of a general measure on
the subject. Thus were disposed of in a very brief speech, and in a very
cool manner, the eleven measures which O'Connell required to be passed
before the rising of the Session, and on the passing of which he had
grounded any support he intended to give the Whig Government.
Whilst people were absorbed with the change of Ministry, and the
wretched conflict in Conciliation Hall, the fatal blight began to show
itself in the potato fields of the country. Its earliest recorded
appearance was in Cork, on the 3rd of June. Accounts of its rapid
increase soon filled the public journals, and the gloomiest forebodings
of the total loss of the crop of 1846, immediately took hold of the
public mind. Here are a few specimens of the manner in which the
dreadful calamity was announced: "Where no disease was apparent a few
days ago all are now black." "Details are needless--the calamity is
everywhere." "The failure this year is universal; for miles a person may
proceed in any direction, without perceiving an exception to the awful
destruction." The South and West suffered more in 1845 than the North;
but this year the destroyer swept over Ulster the same as the other
provinces. "We have had an opportunity," says a writer, "of observing
the state of the potato crop from one end of the county Antrim to
another, and saw only one uniform gloomy evidence of destruction. The
potatoes everywhere exhibit the appearance of a lost crop." The same
account was given of Tyrone, Monaghan, Londonderry, and, in fact, of the
entire province. On the 18th of August, the fearful announcement was
made, that there was not one sound potato to be found in the whole
county of Meath! Again: "The failure of the potato crop in Galway is
universal; in Roscommon there is not a hundred weight of good potatoes
within ten miles round the town." "In Cavan, Westmeath, Galway, and
Kerry, the fields emit intolerable effuvia." "The failure this year is
universal in Skibbereen."[108]
In a letter published amongst the Parliamentary papers, Father Mathew
writes: "On the 27th of last month [July] I passed from Cork to Dublin,
and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant
harvest. Returning on the 3rd instant [August] I beheld with sorrow one
wide waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people
were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their
hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them
foodless."[109]
Such were the words of terror and despair in which the destruction of
the food of a whole people was chronicled; a people who had but just
passed through a year of deadly famine; a people still surrounded with
starvation--looking forward with earnest and longing expectancy to the
new harvest--but, alas! their share of it had melted away in a few short
days before their eyes, and, there they were, in their helpless myriads
before Europe and the world, before God and man, foodless and
famine-stricken, in a land renowned for its fertility, and this, ere the
terrible fact could be fully realised by many of their countrymen at
home; whilst it was doubted, or only half believed by unsympathizing
absentees; who, distant from the scene, are always inclined to think,
with a grudging suspicion, that accounts of this kind are either false
or vastly exaggerated, to furnish an excuse for withholding rent, or for
appealing in some way to their pockets.
The failure of 1845 did not prevent the people from planting potatoes
very largely in 1846, in which year, according to one account, the
quantity of land under potatoes in Ireland, was one million two hundred
and thirty seven thousand four hundred and forty one acres; the produce
being valued at £15,947,919 sterling;[110] but according to another
account it was very much larger, being, as estimated by the Earl of
Rosse, two millions one hundred thousand acres, valued at
£33,600,000.[111] The great discrepancy between these two accounts
arises from there being no authoritative official returns on the
subject. The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere between them.
