The Labour-rate Act passed without opposition: entitled, An Act to
Facilitate the Employment of the Labouring Poor--Its
provisions--Government _Minute_ explaining them--Heads of
Minute--Rate of wages--Dissatisfaction with it--Commissary-General
Hewetson's letter--Exorbitant prices--Opinion expressed on this head
by an American Captain--The Government will not order food as Sir B.
Peel did--Partial and unjust taxation--Opposition to the Labour-rate
Act--Reproductive employment called for--Lord Devon's
opinion--Former works not to be completed under the Act--Minute of
31st of August--Modified by Mr. Labouchere's letter of 5th of
September--People taxed who paid a rent of £4 a year--In many cases
a hardship--Barren works the great blot of the Labour-rate
Act--Arguments against the Act--Resources of the country should have
been developed--Panic among landowners--Rev. Mr. Moore's
letters--Level roads a good thing--Food better--A cry of excessive
population raised--Ireland not overpeopled--Employ the people on
tilling the soil--Sir R. Routh takes the same view--Belief Committee
of Kells and Fore--Reproductive employment--Plan suggested--Address
to the Lord Lieutenant--True remedy--O'Connell on the Famine--Writes
from Darrynane on the subject--Money in the hands of Board of
Works--Compulsory reclamation of waste lands--Drainage Bill--Mr.
Kennedy's opinion--Who is to blame?--The Government, the landlords,
or the people?--O'Connell for united action--Outdoor relief will
confiscate property--Proposed Central Committee--Several Committees
meet in Dublin--Mr. Monsell's letter--His views--Against
unproductive labour--Money wasted--Appeal to the Government--Cork
deputation to the Prime Minister--His views--He _now_ sees great
difficulties in reclaiming waste lands--Platitudes--Change of
views--Requisition for meeting in Dublin--Unexpected publication of
the "Labouchere Letter" authorizing reproductive works--Verdict of
the Government against itself.
The 9th and 10th of Victoria, cap. 107, the Act framed by the Government
to provide against the Famine, sure to result in Ireland from the Potato
Blight of 1846, was passed through Parliament without opposition. It was
entitled, An Act to Facilitate the Employment of the Labouring Poor for
a limited period in distressed districts in Ireland; but it became
commonly known as the Labour-rate Act. The principal provisions of that
measure were:
1. On representation being made to the Lord Lieutenant of the existence
of distress in any district, he was empowered to assemble an
extraordinary presentment sessions for that district.
2. Such sessions were authorized to present for public works.
3. A schedule of the works presented for, was to be signed by the
Chairman of the Sessions, and forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant for his
sanction; it should also receive the approval of the Treasury.
4. On its being approved, the Treasury was to make advances for such
works to the Board of Public Works in Ireland, and authorize them to be
executed.
5. County surveyors were to assist in the execution of those public
works.
6. The advances from the Treasury were to be repaid in half-yearly
instalments; such instalments not to be less than four, or more than
twenty; the tax by which they were to be repaid to be levied under grand
jury presentments, according to the Poor Law valuation, and in the
manner of the poor rate; the occupier paying the whole, but deducting
from his landlord one-half the poundage rate of the rent to which he was
liable--in short, as under the Poor Law, the occupier was to pay
one-half, and the landlord the other. Thus, by this law, the whole
expense of supplying food to the people during the remainder of the year
1846, and the entire year of 1847, was made a local charge, the Treasury
lending the money at five per cent, per annum, which money was to be
repaid at furthest in ten years. The repayments required by the previous
act, under which operations ceased on the 15th of August, had to be made
on the principle of the grand jury cess, which laid the whole burthen
upon the occupier. The Labour-rate Act got rid of that evident hardship,
and charged the landlord with half the rate for tenements or holdings
over £4 a-year, and with the _whole rate_ for holdings under that annual
rent.
The Lords of the Treasury published, on the 31st of August, a _Minute_
explaining how the provisions of this law were to be carried out, which
Minute was published to the Irish people in a letter from the Chief
Secretary for Ireland.
1. This _Minute_ directs the Board of Works to be prepared with plans
and estimates of those works in each district where _relief is as likely
to be required_, on which the people might be employed with the greatest
public advantage; an officer from the Board to be present at the
presentment sessions, in order to give such explanations as might be
called for. 2. It being apprehended by the Government that the public
works would be calculated to withdraw from the husbandry of the country
a portion of the labour necessary for the cultivation of the soil, the
three following rules were laid down in the Minute, which, "in their
lordships' opinion, ought to be strictly observed":--"No person should
be employed on any relief works who could obtain employment on other
public works, or in farming, or other private operations, in the
neighbourhood. The wages given to persons employed on relief works
should, in every case, be at least, twopence a day less than the average
rate of wages in the district.[122] And the persons employed on the
relief works should, to the utmost possible extent, he paid in
proportion to the work actually done by them." 3. Under the former Act,
the members of Relief Committees had authority to issue tickets, which
entitled persons to obtain employment on the Public Works; a system
which, it was found, led to abuses, numbers having obtained employment
on such tickets who did not require relief. The Treasury _Minute_,
therefore, confines the powers of Relief Committees to the _preparation
of lists_ of persons in need of relief by employment on the works,
noting them in the order in which they are considered to be entitled to
priority, either on account of their large families, or from any other
cause; these lists to be supplied to the officers in charge of the
works, who are to revise them from time to time. 4. With regard to
donations from Government, in aid of private subscriptions, "their
lordships consider that they may be made as heretofore, where necessary,
from public funds placed at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant for that
purpose, and in the proportion of from one-third to one-half of the
amount of the private subscriptions, according to the extent of the
destitution, and the means of the subscribers; but in consequence of
such assistance, their lordships are of opinion, that the proceedings of
such Relief Committees should be open to the inspection of Government
officers, appointed for the purpose." 5. The Relief Committees are to
exercise great care in the sale of meal or other food provided by them;
such sale not to be made except in small quantities, and to persons who
are known to have no other means of procuring food. 6. As to the
Government depôts of food, their lordships "desire that it may be fully
understood that even at those places at which Government depôts will be
established for the sale of food, _the depots will not be opened while
food can be obtained by the people from private dealers, at reasonable
prices_; and that even when the depôts are opened, _the meal will, if
possible, be sold at such prices as will allow of the private trader
selling at the same price, with a reasonable profit_."[123] The rule to
allow private dealers to sell at a reasonable profit, excellent in
itself, required an amount of supervision which it did not receive, and
in consequence, the starving poor were often obliged to pay unjustly
exorbitant prices for their food supplies. Commissary-General Hewetson,
writing from Limerick on 30th December, 1846, says: "Last quotations
from Cork: Indian corn, £17 5s. per ton, ex ship; Limerick: corn not in
the market; Indian meal, £18 10s. to £19 per ton. Demand excessive.
