CHAPTER XIII.

The Irish Relief Act, 10th Vic., c. 7--Rapid expansion of Public

Works--They fail to sustain the people--Clauses of the new Relief

Act--Relief Committees--Their duties--Union rating--Principal clergy

members of Relief Committees--Duties of Government

Inspectors--Finance Committees--Numbers on Public Works in February,

1847--Monthly outlay--Parliament gives authority to borrow

£8,000,000--Reduction of labourers on Public Works--Task work

condemned--Rules drawn up by new Relief Commissioners--Rations to be

allowed--Definition of soup--First Report of

Commissioners--Remonstrances--Quantity of stationery used--Cooked

food recommended--Monsieur Soyer comes to Ireland--His coming

heralded by the London Journals--His soup--Jealousy--M. Jaquet on

Soyer--The _Lancet_ on the subject--Professor Aldridge, M.D., on

Soyer's soup--Sir Henry Marsh on it--M. Soyer's model soup

kitchen--A "gala day"--Ireland M. Soyer's "difficulty"--Last

appearance!--Description of his "Model Soup Kitchen"

(_Note_).--Reclamation of waste lands--Quantity reclaimable--Sir

Robert Kane's view--Mr. Fagan on Reclamation--Mr. Poulette Scrope on

the Irish question--Unreclaimed land in Mayo--The Dean of

Killala--Commissary-General Hewetson on reclamation and

over-population--Opposition to reclamation--No reason given for

it--Sir R. Griffith on it--Mr. Fetherstone a reclaimer of

bog--Reclamation of bog in England--Second Report of Relief

Commissioners--Relief Works closed too rapidly--The twenty per cent.

rule--M. Labouchere's reply to Smith O'Brien--Letter from Colonel

Jones--The Premier's promise--The Claremorris deanery--Effect of the

dismissals in various parts of the country--Soup kitchens

attacked--Third Report of the Relief Commissioners--Questions from

Inspectors--O'Connell's last illness--His attempt to reach Rome--His

death--His character--Remaining reports of the Relief

Commissioners--The Accountant's department--Number of rations--Money

spent.

The expansion of the system of Public Works, under the Labour-rate Act,

was as unparalleled as it was unexpected by the Government. The number

of persons employed rose, in less than three months, from 20,000 to four

hundred thousand; the return for the week ending on the 5th of October

was just 20,000; for the week ending on the 26th of December, 398,000!

there being at the latter period at least one hundred and fifty

thousand on the books of the officers of the works, who either would not

or could not be employed; the famine-stricken were, meantime, hastening

to their shroudless and coffinless graves by the thousand. During its

progress the terrible scourge was checked more or less by the various

means made use of, but it was never stayed. The Government were not only

astonished--they were profoundly alarmed at the magnitude to which the

public works had grown. Almost the sole object of those works was _to

apply a labour test to destitution_; but the authorities now felt that

they must dismiss that pet theory of theirs and try to feed the people

in the most direct way possible.

At the opening of Parliament the Prime Minister brought forward, as we

have seen, a new Irish Relief Act, the 10th Vic., c. 7. It was called an

Act for the temporary relief of destitute persons in Ireland. It was

framed according to the views expressed by the Prime Minister in his

speech of January the 25th, and became law on the 26th of February.

The first clause acknowledged that the Labour-rate Act failed to meet

the exigency, for it recites that "by reason of the great increase of

destitution in Ireland, sufficient relief could not be given according

to the provisions of the Labour-rate Act;" the Lord Lieutenant was,

therefore, empowered to appoint Commissioners for the relief of

destitution in that country, with full authority to carry out all

arrangements under the Act. Its chief provisions were: That Relief

Committees should be formed by order of the Lord Lieutenant, and their

powers were to extend to the 1st of November, 1847, on which day they

were to cease. Those Committees were to consist of the Justices of the

district, the Poorlaw Guardians, and one of the Inspectors appointed by

the Relief Commissioners. A Finance Committee was to be selected from

the General Committee, but the Lord Lieutenant was empowered to add

others to it. A chief duty of Relief Committees was to make out lists

of persons requiring relief, but the Finance Committees had authority to

examine such lists, and correct them if necessary. The money required

for this new system of relief was to be levied and collected as a

poor-rate; and the guardians of any Union who refused to do this could

be dissolved by the Poorlaw Commissioners, who were also empowered to

appoint paid Guardians in their place. The Treasury, on being applied to

by the Relief Commissioners, was authorized to make advances to enable

them to grant loans in aid of rates, but no such grant or loan was to be

made after the 1st of October, 1847.