The crop looked most healthy in the earlier part of Summer. Towards the
close of July, the potato fields were in full blossom, and in every way
so promising, that the highest hopes of an abundant yield were
entertained, and the people had so little fear on the subject of the
blight, that there was no appearance of that nervous anxiety which was
so strongly manifested at the same period of the previous year.[112] A
strong opinion prevailed that imported potatoes, at least, would resist
the blight, but there was no considerable importation of them into
Ireland in 1846. There is no doubt that new or strange sets, if of a
good quality, produce a healthier and a better crop than seed raised on
the same or neighbouring land, but from the general prevalence of the
potato blight, it is very doubtful if there would have been much
advantage in importing seed. An admittedly surer way of producing sound
tubers is to raise them from the actual seed as ripened and perfected on
the stalk in the apples, as the notch berries are commonly called in
Ireland, yet Mr. Niven,[113] an excellent authority--being Curator of
the Botanic Gardens belonging to the Royal Dublin Society, says: "The
seedlings I have had, both of 1845 and 1846, have been equally affected
with the leaf disease, as have been the plants from the tubers; whereas
the seedlings I raised on the experimental ground in the Royal Dublin
Society's Botanic Gardens, in Glasnevin, in 1834, at the time I
instituted my first experiments, were not at all infected with the root
disease then prevalent, but were, without an exception, sound and
perfect as could be desired."
The blight of 1846 was identical with that of 1845, but more rapid and
universal. The leaves of the potato plant were spotted in the same way;
the stalk itself soon became discoloured--not completely, but in rings
or patches; it got cankered through at those places, and would break
short across at them like rotten wood. Moisture, it was observed, either
brought on or increased the blight, yet the rainfall of 1846 rose very
little above the average of other years; probably not more than from two
to three inches; but the rain fell very irregularly, being most copious
at those times when it was likely to do most injury to the crops. The
Spring was harsh and severe; snow, hail and sleet fell in March; at
Belfast, there was frost and snow even in the first week of April. In
contrast with this, the greater part of June was exceedingly warm, which
must have stimulated vegetation to an unnatural degree, thus exposing
the growing crops all the surer to danger, whenever the temperature
should fall. It fell suddenly and decidedly, and the month closed with
thunderstorms and heavy rains. On the 19th, it was reported that the
weather at Limerick underwent a sudden change from tropical heat to
copious rain, with thunder, and lightning, followed by intense
cold--there were hail showers on the 24th. St. Swithin, true to his
traditional love of moisture, ushered in his feast, the 15th of July,
with a downpour of rain, and next day a fearful thunderstorm broke over
Dublin, followed by a deluge of rain. The same sort of weather prevailed
in almost every part of the country throughout July and August.
On the evening of the 3rd of the latter month, Mr. Cooper, of Markree
Castle, observed a most singular cloud, which extended itself over the
east of the range called the Ox Mountains, in the County Sligo,
accurately imitating, in shape, a higher range of mountains somewhat
more distant; afterwards an extremely white vapour, resembling a
snow-storm, appeared along the southern declivity of the range. Mr.
Cooper remarked to a friend at the time, that he thought this vapour
might be charged with the fluid causing the disease in the potato. The
friend to whom this observation was made, being a resident near those
mountains, Mr. Cooper requested him to make enquiries on the subject. He
afterwards informed him that on the same evening, or night, the blight
fell upon the whole of that side of the mountain, where they had
witnessed the strange appearance. It was noticed in various districts,
that some days before the disease appeared on the potatoes, a dense
cloud, resembling a thick fog, overspread the entire country, but
differing from a common fog in being dry instead of moist, and in
having, in almost every instance, a disagreeable odour. It is worthy of
remark that from observations made by Mr. Cooper for a series of years,
the average number of fogs for each year was a fraction under four,--the
night fogs for each year not being quite two. In the year 1846, the
night fogs were ten, the day two, being a striking increase of night
fogs, in the year of greatest potato blight in Ireland.[114]
On the last day of July, Lord Monteagle brought forward, in the House
of Lords, a motion for the employment of the people of Ireland, of which
he had given notice whilst the Peel Government were yet in office. He
gave credit to that Government for good intentions in passing several
Acts for the employment of the people, but these Acts were not, he said,
so successful as was expected, or as the wants of Ireland required.