Looking to the quotations in the United States markets, these are really
famine prices, the corn (direct consignment from the States) not
standing the consignee more than £9 or £10 per ton. The commander of an
American ship, the 'Isabella,' lately with a direct consignment from New
York to a house in this city, makes no scruple, in his trips in the
public steamers up and down the river, to speak of the enormous profits
the English and Irish houses are making by their dealings with the
States. One house in Cork alone, it is affirmed, will clear £40,000 by
corn speculation; and the leading firm here will, I should say, go near
to £80,000, as they are now weekly turning out from 700 to 900 tons of
different sorts of meal.... I sometimes am inclined to think houses give
large prices for cargoes imported for a market, to keep them up; it is
an uncharitable thought, but really there is so much cupidity abroad,
and the wretched people suffering so intensely from the high prices of
food, augmented by every party through whose hands it passes before it
reaches them, it is quite disheartening to look upon."[124]
The Government further determined not to send any orders for supplies
of food to foreign countries, as was done by Sir Robert Peel, in the
case of the cargo of India meal; and their depôts would be only
established in those western and north-western districts, where, owing
to the previous almost universal cultivation of the potato (or rather
owing perhaps to its universal use), no trade in corn for local
consumption existed.
The system of relief thus provided was extensive and expansive enough,
as it laid the entire soil of Ireland under contribution. Whether or not
the country would, in the long run, be able to pay for it all, the
Government acted well in making the landlords understand and feel their
responsibilities in such a terrible crisis. But they should not have
stopped there. Those who had mortgages on Irish estates, and their name
was legion, should have been compelled to contribute their due
proportion; the commercial and monied interests of the country should
have been taxed, as well as the land; no one able to bear any portion of
the burthen should have been exempted from it, at such a moment of
national calamity. Instead of taxing one species of property, namely
land, to meet the Famine, the _whole_ property of the country should
have been taxed for that purpose; and this partiality was justly
complained of by the landed interests.
But a much more formidable opposition than that of the landed interest,
as such, rose up against the Labour-rate Act, and for a very sufficient
reason. The employment to be provided under it could not, and was not
intended to be reproductive; the public works which it sanctioned being,
as Secretary Labouchere said, in his letter, only undertaken with a view
of relieving the temporary distress occasioned by the failure of the
potato crop. On this account, the dissatisfaction with the measure was
very general from every section of politicians; not that it was thought,
except perhaps by some few, that the Government were unwilling to
provide against the great Famine which all felt was already holding the
Irish nation in its deadly grasp, but because it was felt and believed,
that the mode chosen for that purpose was the very worst possible. Under
the Labour-rate Act, not so much as one rood of ground could be
reclaimed or improved. The whole bone and sinew of the nation, its best
and truest capital, must be devoted to the cutting down of hills and the
filling up of hollows, often on most unfrequented by-ways, where such
work could not be possibly required; and in making roads, which, as the
Prime Minister himself afterwards acknowledged, "were not wanted," but
which Colonel Douglas, a Government Inspector, more accurately described
"as works which would answer no other purpose than that of obstructing
the public conveyances." This radical defect of the Act was well and
happily put by Lord Devon, when he said it authorized "unproductive work
to be executed by borrowed money."
The Act was criticised for other reasons too. It made no provision for
the completion of the works taken in hand to relieve the people in 1846;
and those works must be finished by the 15th of August of that year, or
not at all, a full fortnight before the Labour-rate Act had become the
law of the land. Of course many of them were unfinished at that date.
Clearly, this was wrong; for on the supposition that they were works of
at least some utility, and not mere child's-play to afford an excuse to
the Government for giving the people the price of food, they should have
been completed. They consisted chiefly in the making or altering or
improving of roads--and everybody knows that unfinished road-work is
worse than useless,--it is a positive injury. Parts of innumerable roads
in Ireland were impassable for years after those works had closed; and
many a poor man, whose horse and dray got locked in the adhesive mud of
a cut-down but unshingled hill, vented his anger against the Board of
Works in the most indignant terms.
The sudden closing of the works of 1846, some even regarded as a breach
of faith with the public. The _Minute_ of the 31st of August, no doubt,
left a course open for their completion, when it ruled, "that if the
parties interested desired that works so discontinued should afterwards
be recommenced and completed, it was open to them to take the usual
steps to provide for that object, either by obtaining loans, secured by
Grand Jury presentments, or by other means." But this suggestion (for it
was no more) did not free the Government from the charge of a breach of
faith, for they called upon the country to complete works begun by
themselves, and to do so under new and very different conditions.