There is a clause in this Act which is not without its interest at the

present time. It is the thirteenth. It recites that "the Relief

Commissioners, with the sanction of the Lord Lieutenant, are empowered

to direct, whether the whole or any part of the sum mentioned ... shall

be borne by and charged exclusively against the Electoral Division, or

whether the whole or any part thereof shall be borne by and charged

against the whole Union; and the Guardians shall charge the whole Union,

and the several Electoral Divisions accordingly."

Here is Union-rating in 1847.

Immediate preparations were made to carry this Act into effect.

Commissioners were appointed; a General Order was issued by the Lord

Lieutenant, and in due time that most potential of documents, a Treasury

Minute, was published.[246]

In virtue of the powers conferred on him, his Excellency, in his General

Order, declared that besides the justices, Poorlaw Guardians and Relief

Inspector; archbishops and bishops of every denomination, the principal

officiating clergy of the three denominations, and the three highest

ratepayers of the district should be members of Relief Committees. Some

further regulations were made to meet such special difficulties as might

arise. In the next place his Excellency defined the duties of Government

Inspectors. They were: 1. To direct and stimulate the Committees within

their districts; 2. They were to exercise vigilance in order that relief

should be given only to persons really in need of it; 3. And they were

commanded to interfere as little as possible with Committees that were

performing their duties well, whilst, at the same time, it was laid down

as their duty to interfere with, and address Committees whose

proceedings were of an injurious kind.

As to Finance Committees, the Lord Lieutenant explained that they were

to be composed of the resident gentlemen, who had the greatest interest

in the welfare of the districts. The legislature intended, he said, that

they were to be the superintending controlling bodies over the

proceedings of the Committees of Electoral Divisions, inasmuch as it was

to them the country had to look for the carrying out of the provisions

of the Act, with the least injury to the great interests concerned.

There is no doubt that in this matter the Lord Lieutenant used the

powers vested in him with a good deal of freedom as to the appointment

of the Finance Committees. The clause of the Act referring to them (the

6th) runs thus: "And be it enacted, that it shall be lawful for the Lord

Lieutenant of Ireland, in every case in which it shall appear to him

expedient, to appoint in every Union in which this Act shall be in

force, a Finance Committee, which shall consist of the Inspector, to be

appointed as aforesaid by the Relief Commissioners for such Union, and

of such justices resident in the Union, or such other persons as the

Lord Lieutenant should think fit, not being less than two and not more

than four persons in addition to such Inspector."

The Treasury Minute repeats the numbers on the public works during the

month of February. They were, in the

Week ending on the 6th, , . . 615,055

Week ending on the 13th,. . . 605,715

Week ending on the 20th,. . . 668,749

Week ending on the 27th,. . . 708,228

It also gives the outlay for three months, not including the expenses of

the Commissariat Department, which were by no means inconsiderable.

It was for December, . . . . £545,054

" " January, 1847,. . £736,125

" " February, " ,. . £944,141

being nearly a million of money for that month. Besides excluding the

expenditure of the Commissariat, this account did not, of course, take

in the very large sums disbursed by charitable bodies and by private

individuals.

The new Relief Act came into force on the 27th of February, and the

Government obtained, without any difficulty, the permission of

Parliament to borrow £8,000,000, to carry out its provisions. As this

Act was to supersede the Public Works, it was decreed by the Treasury

Minute that on Saturday the 20th of March the labourers on those works

should be reduced by not less than twenty per cent. The remainder were

to be dismissed by successive reductions, at such times and in such

proportions as would be determined by the Board. The order in which

dismissals wore to be carried out was, that persons holding ten acres of

land and upwards, were to be discharged on the 20th of March, _even if

they should exceed the twenty per cent._; if they fell below it, the

persons holding the next largest quantity of land should be discharged

in order that the full twenty per cent. should be dismissed. In

districts where rations of soup could be supplied by the Relief

Committees, the Relief Works were to be entirely suspended.