Without any desire of being an alarmist, he told the Government that the
prospects of the coming year were infinitely worse than those of the
year then passing away, and that precautionary measures were much more
necessary than ever. The hopes that were at one time entertained by
physiologists, that potatoes raised from the seed might be free from the
infection, had entirely vanished, and there was every reason to
anticipate a failure of the plant itself. Such a failure would, in his
opinion, be the worst event of the kind that had ever happened in
Ireland. No antecedent calamity of a similar nature could be compared
with it. He was, he said, well acquainted with the calamity of 1823, but
that was as nothing compared with the one from which the people had just
escaped. Alluding to the sums of money given by Government, and by
private individuals, he praised the generosity of landlords, naming
three or four who had given considerable subscriptions, one of them
belonging to a class who had been frequently and unjustly attacked, the
class of Absentees.[115] Of the aid given by Government, he said, that
although the funds had been administered as wisely as the machinery of
the law allowed, he entirely denied that they had been economically or
quickly administered for the relief of distress. To a certain extent the
Board of Works must be pronounced a failure. How had it acted when the
duty was confided to it of finding employment? In the County of Clare,
an application was made by Lord Kenmare and himself, to put them in the
way of giving productive employment to the people about them, and their
lordships would, he said, scarcely credit him when he stated that, up to
the present time, they had not been able to obtain the preliminary
survey, so as to enable them to take a single step. His lordship moved,
that an humble address be presented to her Majesty, on the subject of
encouraging industry and employment amongst the people of Ireland.
Some weeks later, Lord Monteagle, addressing himself to the same
subject, said he agreed in the propriety of the Government not
purchasing the Indian corn which would be required that year; at the
same time, he approved of the steps they had taken the year previous, in
purchasing Indian corn. He called upon their lordships to recollect that
the peasantry of Ireland grow their own food, and they were, by this
disease of the potato crop, deprived of the first necessary of life.
Under these circumstances, therefore, however they might respect the
doctrines of strict political science and non-interference, _yet they
would not be doing their duty as legislators, if they stood by and
allowed the people to perish without interfering to prevent it_. Of the
Bill before them, [a Bill for the employment of the poor of Ireland,] he
said, that _its groundwork should have been the profitable employment of
the people_; but if they set their baronial sessions to work without
reference to profitable employment, they would be making relief the only
object, whilst they would be wasting capital, and destroying the funds
that would employ labour.
The President of the Council, the Marquis of Lansdowne, in offering some
remarks on the speech of Lord Monteagle, said he wished to God he could
differ from him, in the expectations which he entertained of the too
probable, he would not say certain, but the too probable recurrence of
that alarming evil, which was even then staring them in the face. Of
course, he said, the Government would endeavour to discharge its duty
with efficiency, in every circumstance which arose from the general
necessities felt in administering to the wants of a poor country; but he
could not be expected, at that moment, to enter more fully into the
question. He referred, in terms of approbation, to the measures taken by
the late Government, in November, 1845, to meet the famine; of their
prudent foresight in _supplying Indian meal, he entirely approved_.
It was a matter of course, according to Lord Lansdowne, that the
Government would try to discharge its duty, but he more than hints at
the difficulty of relieving a poor country, like Ireland. Yes, he spoke
the truth, Ireland was poor--poor with the poverty brought upon her by
wicked laws, enacted to make her poor, and keep her so; and that poverty
is flung in her face by an English Minister, at a time when the effects
of those laws had brought her people to the brink of one common
grave--not the grave of a slaughtered army, but the vast monster-grave
of a famine-slain nation. "Was there ever heard of such a thing,"
writes Lord Cloncurry, "as the almost yearly famine of this country,
abounding in all the necessaries of life, and endeavouring to beg or
borrow some of its own money to escape starvation."[116]
The Earl of Devon, a man eminently qualified to offer an opinion at such
a crisis, touched the true point, when he said, there was a matter which
he regarded as of still greater importance than public works, and that
was _the employment of the people in improving the soil and increasing
the productive powers of the country_.