Besides, it was pretty evident that Grand Juries would not present for
the completion of works commenced by the Government, on its own
responsibility. That the Government felt there was some ground for the
charge brought against them, of a breach of faith with regard to those
works, is evident from a letter from Mr. Trevelyan to Lieutenant-Colonel
Jones in the beginning of October. In that letter he says, the works
under the Labour-rate Act must, as far as the Act is concerned, come to
an end on the 15th of August, 1847; and he adds, that "if Parliament
should determine that the Irish proprietors shall support their poor
after the 15th of August, 1847, by payments out of the current produce
of the Poor-rate, instead of by loan from Government, the transfer from
one system to the other may take place _without our being liable_ to any
demands like those which have been lately made upon us _to finish what
we had begun_, on pain of being considered guilty of a breach of faith."
This, says Mr. Trevelyan, is the full mind of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.[125]
The Minute of the 31st of August was modified somewhat by a letter from
Mr. Labouchere, dated September 5th. In that letter the Secretary says
it is his Excellency's pleasure that all works stopped on the 15th
August should be proceeded with as far as the sums which may have been
so sanctioned for them respectively would admit. Should the balance not
be sufficient, a presentment under 10 Vict. cap. 107, should be sought
for at the Presentment Sessions, provided the work were a desirable one
to undertake.
Nor did the new arrangement, under which the landlord paid one moiety of
the rate, and the occupier the other, pass without censure. It was, to
be sure, considered an improvement on the rule which compelled the
occupier to pay the whole; still it was urged that great numbers of the
occupiers of small holdings would be as much in need of relief as any
portion of the community, and in no position whatever to pay rates. That
was true enough, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and when they
determined to make the soil responsible, it is hard to see to whom they
were to look for rates, had they exempted the small farmers from them.
The exemption they made, namely, of those whose rent was under £4
a-year, was probably not liberal enough, but there does not seem to have
been any great reason for finding fault with it.
But the great and fatal blot in the Labour-rate Act was, that under its
provisions the people could not be employed on works capable of making a
profitable return. Lord John Russell's Government followed the precedent
set by its predecessors as to the class of works upon which employment
was to be given; but there was this important difference in their
legislation,--the former made no grants under their Labour-rate Act,
while the latter supplied about half the cost of the Public Works from
the Treasury, the remainder being a loan. Against this Act several
arguments were employed, and, for the most part, very cogent ones. 1. It
was said that as the country was taxed for the whole outlay, whatever it
might be, the Government had no right to apply the money to unprofitable
works, thus taking from our capital (already far too small) a vast sum
that could not return to it. 2. Moreover, no matter whence the money
came, it was urged that to employ it on barren works was wrong in
principle, especially in a country like Ireland, with millions of
reclaimable acres, which would, if brought under cultivation, return in
almost every case ten per cent, for capital expended. 3. Again, it was
put forward with reason, that the employment for the past year was meant
to relieve transient distress only; but now the case was very
different--a new, a far more extensive and complete failure of the
potato had occurred. There was now no question of transient distress;
the potato, the principal--almost the only--food of five millions of the
people of Ireland, had not only failed a second time, but, to all
appearance, had failed permanently and finally: such was the
apprehension at the moment. In face of that alarming state of things,
why talk of cutting down hills, or of making useless roads,--provide
rather some substitute for the doomed esculent, and let the labour-power
of the country be, at least in the first instance, employed upon it, to
secure food for the next year. 4. Even if it were desirable to continue
employing the people upon those public works, where were they to be
always found? "In many districts it was impossible last year to find
useful public works. Hills were cut down, and new roads made, which,
under ordinary circumstances, no one would have thought worth the
expense which they entailed on the baronies in which they were situated.
In such districts, where are hills and roads to be found upon which the
people may, this year, be employed?"[126] Was it not passing strange,
that, with such difficulties existing, the Government would neither
apply labour to profitable work, nor even allow the old unfinished works
to be completed?
At the time of the Famine it was an unquestionable fact, and (to the
shame of the Government be it said) it is an unquestionable fact to-day,
that no country with any pretence to civilization required its resources
to be developed more than Ireland; in no country could a government be
more imperatively called upon to foster--nay, to undertake and
effect--improvements, than Ireland. In a country so circumstanced, how
disappointing, then, and heart-sickening must it not have been to good
and thoughtful men, to find the Government passing a bill for the
employment of our people on unproductive labour. Not only did the
Labour-rate Act exclude productive labour from its own operations, but
its direct tendency was to discourage and put a stop to improvement on
the part of others. This is manifest enough. The baronies--that is, the
lands of the baronies--were to be taxed to pay for all the works
undertaken to give employment to the starving people. No one could
foresee where or when that taxation was to end. There could be no more
effectual bar to useful improvements. What landowner could afford the
double outlay of paying unlimited taxation, and at the same time of
making improvements on his property? Then, he had to look forward to
other probable years of famine, and he naturally trembled with dismay at
the prospect, as well he might. So far from making improvements, the
commonest prudence warned him to get together and hold fast whatever
money he could, in order to maintain himself and his family when his
property would be eaten up--confiscated--by taxation expended upon
barren works. Private charity, too, was paralysed; private exertion of
every kind was paralyzed; everything that could sustain or improve the
country was paralysed, by this blind, or wicked, or stupid, or
headstrong legislation of Lord John Russell's Government, by which the
energies and the capital of the country were squandered upon labour that
could not, and was not intended to, make any remunerative return
whatever.
Whilst the value of the general principle of employing labour on
profitable rather than on unprofitable works was evident enough, and
accepted by almost everybody, the practical carrying out of that
principle was not without its difficulties. Those who endeavoured to
solve them brought forward plans varying from each other in some
particulars; but, taking them collectively, there was sufficient good
sense in them to enable the Government to frame a system of reproductive
employment for the exigencies of the period.