It was added in the Minute, that as the Commissioners of Public Works

were of opinion that, in existing circumstances, the mode of employing

persons by task work did not answer the expectations that were formed of

it, there should be a recurrence to daily pay, at such rates as might be

fixed with the sanction of the Lord Lieutenant.

As soon as the Relief Commissioners entered upon their duties, they drew

up a code of rules for the information and guidance of Relief

Committees.

The following are the principal:

1. Relief Committees to be under the regulating control of a Finance

Committee for each Union.

2. As to funds:--local or other subscriptions, with donations from

Government and moneys in hand of Poorlaw Guardians, to be regarded as

appropriated rates on electoral divisions, where needed.

3. The funds in hands of existing Relief Committees were to be generally

available for Committees under the new Act.

4. Relief to be given exclusively in food; gratuitously to the

absolutely desolate; by reasonable prices to such, as were in

employment, or had the means of purchasing.

5. There was to be a Government Inspector of every Union, who was to be

an _ex-officio_ member of every Committee under the Act in the Union.

9. Persons requiring relief were to be classed under _four_ heads,

namely: (1) Those who were destitute, helpless or impotent; (2)

Destitute able-bodied persons not holding land; (3) Destitute

able-bodied persons who were holders of small portions of land; (4) The

able-bodied employed at wages insufficient for their support, when the

price of food was very high.

10. The first three classes to get gratuitous relief, but the fourth to

be relieved by the sale of food of a cheap description: and it was

specially laid down that there were to be "no gratuitous supplies of

food to them." "This," say the Instructions, "is to be a fixed rule."

Yet it was afterwards modified with regard to class 4: the clause

saying "they were to be relieved by the sale of food of a cheap

description" did not, it would seem, mean that such food was to be sold

under its value. This was represented as a hardship, and on the 11th of

May the Relief Commissioners ruled, that with regard to the price of

food to class 4, "any food cooked in a boiler might be sold under first

cost."

12. Persons receiving wages, or refusing hire, to be excluded from

gratuitous relief.

15. To entitle holders of land to gratuitous relief, it should be

absolutely required of them to proceed with the cultivation of their

land.

The relief lists were to be revised every fortnight; the food best

suited to each district, and the most easily obtained _there_, to be at

once taken into consideration.

As to rations, it was considered that the most nourishing and economical

food was soup made after some of the approved receipts, with a portion

of bread, meal, or biscuit.

The 26th rule fixed the quantity and quality of a ration.

It was to consist of

1-1/2 lbs. of bread; or

1 lb. of biscuit; or

1 lb. of meal or flour of any grain; or

1 quart of soup thickened with a portion of

meal, according to the known receipts,

and one quarter ration of bread, biscuit or

meal, in addition.

Persons above nine years of age to have one full ration; those under

that age half a ration.

These rules were promulgated from the Relief Commission Office, in

Dublin Castle, on the 8th of March.

A difficulty having arisen as to what could be strictly considered

"soup," the following definition of it was issued by the Relief

Commissioners to the Inspecting officers of each Union.

"Sir, As the term 'Soup' in the Instructions seems to have created an

impression with many parties, that only the liquid ordinarily so called

is meant, and that meat must necessarily form an ingredient, the Relief

Commissioners beg that the general term 'soup,' in their Instructions,

may be understood to include any food cooked in a boiler, and

distributed in a liquid state, thick or thin, and whether composed of

meat, fish, vegetables, grain or meal."

The Commissioners published their first report on the 10th of March,

eleven days after the Relief Act came into force; an exceedingly short

time for them in which to have done anything worth reporting; but this

is explained by the fact, that they and their officers had been set to

work a considerable time before the Relief Act had become law; the

Government assuming that it would meet with no real opposition in its

passage through Parliament.