All relief from Government ceased, as we have seen, on the 15th of
August. On the 17th, the Prime Minister went into a general statement of
what had been done by Sir Robert Peel's Government to meet the Irish
Famine. He detailed the measures adopted by them, in a spirit of
approval, like Lord Lansdowne, and dwelt, of course, with especial
laudation on the celebrated purchase of Indian meal;--its wisdom, its
prudence, its generosity, its secrecy--not disturbing the general course
of trade; its cheapness, coming, as it did, next in price to the potato,
which the Irish had lost. Beyond doubt, there never was such a wonderful
hit as that cargo of Indian meal. Sir Robert Peel flaunted it, with
simpering modesty, to be sure, as his wont was, but flaunt it he did, in
the face of every member who ventured to ask him what provision he had
made against starvation in Ireland; and here again his successor seems
to think that even he, who had nothing whatever to do with it, can take
shelter under the ample protection it affords to all shortcomings with
respect to the Irish Famine. But however good and praiseworthy this
purchase of Indian meal was, the precedent it afforded was not to be
followed; for, says the First Minister, "if it were to be considered as
establishing a principle, for the Government to apply the resources of
the Treasury _for the purchase of food in foreign countries_, and that
food were afterwards to be sold by retail at a low rate, it was evident
that all trade would be disturbed, and _those supplies which would be
naturally a portion of the commerce of this country would be applied for
the relief of the people of Ireland_." Loud cheers hailed the
announcement. "Likewise, that portion of the local trade in Ireland,
which referred to the supply of districts, would be injured, and the
Government would find itself charged with that duty most impossible to
perform adequately--to supply with food a whole people."
The miserable, transparent, insulting fallacy that runs through this
statement, is also found in almost all Sir Robert Peel's speeches on the
famine, namely, that there was not food enough in Ireland for its
people; and that it must be brought from foreign countries through the
channels of commerce. Let any one look at the tables of our exports of
food during the famine years, and he will see how the case stood. The
food was in the country, on the very ground where it was
required--beside the starving peasant, but was taken away before his
eyes, while he was left to travel day after day three, four, five, and
in many cases six or seven miles for a pound or two of Indian meal,
carried three thousand miles to replace the wheat and oats of his own
country, of which he was deprived; and there are recorded instances of
men falling down dead at their own threshholds, after such journeys,
without having tasted the food which they had sacrificed their lives to
procure.[117]
It was a question of money also. The Government would not advance
enough of money to buy the wheat, oats, or barley of the country; there
must be a food found that was nearest in price to the potato. England
could find a hundred millions of money to spend in fighting for the
Grand Turk; she could find twenty millions for the slave-owners of her
colonies; she could find twenty millions more for the luxury of shooting
King Theodore, but a sufficient sum could not be afforded to save the
lives of five millions of her own subjects.[118]
Lord John having announced the intention of the Government, to bring in
a bill empowering the Lord Lieutenant to summon baronial and county
sessions, for the purpose of providing public works for the Irish
people, proposed that the Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury should
issue Exchequer bills for £175,000 as a grant, and for £255,000 as a
loan, to pay for the works that might be undertaken. He concluded in
these words: "Sir, as I stated at the commencement, this is an especial
case, requiring the intervention of Parliament. I consider that the
circumstances I have stated, of that kind of food which constitutes the
subsistence of millions of people in Ireland being subjected to the
dreadful ravages of this disease, constitutes this a case of exception,
and renders it imperative on the Government and the Parliament to take
extraordinary measures of relief. I trust that the course I propose to
pursue will not be without its counterbalancing advantages: that it will
show the poorest among the Irish people that we are not insensible,
here, to the claims which they have on us in the Parliament of the
United Kingdom; that the whole credit of the Treasury and means of the
country are ready to be used, as it is our bounden duty to use them, and
will, whenever they can be usefully applied, be so disposed as to avert