Fears were entertained by many that much of the arable land would remain
unfilled in the ensuing spring, by which the Famine would be
perpetuated; and it was thought the labour of the country ought to be
made available for that purpose. A kind-hearted, charitable clergyman,
the Rev. William Prior Moore, who endeavoured most zealously to relieve
the sufferings of the people, put forward this view very strongly, in
letters addressed by him to the Chief Secretary. In those letters he
accuses the Government of being mere theorists, ignorant of the
practical way of relieving Ireland. "The Labour Act," he says, "was
worse than _absurd_--it was in many respects _pernicious_. The Chief
Secretary's letter (I speak with all respect), though well meant, was in
many cases impracticable; and the late Treasury Minute, also
well-intentioned though it be, is for the most part _incomprehensible_;
and when the three are taken together, or brought partially into
operation together, as in some places is attempted, the Irish gentry
would require a forty-horse power of intellect to understand or avail
themselves of them."[127] "I do not say, as many do," Mr. Moore
continues, "that the roads will be spoiled by cutting down the hills; on
the contrary, it will be of the greatest advantage to have level
highways through the land; but I do say, that there could not by
possibility have been a more absurd misapplication of the labour and the
power of the country. _Level roads are a good thing, but food is
better._ And what will level highways do for the poor of Ireland next
year, if they have nothing to eat?"[128] When Mr. Moore penned these
lines he assumed, we must suppose, that all roads undertaken by
Government would be completed, which would, in its way, be an
improvement; but such was not the case.
At this time a class of landowners, and an extremely numerous one,
raised the cry of "excessive population." They were anxious to clear
their lands, not of rocks or briars, but of human beings; and in their
opinion the country could be saved only by a vast system of emigration.
Mr. Moore denies that such excess existed, and therefore condemns
emigration. "_It is not a fact,_" he says, "_that Ireland is
over-peopled;_ the contrary is the fact. But the strength of Ireland,
her bone and sinew, like her unequalled water-power, is either unapplied
or misapplied."[129] "Simply two things," in his opinion, were
required--"immediate occupation for the people, and that that occupation
shall, as far as possible, be made conducive towards providing for the
exigencies of coming seasons ... WE WANT EMPLOYMENT WHICH CAN BE MADE
IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD--and _nothing will or
can answer this purpose, save only to employ the people in tilling and
cultivating the soil; and not a moment is to be lost!_"[130] One is
inclined to doubt the feasibility of sending the labouring population of
Ireland in upon the tillage farms, to trench, and dig, and plough, and
sow; but Mr. Moore had his practical plan for doing it; and although he
does not go into details, it does not seem to offer insuperable
difficulties. "The plan I would suggest," he writes, "is briefly this:
to HIRE THE LABOURERS TO THE SMALL FARMERS ALL THROUGH THE COUNTRY, AT
HALF-PRICE, TO TILL THE GROUND. The farmers would be delighted at the
arrangement."[131]
The necessity of applying labour to the cultivation of the soil was also
most strongly insisted upon by a high Government official, Sir Randolph
Routh, the head of the Commissariat Relief Office, Dublin Castle, whose
experience was of the most extensive and valuable kind, he having
superintended the relief works through Ireland in 1846. He says: "Under
the circumstances which you describe, I recommend you to call a meeting
of the proprietors, to explain to them the state of the country; to
state the liberal intentions of the Government to give a grant equal to
the amount subscribed, when the Workhouse is full; to explain to them
that this grant is tantamount to selling them the supply at half-price,
as their funds, being doubled, go twice in the purchases they require.
Point out to them also the dreadful responsibility the whole country
will incur, if they neglect the cultivation of the soil. The transition
from potatoes to grain," he says, "requires a tillage in the comparison
of three to one between grain and potatoes. All this requires a
corresponding increase of labour; and wages so paid are a mere
investment of money, bringing a certain and large profit." He adds these
remarkable words: "It is useless to talk of emigration, when so much
extra labour is becoming indispensable to supply the extra food. Let
the labour first he applied, and then, it will be seen whether there is
any surplus population, and to what extent. If industrious habits can be
established, and the waste lands taken into cultivation, it is very
doubtful whether there would be any surplus population, or even whether
it would be equal to the demand."[132] These were sound views, except in
so far as they threw upon landlords and people the duty of cultivating
the soil; the people could do nothing, and many of the landlords had not
capital: moreover, _as a class_, they were wholly disinclined to make
any adequate effort. From the terms of the memorandum just quoted, it is
evident that, in their intercourse with Commissary Hewetson, they were
clamouring for emigration. If the Government were sincerely anxious to
produce food, and save the country, they ought not to have leaned on
such rotten reeds. They should have put their own hand more thoroughly
to the work, and framed an Act which would, at least indirectly, have
compelled proprietors to second their efforts, and discharge those
duties, which, as men and as Christians, they refused to attend to or
acknowledge.
Besides the numerous letters called forth by the publication of the
Treasury Minute, that important document came prominently under
discussion at baronial sessions, and the meetings of Relief Committees.