From this Report we learn that there were, at the time, 2049 electoral

divisions in Ireland; and from a later one, that Blackrock, near Dublin,

was the smallest electoral division, consisting only of 257 acres; that

the largest was Belmullet, in the County of Mayo, which contained

145,598 acres. The extremes in the valuation of electoral divisions

were,--Mullaghderg, in Glenties Union, £331 10s. 0d.; South Dublin,

£402,516 3s. 4d. So that a shilling rate levied off Mullaghderg would

produce just £16 12s. 6d., which in all probability would not pay for

the time necessary to collect it.[247]

The Commissioners report, that two conditions laid down by them had

called forth several remonstrances, namely, (1) The prohibition of

administering relief under the Act _in aid of wages_; and (2) The

restriction to the sale of food under cost price, with the exception of

soup.

The quantity of stationery necessary for the carrying out of the Relief

Act is certainly worth noting. In the mere preparation for their work,

the Commissioners had delivered to them upwards of 10,000 books, 80,000

sheets, and 3,000,000 of card tickets; the gross weight of all not being

less than fourteen tons! Two Inspectors, Major Parker and Captain Drury,

having caught fever at Skibbereen and Kinsale respectively, fell victims

to it.

Lest they should be suspected of not being true believers in Political

Economy, the Commissioners thus conclude their first report: "Your

Lordships are aware that the relief that we are now administering is not

only of a temporary character, but necessarily of a nature contrary to

all sound principles of policy."

The determination of the authorities to supply, as far as possible, the

starving people with cooked food, especially soup, made the question of

preparing it for millions one of vast importance. To produce the

greatest quantity of cooked food in a palatable form, at the minimum of

cost, and with the maximum of nutrition, might save the country half a

million of money, and many thousands of lives besides. With this object

the Government fixed upon Monsieur Soyer of the Reform Club, and

appointed him Head Cook to the people of Ireland. His elevation to this

unique office was announced with considerable flourish. "We learn," says

one of the London journals, "that the Government have resolved forthwith

to despatch M. Soyer, the _chef de cuisine_ of the Reform Club, to

Ireland, with ample instructions to provide his soups for the starving

millions of Irish people." And this journal further informs us that

artizans were busy day and night constructing kitchens, apparatus, etc.,

with which M. Soyer was to start for Dublin, "direct to the Lord

Lieutenant." His plans had been examined and approved of. The soup had

been served to several of the best judges "of the noble art of

gastronomy in the Reform Club, not as soup for the poor, but as soup

furnished for the day, in the _carte_." It was declared excellent. He

undertook to supply the whole poor of Ireland, at one meal for each

person each day. This meal with a biscuit, he assured the Executive,

would be more than sufficient to sustain the strength of a strong and

healthy man. One hundred gallons of the soup was to be produced for £1.

And M. Soyer had satisfied the Government, that he would furnish enough

and to spare of most nourishing food "for the poor of these realms;" and

it was confidently anticipated that there would be no more deaths from

starvation in Ireland.[248]

M. Soyer arrived in Dublin on the 1st of March, bringing with him his

model kitchen and apparatus, and a building to receive them was erected

on the ground in front of the Royal Barracks, and not far from the

principal entrance to the Phoenix Park. Before leaving London he had

published some of the receipts according to which he intended to make

various kinds of soups for the starving Irish. Objections were raised in

the columns of the _Times_ against the small quantity of meat he used in

making some of those soups. "A brother _artiste_," as M. Soyer calls

him, maintained that a quarter of a pound of meat, allowed in making two

gallons of his soup No. 1, was not at all enough. M. Soyer rather

jauntily replies that he had made two gallons of excellent soup without

any meat, and that he had, at the moment, three soups "on taste," two

with meat and one without, and he defied the "scientific palate" of his

brother _artiste_ "to tell which was which." "The meat," says M. Soyer,

"I consider of no more value than the other ingredients, but to give a

flavour by properly blending the gelatine and the osmazome, for," he

adds with complacent self-reliance, "in compounding the richest soup,

the balance of it is the great art."