famine, and to maintain the people of Ireland; and that we are now
disposed to take advantage of the unfortunate spread of this disease
among the potatoes, to establish public works which may be of permanent
utility. I trust, sir, that the present state of things will have that
counterbalancing advantage in the midst of many misfortunes and evil
consequences."[119]
The 15th of August was fixed for the cessation of the Government works,
as well as the Government relief, because it was considered that relief
extended beyond that time would be, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer
said, in reply to a question from O'Connell, "an evil of great
magnitude." When the relief was withdrawn, and the blight had manifested
itself in such giant proportions, the friends of the people saw nothing
but famine with all its attendant horrors at their doors. At this time I
find the Secretary of the Mallow Relief Committee, the Rev. C.B. Gibson,
calling the urgent attention of the Commissioners of Relief, in Dublin
Castle, to the state of his district, and his facts may be taken as a
fair specimen of the state of a great portion of the country at the
moment. He had just made a house-to-house visitation of the portion of
the country over which the operations of his committee extended, and he
says, the people were already starving, their only food being potatoes
no larger than marbles, the blight having stopped their growth. He took
some of the best of those potatoes to his house, and found that twelve
of them weighed just four ounces and a-half--merely the weight of one
very ordinary sized full-grown potato. They sickened the people instead
of satisfying their hunger. In many places the children were kept in bed
for want of clothing, as also to enable them to silence, to some extent,
the pangs of hunger; some of them had not had any food for a day and
a-half. And such beds as those starving children had! Of many he
describes one. It consisted of a heap of stones built up like a
blacksmith's fire-place, (these are his words), with a little hay spread
over it; bed clothes there were none. One of the children of this family
had died of starvation a fortnight before. The people in every house
were pallid and sickly, and to all appearance dying slowly for want of
sufficient nourishment. Mick Sullivan, a specimen of the labouring
class, was the owner of a cabin in which Mr. Gibson found two starved
and naked children; this man was obliged to pay a rent of £1 15s. a year
for that cabin, and £2 5s. for half an English acre of potato garden, or
rather for half an acre of mountain bog. He paid for these by his labour
at 6d. a day. It took one hundred and sixty days' clear work to pay for
them, and of course his potato garden was no use to him this year. Mr.
Gibson valued the furniture in another cabin, John Griffin's, at 15d. A
week before Mr. Gibson's visit, the parish priest had found in the same
district, a mother dividing among three of her children that nourishment
which nature only intended for their infancy. And this was the moment at
which the Government relief was withdrawn, because the harvest had come
in. It is not matter for wonder that the Rev. Secretary of the Mallow
Belief Committee indignantly asks, "Is not the social condition of the
Hottentot, who was once thought to be the most wretched of mankind,
superior to that of Mick Sullivan, or John Griffin, whose furniture you
might purchase for fifteen pence? I will not compare the condition of
such an Irish peasant to that of the red man of North America, who, with
his hatchet and gun and bearskin, and soft mocassins, and flashy
feathers, and spacious wigwam (lined with warm furs, and hung about with
dried deer and buffalo), may well contemn the advantages of our poor
countryman's civilization. The Irishman has neither the pleasure of
savage liberty, nor the profit of English civilization."[120] "I think,"
adds Mr. Gibson, "the present the proper time for noticing the panegyric
passed by Lord Monteagle on the gentry of this country for their
liberality.[121] He gives two or three examples; but they may be the
exceptions, instead of the examples of the class; and as his Lordship is
one of the class he seeks to protect, his testimony cannot be received
as impartial. I shall now furnish you with more satisfactory data, from
which to draw a conclusion. According to the Poor Law Valuation, the
yearly rental of Rahan, the parish a part of which I have already
described, is £5,854. From those who hold the possession in fee of this
pauper parish, we received thirty-five pounds; from a gentleman farmer
we received three pounds; in all, thirty-eight pounds. If this is
benevolence, the inhabitants of Rahan would soon starve upon it. If it
had not been for the exertions of the Mallow Relief Committee, a number
of those people would not be alive this day."