At a meeting of the Relief Committee for the districts of Kells and
Fore, in the County of Meath, held in the Court House of Kells on the
5th of September, and presided over by the Marquis of Headfort, the
principal question debated was, "the nature of the employment which
ought to be provided for the poor during the ensuing season." A report
to his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant was agreed to. It was based upon
the sound, common-sense principle, "that the labour for which the land
is compelled to pay, should be applied in developing the productive
powers of the land." From this stand-point they proceed to make
practical suggestions, as to the manner in which its principle is to be
carried out. Assuming that a rate sufficient to provide for the
employment of labour should be levied in each district, and that this
labour should be paid for by landlord and occupier, according to the
Poor Law valuation, as enacted by the Labour-rate Act, they suggest:
1. That instead of the money being taken from the farmers, and wasted in
useless and unproductive works, each person liable to pay this rate
should have the option of expending it upon his own land, in additional
labour, upon works tending, as far as possible, to promote the increased
production of food; and that the most suitable and profitable works in
each locality would be best ascertained by inviting proposals from the
ratepayers--each for his own land. 2. That in the event of landlord and
tenant not agreeing in the works to be undertaken, each should be
entitled to expend the portion of rate paid by himself. These
suggestions were certainly calculated to avert the most threatening
danger of the moment--the danger of not having sufficient attention paid
to the cultivation of the land, in order to produce food for the coming
year. 3. Those ratepayers next express their opinion, that landlords and
others, having sufficient interest in lands, should be encouraged by the
offer of loans to undertake extensive and permanent profitable
improvements, such as the draining and reclaiming of land--the making of
roads to come under the designation of profitable improvements, only so
far as they would be the means of facilitating cultivation. All the
works undertaken to be under the superintendence of the Board of Works.
4. The ruling and controlling power in the case to be a local committee
of landlords and ratepayers, which committee, on the completion of each
work within the time agreed upon, should have notice to that effect;
and who should have power to order an inspection of such works, if they
thought it necessary. Upon being satisfied that the outlay was fairly
and honestly made, according to the terms of agreement, a certificate to
be given to that effect, _which should be taken_ in payment _of the
rate_. The Kells and Fore Committee add, with truth, that this labour,
being carried on under the ordinary relations of employer and employed,
would be free from the difficulties of superintendence, and the
demoralizing effects which "charity works" are apt to produce in the
labourer.
After expressing these views and making these suggestions they prepared
a formal address to the Lord Lieutenant to impress upon him the urgent
necessity that existed for employing the labour of the country in the
raising of food. The duties which devolve on those in power this year,
they tell him, are very different from those of last year. Last year,
when it was found that a great portion of the food of the people had
perished, the evident duty of the Government and the country was to
provide a sufficient supply, until the harvest would come in. This was
done by securing additional wages for the people, with which to buy
food; wages paid for the public works then undertaken being the readiest
means to meet a transient emergency; but the Committee are convinced,
they assure his Excellency, that the calamity of the current year is not
transient but permanent. Not one of them, they say, entertains the
expectation that the next year's potato crop will put an end to the
difficulties of the country, by supplying sufficient food for the
population: "the question is not now of the distribution but of the
production of food. We have not to relieve a temporary distress, but to
make provision for the food of a people." To buy food in foreign markets
with money paid for unproductive labour at home, they of course,
designate as it deserved. The true and permanent remedy is only to be
found in the employment of additional capital and labour on the land.
"To anticipate the available resources of the country," they urge, "and
to compel or induce the outlay of them on public works not productive of
food, or of any commodity which could be exchanged for food, must
fearfully aggravate the dangers of our position." Finally, they tell the
Lord Lieutenant frankly, that they feel it to be their duty to deprecate
the continuance of a system which tends to discourage the exertions of
landlord and farmer, and to misapply the labour of the people--closing
their admirably reasoned address by repeating the principle with which
they had set out: "_That the labour for which the land is compelled to
pay should be applied in developing the productive powers of the land._"
O'Connell, as was to be expected, took the greatest interest in the
perilous state of his countrymen at this critical period; and he
expressed his views in public on several occasions. His great anxiety
was for united action. In a letter written from Darrynane, dated 17th of
September, and addressed to the Secretary of the National Repeal
Association, he says, the system of public works is, in its nature,
sufficiently comprehensive, if carried actively and energetically into
effect, to afford employment to the great bulk of the adult population;
but he feels convinced, that to be satisfactory it requires the most
active co-operation of landowners and farmers. The great difficulty, he
thinks, is not in want of employment, but in the want of food, and to
leave to commercial speculators the supply of food for the people will
keep it at a famine price. In his opinion, therefore, the intervention
of the Government was absolutely necessary. Such intervention, he admits
to be surrounded with great difficulties, and calculated to impose an
enormous additional burthen upon them; it must, however, he holds, be
done, or the people will starve. In reply to those who called for loans,
at a low rate of interest, to be expended on the improvement of the
land, he says, it is to be remarked that there are already a million of
pounds sterling in the hands of the Board of Works, to be lent for the
drainage of Irish estates, and but few had availed themselves of that
fund.[133]
But this is no complete answer to the call made for reclaiming Irish
lands, because the money held by the Board of Works was only lent when
applied for. The advocates for reclaiming waste lands in order to give
employment to the starving people wanted a Special Bill empowering the
Government to call upon the owners of estates either to reclaim their
waste land themselves, or to permit the Government to do so on equitable
terms. To some this seemed an interference with the rights of property;
but even if it were, the occasion was sufficient to justify it; for when
a whole nation is in the throes of famine--threatened with annihilation,
as Ireland then was--_salus populi suprema lex_ should become the
guiding principle of a government. Extraordinary evils call for
extraordinary remedies. Nor would such a law be one whit more of an
interference with the rights of property than the law which enables a
railway company to make their line through a man's estate whether he
likes it or not, giving him such compensation as may be awarded by an
impartial tribunal. And this is just, for no private individual ought to
have the power of preventing what is for the general prosperity. But
important as the construction of a railway may be, there is no
comparison between its importance and that of saving the lives of a
whole people, for whose benefit railways are constructed, and all
material improvements projected and carried out.