His brother _artiste_, M. Jaquet, of Johnson's tavern, Clare Court,

rejoins that he never questioned M. Soyer's ability to make a palatable

and pleasing soup with little or no meat, but that he himself had not

acquired the valuable art of making nutritious and useful soup without

meat, and that he would not like to make the experiment of doing so,

"for the use of the destitute poor." He expressed the hope that receipt

No. 1 might be analyzed, and if it had all things necessary for

nourishment, he, of course, was silenced.

M. Jaquet had his wish. Scientific people took up M. Soyer's receipts,

and dealt with them,--correctly and justly, no doubt, but in a manner

that must have been anything but agreeable to the great _artiste_ of the

Reform Club, who seems to have had very exalted ideas of the importance

of the mission on which he was sent to Ireland.

Thus wrote the _Lancet_ on the subject: "The mass of the poor population

of Ireland is in a state of starvation. Gaunt famine, with raging fever

at her heels, are marching through the length and breadth of the sister

island, and they threaten to extend their fury to this Country. The

British public, under the form of clubs, committees, and relief

associations, are actively engaged in sending food to the famine

districts. All this is done without boasting or ostentation. But

parliament and the executive, in the midst of the best intentions, seems

to be agitated by a spasmodic feeling of benevolence; at one time

adopting public works, at another preaching a poorlaw--now considering

the propriety of granting sixteen millions for railways, and then

descending to M. Soyer, the chief cook of the Reform Club, with his

ubiquitous kitchens and soups, at some three farthings the quart, which

is to feed all hungry Ireland.

"As this soup quackery (for it is no less) seems to be taken by the rich

as a salve for their consciences, and with a belief that famine and

fever may be kept at bay by M. Soyer and his kettles, it is right to

look at the constitution of this soup of pretence, and the estimate

formed of it by the talented but eccentric self-deceived originator.

"M. Soyer proposes to make soup of the following proportions:--Leg of

beef, four ounces; dripping fat, two ounces; flour, eight ounces; brown

sugar, half an ounce; water, _two gallons_.

"These items are exclusive of the onions, a few turnip parings,

celery-tops, and a little salt, which can hardly be considered under the

head of food. The above proportions give less than three ounces of solid

nutriment to each quart of soup a la Soyer. Of this its inventor is

reported to have said to the Government 'that a bellyful once a day,

with a biscuit, (we quote from the _Observer_,) will be more than

sufficient to maintain the strength of a strong healthy man.'

"To bring this to the test. Organic chemistry proves to us that the

excretæ from the body of a healthy subject by the eliminatory organs

must at least amount to twelve or fourteen ounces; and organic chemistry

will not, we fear, bend to the most inspired receipts of the most

miraculous cookery book, to supply the number of ounces without which

the organic chemistry of the human body will no more go on than will the

steam-engine without fuel. M. Soyer, supposing each meal of his soup for

the poor to amount to a quart, supplies less than three ounces, or less

than a quarter the required amount, and of that only one solitary half

ounce of animal aliment, diluted, or rather dissolved in a bellyful of

water. Bulk of water, the gastronomic may depend, will not make up for

the deficiency of solid convertible aliment. No culinary digesting, or

stewing, or boiling, can convert four ounces into twelve, unless,

indeed, the laws of animal physiology can be unwritten, and some magical

power be made to reside in the cap and apron of the cook for

substituting fluids in the place of solids, and _aqua pura_ in place of

solids in the animal economy.

"It seems necessary to bring forward these facts, as M. Soyer's soup

has inspired the public mind with much satisfaction--a satisfaction

which, we venture to say, will never reach the public stomach.

"Marquises and lords and ladies may taste the meagre liquid, and

pronounce it agreeable to their gustative inclinations; but something

more than an agreeable titilation of the palate is required to keep up

that manufactory of blood, bone, and muscle which constitutes the

'strong healthy man.'"