With regard to the Treasury minute, announcing the stoppage of the
Government works, he expresses his conviction that if they cease the
result around Mallow will be starvation and death. In view of the facts
placed before the Commissioners by Mr. Gibson, which could, he says, be
verified on oath by every member of the Mallow Relief Committee, he
calls upon them not to leave the people to starve, their only resource
being their potato gardens, which are utterly destroyed.
Parliament rose on the 28th of August. The Queen's Speech was read by
the Lord Chancellor. Her Majesty referred with thanks to the public
spirit shown by the members of both Houses, in their attention to the
business of the nation, during a laborious and protracted session She,
of course, lamented the recurrence of the failure of the potato crop in
Ireland, and had given, she said, her cordial assent to the measures
framed to meet that calamity. After the fashion of most royal speeches,
she expressed her satisfaction at the diminution of crime--not
throughout the United Kingdom--but in Ireland.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] _Times_ of 31st July, 1846.
[103] The italics are the Author's.
[104] "Grand Juries feared neither God nor man."--_Times_, August 22,
1846.
[105] Mr. Mitchell evidently alludes to the passage so often found in
O'Connell's speeches, commencing--
"O Erin, shall it e'er be mine To wreak thy wrongs in battle line," etc.
It is a curious fact that the Liberator, in the lapse of years, forgot
where he had originally found the passage, as the following extract from
the proceedings of the Repeal Association, on the 12th of April, 1844,
will show:--
"Mr. O'Connell--As Mr. Steele began by correcting some errors which had
crept into a published report of some of his observations, there is
quite enough in that fact to justify me in following his example. The
errors to which I allude appear in a book recently published by a
Frenchman, the Viscount D'Arlingcourt, whom I met accidentally at Tara,
and who felt somewhat surprised and mortified, on being informed that I
had not heard of him before. In his work he speaks of the meeting, and
he makes me state to him that six lines which I wrote in an _album_ he
presented to me for the purpose, were my own composition. Now, I am a
plain prose writer, and I neither wrote, nor said I wrote, the lines in
question. You may recollect them; they are as follows:--
O Erin shall it e'er be mine, To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To
raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That
glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave!
(Cheers.)
The rhythm is perfect, the versification excellent, and my
disinclination to take the parentage is not because of any defect in
them; but it is a matter of fact, there is only one word which I
inserted, and which I claim as my own composition--that word is 'Erin.'
In the original lines the word was 'Scotland;' they are from a poem of
Miss Mitford, called '"Wallace '--a poem not as well known as it ought
to be."
"Mr. Maurice O'Connell--The lines are by Miss Holcroft."
"Mr. O'Connell--My son differs with me as to the authorship, but I
cannot help that; but there is one thing we cannot dispute about, and
that is, the lines are not mine."
Although Mr. Maurice O'Connell undertook to set his father right, he was
equally at fault himself, for the lines are Scott's.
In the Lord of the Isles, canto 4, stanza 30, King Robert says:--
'O Scotland! shall it e'er be mine To wreak thy wrongs in battle line;
To raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people
free,--That glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my
grave." Then down the hill he slowly went, etc.
[106] The author was present at the two days' discussion. As Smith
O'Brien, on leaving, went towards the door, several persons seizing him
by the hands and arms, said to him, in a spirit of earnest, but friendly
appeal--"Sure you are not going away, Sir. O'Brien?" He only answered by
a determined shake of his head, and moved on. For some time after the
departure of Smith O'Brien and his supporters silent depression reigned
in the Hall. John Augustus O'Neill, in an eloquent speech, endeavoured
to put the meeting in good spirits again, but with very limited success.