That some compulsory clauses were necessary in the Drainage Bill is
clear from the statement of O'Connell, that but few availed themselves
of its provisions. Speaking of this Bill, a gentleman whose opinion must
carry much weight with it, says, that all acquainted with the subject
admit the whole cost of thorough draining would be returned by the first
crop, or the first two, or at least by the first three crops.[134]
"Under such circumstances," he asks, "how can the country be exposed to
danger or suffering from an infliction such as now threatens? It is
impossible, unless we assume all the parties interested--whether the
government, the landed proprietors, the farmers, or the labourers--to be
inert, and forgetful of their respective interests to an extent of which
the world has not yet seen a parallel ... Is it possible to imagine that
such a cooperation can be withheld: can the alienation and errors
infused among classes be so great, that they will perish rather than
follow their concurrent interests!!!" "The Drainage Act of 1846 made the
expense of drainage works a first charge upon the land, and that Act
could be easily expanded and adjusted to the present emergency of the
country. _This principle, alike equitable, comprehensive, and applicable
to our case, is the law; and it only requires that it should be
judiciously and extensively used in order to effect the most rapid and
beneficial change that ever occurred in any country._"[135] That want of
co-operation amongst men for their respective interests of which this
well-informed writer asserts the world had seen no parallel, occurred in
Ireland. Millions of acres were in a wretched half barren condition for
want of being drained; the money for the purpose, already granted by
Parliament, was in the coffers of the Board of Works, and more would
have been supplied; the return for the outlay would have been quick and
remunerative; but the money remained unused and sterile; the land was
not drained, and the people in myriads died of hunger.
We must not, however, be unjust to the parties named in the quotation
given above. The farmers and labourers were powerless for good, unaided
by the landlords and the Government. The last-named gave the landlords
the power of draining their estates on terms not merely just, but really
easy, generous, and remunerative; they refused to avail themselves of
that power; on them, therefore, first and above all others, rests the
weighty responsibility of neglecting the most solemn duty that could
devolve upon them, as accountable beings--that of saving the lives of
their fellow-countrymen; a duty not only within their reach, but one
that could be discharged with the greatest advantage to their own
interests. The next party that failed in its duty was the Government,
who should have compelled the owners of land to that, which, of their
own motion, they had so culpably neglected. Had the Government done
this, the farmers and labourers would have been but too happy to unite
with it and the landlords, in an undertaking so evidently for their own
advantage, as well as for the general weal.
O'Connell, knowing well that if he could secure united action for
practical good amongst the landed interests, everything necessary to
save the people would be comparatively easy, laboured to effect this in
the letter above referred to. He threatened them, too, with the danger
of losing their properties, unless they so acted. "The Government plan
of succour," he says, "is calculated to produce throughout Ireland a
more extended Poor Law, necessarily calculated to extend outdoor relief
to all adult labourers and their families, in a state of destitution, as
well as to all other destitute poor. The English statute of Elizabeth is
being extended to Ireland, and the poverty of the country is about to be
placed for support upon the property--especially upon the landed
property." And again: "The English plan of out-door relief, in its worst
form, will be almost insensibly communicated to Ireland, and their [the
proprietors,] estates not only burthened but actually confiscated." The
remedy for this, he says, is combination amongst the owners of land. The
baronial sessions proved the possibility of such a combination, but they
lasted only a part of a day--there should be a great central permanent
committee in Dublin, appointed by the landowners, and communicating
between them and the Government. Such a body would be most influential,
and could organize the best plans for obtaining Government and local
relief.
Several Relief Committees assembled in Dublin, but not one of them was
constituted after the plan suggested by O'Connell, although many
influential persons expressed their warm approval of it, one landlord,
whilst he did so, offensively applying to its originator the vile
quotation:--_fas est ab hoste doceri_.
Towards the end of September Mr. Monsell, of Tervoe,[136] addressed a
letter to the Irish Chief Secretary, in which he reminds him that the
Labour-rate Act was framed and passed into law at a time when the
Government did not foresee that the potato rot would be making fearful
ravages in every electoral division in Ireland by the first of
September;--that in a number of those there would not be a potato fit to
eat on the first of October, and that, in all probability there would
not remain in the country any considerable quantity of potatoes suitable
for human food by November. In view of this terrific state of things, he
thinks it is no exaggeration to say, that for ten months to come labour
must be found for five hundred thousand men, the cost of which could not
be under five millions of pounds; and as destitution in the South and
West was greater than in the other parts of the country, a great portion
of this sum should be raised in Munster and Connaught. The people were
starving, and be the law good or bad they must be employed under it, as
it was the only way the poor could, for the time, be relieved. He
reviews the provisions of the Labour-rate Act, and like so many other
enlightened men of the period--whose opinions he may be fairly taken to
represent, he is alarmed at the principle of unproductive labour upon
which it was based. The money necessary for the support of the people
must, for the most part, be raised from the land, and as this vast sum,
so raised, does not "revolve back again upon the land," it would be
impossible, he thought, for the nation to recover from such a shock. It
was universally acknowledged that the want of sufficient capital was one
of the great evils--if not _the_ great evil of Ireland. There was
abundant scope for the profitable expenditure of capital, "in every
corner of Ireland--in every barony--almost in every townland; the money
expended upon its improvement would return a large interest of at least
ten per cent., [the usual estimate made by practised men was higher, but
he, being anxious to avoid exaggeration, leaves it at ten], and the
capital of the country would, of course, be largely increased by such
expenditure ...an increasing capital would give more labour, a
decreasing capital less."