During M. Soyer's visit to Ireland, a Dublin chemist read, before the

Royal Dublin Society, a paper upon the nutritive and pecuniary value of

various kinds of cooked food. He had previously put himself in

communication with M. Soyer, who showed him over his model kitchen, and

allowed him to analyze his soups. The result of this analysis was

remarkable, for he found that M. Soyer's dearest soup was the least

nutritive, whilst his cheapest soup was the most so: a proportion which

held through all the soups analyzed; their nutritive qualities being in

an inverse ratio to their prices. In his calculation the chemist takes a

child of four stones weight, as the average of persons who required food

relief, and he found that--

160 gallons of Soyer's soup No. 2 would give sufficient nutriment

to 213 such children for one day. Its price was 2-3/4d. the gallon.

160 gallons of Soyer's soup No. 4 would give sufficient nutriment

to 420 such children for one day. Its price was 2-1/4d. the gallon.

160 gallons of his soup No. 5 would give sufficient nutriment to

385 such children for one day. Its price was 2-1/2d. the gallon.

160 gallons of his soup No. 6 (a fish soup) would give sufficient

nutriment to 700 such children for one day. Its price was only

1-3/4d. the gallon.[249]

So that the famous cook of the Reform Club did not know the comparative

nutritive qualities of his own soups.

But a still greater came on the scene in the person of Sir Henry Marsh,

the Queen's physician, and long at the head of his profession in this

country. He published a pamphlet of some ten pages, not for the purpose

of finding fault with M. Soyer or his soups, but evidently to set the

public right on the question of food, as they seemed to have taken up

the idea that there resided some hidden power in the cook's receipt,

distinct from the ingredients he used. Sir Henry thus deals with soup

food:--

"A soft semi-liquid diet will maintain the life and health of children,

and in times of scarcity will be sufficient for those adults whose

occupations are sedentary, and is best suited to those who are reduced

by and recovering from a wasting disease. Such persons stand in no need

of the more abundant and more substantial nutriment which is essential

to those who are daily engaged in occupations exacting much muscular

labour. In the preparation and distribution of food, this I believe to

be an important point, and one which should be held steadily in view.

For the labourer the food must be in part solid, requiring mastication

and insalivation, and not rapid of digestion. Food, however nutritious,

which is too quickly digested, is soon followed by a sense of hunger and

emptiness, and consequent sinking and debility. Food of this description

is unsuited to the labourer. It will not maintain strength, nor will it

maintain health, and, if long persevered in, it will be followed by some

one or other of the prevailing diseases which result immediately from

deficient, imperfect, and impoverished blood."

Again:--

"Our attention must not be too exclusively directed to soups and other

semi-liquid articles of food. These pass away too rapidly from the

stomach, are swallowed too hastily, and violate a natural law in

superseding the necessity of mastication, and a proper admixture with

the salivary secretion. Restricted to such food the carnivora cannot

maintain life; nor can man, being half carnivorous, if laboriously

employed, long preserve health and strength on food of such

character.... Food, to be at once sustaining to the labourer, and

preventive of disease, must have bulk--must possess solidity--must not

be rapidly digestible, and must contain, in varied proportions, all the

staminal ingredients of nutriment."

Sir Henry Marsh, said one of the morning journals, did not attack M.

Soyer, but he demolished the soup kitchen as effectively as if he did.

As soon as M. Soyer's model soup depôt was completed, he resolved to

open it for public inspection with a good deal of ceremony. On the 5th

of April, therefore, the opening day, the space in front of the Royal

Barracks presented a very animated scene; flags floated gaily in the

breeze; the rich dresses of ladies of birth and fashion contrasted

pleasingly with the costly and superb military uniforms among which they

moved; and M. Soyer was all politeness in explaining to his

distinguished visitors the arrangements and perfections of his soup

kitchen. In a famine-stricken land, the good taste of this exhibition

was doubtful enough: at any rate it was criticised with no sparing hand.

When I got a card of invitation, writes one, I thought I was to see M.