Every one seemed to feel that a great calamity had occurred. O'Brien and
Mitchel spoke with cool, collected determination--more especially the
latter. John O'Connell took his stand on the Rules of the Association,
as embodied in the Peace Resolutions. I was near him during his speech
on each day; and although evidently labouring under the gravity of the
occasion, he never ceased to be master of himself. His style was clear,
but his voice being neither powerful nor resonant, he failed to make
that impression upon his hearers which was warranted by his reasoning.
Meagher's delivery of the sword speech had more of ostentation than
grace in it. A common gesture of his (if it can be called such) was to
place his arms a-kimbo, and turn his head a little to one side,
suggesting the idea that this attitudinizing was meant to attract
admiration to himself rather than to his argument. His voice was good,
but his intonation unmusical, and he invariably ended his sentences on
too high a note; but his fiery rhetoric carried the audience almost
completely with him, and he was cheered again and again to the echo.
[107] Many a fine, stalwart peasant said to me, during the great era of
the Monster Meetings, "I'm afraid, sir, we'll never get the union
without fighting for it." I know for a fact, that wives and daughters
and sisters endeavoured to dissuade fathers and husbands and brothers
from going to the great Tara Meeting--suspecting, as they said, that
"bad work would come out of it," _i.e._, fighting.
[108] _Daily and Weekly Press. Census of Ireland, 1851._
[109] _Correspondence relating to the measures adopted for the relief of
the distress in Ireland (Commissariat Series), p. 3._
[110] This estimate is said to have been compiled from the best
available sources for Thom's Almanac and Directory for 1847. The
quantity of potatoes in each of the four Provinces, and their probable
value were:
Ulster, 352.665 acres, valued at £4,457,562
Munster, 460,630 " " 6,030,739 10s.
Leinster, 217,854 " " 2,814,150
Connaught, 206,292 " " 2,645,468
------- ---------
1,237,441 £15,947,919 10s.
[111] Letters on the state of Ireland, by the Earl of Rosse: London,
1847. _Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1993_. These letters were originally
sent to the _Times_, but that journal having refused them insertion, the
noble author published them in a pamphlet. The Rev. Theobald Mathew
said, I do not know on what authority, that two millions of acres of
potatoes were irrevocably lost, being worth to those who raised them £20
an acre. This estimate would make the loss £40,000,000.
[112] _Mayne on the Potato Failure_. The potato crop, for the most part,
continued to look well up to the end of July, but the blight had
appeared, in the most decided way, during the first half of that month,
although not then very apparent to a casual observer. Mr. Mayne, like
many persons at the time, attributed the blight to an insect which some
called _Aphis Vastator_, others _Thrips minutissima_. There was a glass
case in the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, showing this insect feeding on
the leaves and stalks of the potato plant. Mr. Mayne and those who
agreed with him, seem, in this instance, to have mistaken cause for
effect. Indeed the insect, it would appear, was a natural parasite of
the potato, and some observers have gone so far as to assert that the
_Aphis Vastator_ abounded more on healthy plants than upon those
affected with the blight.
[113] _Letter to the Duke of Leinster quoted in Irish Census for 1851_.
M. Zander, of Boitzenberg, in Prussia, published, about this time, a
method by which full sized potatoes could be produced in one year from
the seed, and he further stated that the seedlings so produced had
resisted the blight. The old idea was, that it took three years to
produce full-sized potatoes from the seed. M. Zander's method was tried
in various parts of Ireland and England, its chief peculiarity being
that the seed was sown on a light hot bed, and the plants so produced
were transferred to the ground in which they were to produce the crop.
Full-sized potatoes were the result, each plant producing, on an
average, 1-1/2 lbs. of potatoes, or rather more than 29 tons to the
Irish acre. This method appeared satisfactory to those who interested
themselves about it, but it does not seem to have been followed up.
[114] Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society.