1. The first important point, in Mr. Monsell's opinion, was to consider
how they were to spend the large sum necessary to sustain the people. Is
it, he asks, to be spent on productive or unproductive labour? If on the
former, the capital of the country would be vastly increased, and the
means of giving future employment increased in proportion; if on the
latter, every pound so spent would be taken away from that capital, and
the means of employing labour proportionably reduced. It seemed,
therefore, to follow very evidently that, as the leading feature of the
Labour-rate Act was to employ the people on unproductive labour, its
direct tendency was not only to pauperize the country, but to run it
into complete ruin. 2. Another fault in the Act, but one of inferior
magnitude, was that it necessitated the congregating together of large
masses of the people upon public works, which tends to demoralize the
labouring classes; and inflicts, besides, a great hardship upon them, by
compelling them to walk great distances to and from those works, making
it almost impossible for them to have their mid-day meal carried to
them. 3. The experience of the last year proved that fully one-fourth of
the money granted to support the labouring poor was expended on the
purchase of land, on horse labour, and on blasting rocks. Hence,
according to his estimate of the money required for the coming year,
there would be a million and a-quarter of it diverted from its intended
purpose--the relief of the destitute. "The Government cannot," he says,
"by act of Parliament compel drainage or fencing; but they can compel
the owner of land to employ the poor, and make those who refuse to
employ them on productive labour pay for their employment on public
works." Appeals to public spirit, social duties, and so forth, have no
effect; nothing will avail but an appeal to self-interest. Make it,
then, the interest of landowners who neglect their duties to employ the
destitute poor upon profitable labour, by taxing them to pay those poor
for public works--unprofitable labour. As the Labour-rate Act did
nothing of this kind, it inflicted a positive injustice on the good
improving landlord, by taxing him equally with the landlord who never
made an improvement; who, in many instances, was an absentee, forgetful
and culpably ignorant of the state of his property, his sole aim being
to get as much as possible out of it, without expending anything. The
tenants of such a man would be sure to be more destitute than those of
an improving landlord, who is thus taxed unfairly to support
them,--taxed in another way too,--taxed by giving employment, whilst the
other gives none. Indiscriminate taxation was, therefore, a positive
injustice to the improving landlord, and an actual bar to improvement;
for, of course, he would be rated higher on account of his improvements.
Such, however, was taxation under the Labour-rate Act.
Mr. Monsell concluded his able letter in the following words:--"I am
convinced that these evils cannot be avoided without a change in the
law. No matter how the managing of the public works may be extended,
you will still find that unless there is an absolute power given to the
owners and occupiers of land, to have the money raised from the land
expended upon it, you will have such a mass of jobbing and jealousy to
contend with, that very few works of private benefit, very few
productive works, will be executed. I am sure that if you agree with the
views that have now been laid before you, you will announce it speedily
in order to prevent the carrying out of the present ruinous system on
any scale larger than that required to meet our immediate wants, and
that you will not hesitate to recommend that Parliament should be called
together at once. This course may be inconvenient, but such an emergency
requires inconveniences to be encountered. History presents no parallel
to our circumstances. There is no other instance on record of the whole
food of a people becoming rotten before it was ripe. Of course the
system of public works would go on more smoothly than any other that can
be suggested. It would give far less trouble to the Government than the
system which it is proposed to substitute for it; but what would the end
of it be? Never since the connexion of Ireland with England has so awful
a power been placed in the hands of any statesman as in yours. The whole
country is, as it were, fused in your hands--on you depends the future
shape which it will assume. If you use your opportunities well--if you
develope its resources--if you increase its capital--if you improve its
agriculture--if you distribute its wealth as it ought to be distributed,
its progress in the next two or three years will be greater than the
progress ever made by any country in the same time. If you take the easy
course--if you throw away the opportunity placed by Providence in your
hands--if you allow the vast sums of money which you have to direct the
distribution of to be spent unprofitably, we shall retrograde as fast as
under the other alternative we should have advanced; and those who have
been year after year hoping against hope, and labouring against the
tide, will fold their arms in despair."
A deputation from Cork waited on the Prime Minister to urge upon his
attention the utility and necessity of employing the people in
productive instead of non-productive works. He read to them a reply, in
which he said he thought the measures that had passed through Parliament
ought to be sufficient to meet the existing emergency; but whilst he
expressed this view he, using the time-honored official style of
replying to deputations, promised that the subject should receive the
deepest consideration during the ensuing session of Parliament. There
were, he said, subjects of great difficulty to be encountered in
legislating for a country circumstanced as Ireland was. The lands held
by Government might be at once improved, but the case was different with
respect to those that were the property of individuals. Still, he would
not shrink from the necessity or duty of Government interfering even in
the latter case; neither did he deny that while property had its owners
and its rights, that such ownership and rights should not be allowed to
interfere with the operations intended to develop the resources of the
soil, and improve the social condition of the people. The Premier here
uses the far-famed sentiment, almost the very words, of Secretary
Drummond, that property has its duties as well as its rights; but a
sentiment, however just, is but an empty form of words, unless it
receives a practical application at the proper time. The threadbare and
almost insulting platitudes--insulting from the very frequency of their
use--about developing resources and improving the social condition of
the people, were strangely out of place at a moment when coroner's
juries, in various parts of Ireland, were beginning to return verdicts
of "Death from starvation." Lord John, now that he was Minister, talked
of difficulties in legislating for Ireland, especially with regard to
the reclamation of land; when he was only an expectant of office, his
expressed sentiments were quite different. In his speech on the Coercion
Bill, two or three months before, he said:--"There is another source of
benefit, namely, the cultivation of the waste lands. On that subject I
do not see the difficulties which beset the propositions in the regard
of the Poor-laws." Now it is the very reverse. He sees difficulties in
reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland, but finds none in putting into
operation the most objectionable part of the Poor-Law system--- outdoor
relief; for, his Labour-rate Act was, substantially, a gigantic system
of outdoor relief.[137]
Meantime the following requisition was put in circulation and numerously
signed, both by peers and gentry: "We, the undersigned, request a
meeting of the landowners of Ireland to be held in Dublin on the __ day
of ____ next, to press upon her Majesty's Government the importance of
at once adopting the necessary measures to alter the provisions of the
Act, entitled the 9th and 10th Vic., chap. 107, so as to allow the vast
sums of money about to be raised by presentment under it, to be applied
to the development of the resources of the land, rather than in public
works of an unproductive nature."
The principle of the Labour-rate Act was doomed; no voice was raised in
its defence, nor could there have been. The Government having turned a
deaf ear to the call for an Autumn Session, the Repealers were anxious
there should be a demonstration in Dublin that would, as far as
possible, bear the similitude of an Irish Parliament. The above
requisition, very probably without intending it, sustained and
strengthened this idea; the Prime Minister and his colleagues became
alarmed, and the Lord Lieutenant, on the 5th of October, suddenly and
unexpectedly issued, through his Chief Secretary, the famous
Proclamation known as "Labouchere's Letter," which, if it did not
entirely repeal the Labour-rate Act, changed its whole nature. In that
document the Irish public are told that the Lord Lieutenant has had
under his consideration the various representations which had been made
to him of the operation of the poor employment Act, and the difficulty
of finding "public works" upon which it would be expedient or beneficial
to expend money to the extent requisite for affording employment to the
people during the existence of distress; and to obviate the bad effects
of a great expenditure of money in the execution of works _comparatively
unproductive_, he desires that the Commissioners of Public Works would
direct their officers, in the respective counties, to consider and
report upon such works of a _reproductive character and permanent
utility_, as might be presented at any Sessions held under the above
Act; and his Excellency would be prepared to sanction and approve of
such of those works as might be recommended by the Board, and so
presented, _in the same manner_ as if they had been strictly "public
works," and presented as such in the manner required by the Act.[138]
Never did any Government pronounce against itself a more complete
verdict of ignorance and incapacity. The Government had framed the Act;
every clause of it was its own handiwork; it was passed through
Parliament without being modified, amended, or in the slightest degree
opposed, and yet, before it was brought into practical operation--for a
single work had not been commenced under it at the date of the
Proclamation--that same Government virtually repeal it, well knowing
that for such proceeding it must come before Parliament for an Act of
Indemnity.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] This rule gave great dissatisfaction, the wages in many places
being already far too low, in proportion to the price of provisions.
When the Cork deputation waited on Lord John Russell, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer said, in reply to Rev. Mr. Gibson, that the Minute of the
Lords of the Treasury requiring that wages should be twopence under the
standard of the country _was not the law_, and if necessary could be
modified.
[123] The italics are their lordships'.
[124] Letter to Mr. Trevelyan, Commissariat Series, Part I, p. 439, who
did not like it all, and sent in reply, on the part of the Treasury, an
elaborate defence of high prices and large profits; although the people
in many districts could only purchase one meal a day with the wages they
received on the public works, as is testified by Commissary-General
Doree's letter (p. 444); and by numberless other letters from almost
every part of the country; hence men in full employment on the
Government works died of starvation, or of dysentery produced by it. And
why should they not? They were earning 8-1/4d. a day at task work,
whilst meal was 3s. a stone; and the next shop in which it was sold for
that sum was often a great distance from them--in some cases twenty, and
even five-and-twenty miles!
The following paragraph went the round of the newspapers at the close of
December:--"A FACT JOB LORD JOHN RUSSELL.--Mr. Bianconi, ex-Mayor of
Clonmel, had shipped to him on the 14th of December, at New York, a
small lot of best Indian corn, at _twenty-three shillings_ per quarter
of 480 lbs.; and the same post which brought the invoice brought a
letter stating the price at Liverpool was _seventy-two_ shillings. What
will Lord John Russell say to this?
[125] Board of Works' Series, vol. L., p. 97.
[126] Mr. Monsell's Letter to Lord Devon.
[127] The case of Ireland, etc., contained in two letters to the Right
Hon. Henry Labouchere, Chief Secretary of Ireland, by the Rev. William
Prior Moore, A.M., Cavan, p. 6. Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1991.
[128] _Ib._ p. 7.
[129] _Ib._
[130] The Case of Ireland, etc., p. 11.
[131] _Ib._ p. 11, 12. The capitals and italics in the above quotations
are Mr. Moore's.
[132] Memorandum to Commissary-General Hewetson. Commissariat Series, p.
452.
[133] "A great deal of delay on the part of the Board of Works in the
respect of drainage was occasioned by that body involving themselves in
legal intricacies which were not necessary under the Act." _O'Connell's
Speech at the Baronial Sessions of Caherciveen._
[134] _Correspondence on some of the general effects of the failure of
the potato crop and its consequent relief measures. By J.P. Kennedy,
formerly an officer of the corps of Royal Engineers, and late Secretary
of the Land and Relief Commissions. Dublin: Alex. Thom, 1847. Halliday
Pamphlets, vol. 1993._
[135] _Ibid._ The italics are Mr. Kennedy's.
[136] Now Lord Emly.
[137] "The works under the 9th and 10th Vict., cap. 107, (the
Labour-rate Act,) were to be sanctioned for sake of this relief, and not
for sake of the works themselves."--_Mr. Trevelyan's Letter to
Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, Board of Works' Series of Blue Books, vol. L.,
p_. 97.
[138] See Proclamation, in Appendix, Note D. "The intended meeting in
Dublin will be _now_ abandoned, as the promoters of it must be satisfied
with Lord Bessborough's Proclamation."--_Mr. Pierce Mahony to the Earl
of Clarendon, 6th October, Commissariat Series of Blue Books, vol. I.,
p. 123_.
Mr. Pierce Mahony was a very well-known Dublin solicitor; a man of
position, and evidently in the confidence of Lord Clarendon. He writes
from the Stephen's-Green Club, the recognised representative body of the
Whigs in Ireland. How anxious the Government must have been that a chief
effect of their proclamation would be to prevent the intended
demonstration in Dublin is patent from the hurry with which Mr. Mahony
transmits the intelligence to the President of the Board of Trade.