This opinion as to fogs preceding or accompanying the potato blight was
corroborated from various parts of the United Kingdom. A correspondent
of the _Gardener's Chronicle_, under date 14th Nov., 1846, writes: "In
the early part of August, 1846, there was not a diseased potato in the
North Riding of Yorkshire. Late in August, I think the 25th, a very
thick dense fog prevailed. The air was not, however, at all _chill_. The
heat and closeness was most oppressive. This continued all night, and
anything similar to it I never before saw, with so high a temperature.
It occurred also on the following night. _On the morning after the fog,
the whole of the potato fields had precisely the disorganized appearance
they have after a night's frost_. They soon became black, and the
disease followed in a very few days."
In the _Gardener's Chronicle_ of the 5th of September, it is mentioned
that shortly before, and about the time the disease appeared at
Aberdeen, "there was a succession of unusually dense fogs, followed by
great warmth."
In one of the Orkney Islands it was remarked by a farmer that "a very
dense fog rested in patches on certain parts of the island; at times it
was so defined, that the observer could point out the exact measure of
ground over which it rested. It hung low, and had the appearance of a
light powdering of snow. In passing, it fell down on his small farm, and
_he smelt it very unpleasant_, exactly like, he says, the bilge water of
a ship--a sulphurous sort of stench. After the wind rose and cleared off
those clouds or lumps of fog, there _remained on the grass_ over which
they had hung, as well as on the _potato shaws_, [stalks,] _an
appearance of grey dew or hoar frost. The next morning he noticed the
leaves of his potatoes slightly spotted_ ... Before ten days, not a shaw
was in his potato patch more than if it had been a bare fallow ...
_Everywhere through the island, the disease, after the fog, began in
spots and corners of fields_, and spread more slowly over
all."--_Observations on the probable cause of the Failure of the Potato
Crop, by David Milne, Esq., p. 37. Halliday Pamphlets_, vol. 1, 994.
[115] See post, p. 165.
[116] Public Letter of 25th of August.
[117] In the debate on the "Fever (Ireland) Bill," on the 18th of March,
Mr. Scrope said, "He must observe that he held to the opinion that the
first resource for the people of Ireland which should have been looked
to, on the failure of the potato crop, should have been the oats which
they themselves had grown by the side of their potatoes, and that the
burthen should have been thrown upon the Unions of taking care that a
sufficient stock of those oats should have been stored to provide
against necessity."
In replying to Mr. Scrope, Sir James Graham called this "a forced
purchase of oats which would be most injurious, by increasing the demand
for the article." Mr. Wakley addressing himself to that observation,
said "he would ask, was not England open to the same or similar effects?
Did not the guardians of the poor in this country make purchases upon
the spot? Surely, meat, flour, and other provisions for the workhouses
were purchased in the immediate neighbourhood of such workhouses--in
short, was not everything given in the workhouses obtained in the
immediate vicinity of them?"--_Hansard, vol. 150. Columns 1168 and
1191._
[118] "Gentlemen, when I reflect that as much as £30,000,000 of money
have been expended in one year in contending with foreign countries for
objects of infinitely less importance to us."
Sir H.W. Barren (interrupting) "£30,000,000 per annum."
Lord Stuart--I stated so--infinitely of less importance than assisting
to relieve an immensity of our fellow-countrymen from starvation. I have
not, nor can I feel any distrust in those to whom her Majesty has
entrusted the government of the country so as to believe they could
hesitate ... in granting a sixth of that sum for rendering Ireland
prosperous and contented."--_Speech of Lord Stuart de Decies_ at
Dungarvan, recommending the Government to reclaim the waste lands,
November 13, 1846.
[119] Hansard, vol. 154, p. 776.
[120] "I have visited the wasted remnants of the once noble Red Man, on
his reservation grounds in North America, and explored the "negro
quarter" of the degraded and enslaved African, but never have I seen
misery so intense, or _physical_ degradation so complete, as among the
dwellers in the bog-holes of Erris."--_Visit to Connaught in the Autumn
of 1847, by James H. Tuke, of York_.
[121] Ante, p. 158.