Soyer's peculiar appliances for making soup for the poor; but no--it was

a "gala day:" drums beating, flags flying. Then the writer grows

political, and says bitterly, that he "envied not the Union flag the

position it occupied as it flaunted in triumph from the chimney top of

the soup kitchen; it was its natural and most meet position; the rule of

which it is the emblem has brought our country to require soup

kitchens,--and no more fitting ornament could adorn their tops." All the

parade he could, he says, have borne, but what he considered

indefensible was the exhibition of some hundreds of Irish beggars "to

demonstrate what ravening hunger will make the image of God submit

to."[250] "His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant was there," wrote the

_Evening Packet_ (a Conservative journal); "the ladies Ponsonby and many

other fair and delicate creatures assembled; there were earls and

countesses, and lords and generals, and colonels and commissioners, and

clergymen and doctors; for, reader, it was a _gala day_,--a _grand

gala_." The provincial press dealt with the proceedings in the same

spirit.

Like many other great men, M. Soyer, in a short time, found that Ireland

was his "difficulty;" so he resolved, somewhat suddenly, it would

appear, to return to the more congenial atmosphere of the Reform Club.

His resolution was thus announced in one of the Dublin morning journals:

"SOYER'S MODEL KITCHEN.--By the special desire of several charitable

ladies, who have visited and paid particular attention to the working of

the model kitchen, it will be opened again on Saturday next, from two to

six, on which day those ladies, under the direction of Mrs. L----, will

attend and serve the poor. The admission for the view on that day will

be five shillings each, to be distributed by the Lord Mayor in charity;

after which the kitchen will be closed, M. Soyer being obliged to leave

for the Reform Club, London." This smacked very much of a "positively

last appearance." Referring to it, a Dublin journal exclaims--"Five

shillings each to see paupers feed! Five shillings each to watch the

burning blush of shame chasing pallidness from poverty's wan cheek! Five

shillings each! When the animals in the Zoological Gardens can be

inspected at feeding time for _sixpence_!"[251]

A few gentlemen gave M. Soyer a dinner and a snuff box before he left,

and so his Irish mission was brought to a close; but his name was not

forgotten, for _Sawyer's soup_ was long a standing joke with a certain

class of the Dublin people. Had the word come into popular use at the

time, there is little doubt that M. Soyer's undertaking to feed the

starving Irish would have been called a _fiasco_.[252]

Philanthropists of a stamp different from M. Soyer brought forward

schemes for the good of Ireland at this time. They related chiefly to

the reclamation of her waste lands. At the opening of Parliament in

1847, Lord John Russell, as we have seen, proposed to introduce a Bill

on this subject, one million being the first grant to be made for the

purpose. The plan on which the reclamation was to be carried out is

given in the resumè of Lord John's speech at the opening of the session.

It was the very best of the Premier's measures for the permanent

improvement of Ireland; but, according to Mr. D'Israeli, it was faintly

proposed, and finally abandoned in deference to the expressed opinion of

Sir Robert Peel, who, at the time, governed from the Opposition benches.

This question of the reclamation of our waste lands had been often

before Parliament and the public previous to 1847. The committee

relating to the poor of Ireland in the year 1830 refer in their report

to no less than twelve preceding sessions in which the importance of

reclaiming the Irish wastes was strongly recommended, but the

publication of the "Industrial Resources of Ireland," by Dr. (now Sir

Robert) Kane, a short time before the Famine, directed public attention

anew to the subject.

The area of Ireland is 20,808,271 statute acres. Of these it is commonly

admitted that 18,600,000, or thereabouts, are susceptible of

cultivation. In 1845, somewhat over 13,000,000 of acres were in

cultivation, whilst nearly 5,000,000, which could be brought under

culture, lay barren. Referring to the estimate of those writers who held

that Ireland contained 4,600,000 acres of waste, which could be made

arable, Dr. Kane said he did not think the estimate too high; and this

opinion was quoted approvingly by Lord John Russell.[253]

But the question might still remain,--could those four and a-half

millions of acres he profitably cultivated? Would their cultivation give

remunerative interest on the capital expended? That is the purely

commercial view of the matter; but there is another which should not be

overlooked: Would it not be wise policy to increase the resources of a

country,--to increase its area of cultivation,--to extend the means of

employing and feeding its population, even though the work did not

actually make a very remunerative commercial return? English capital has

gone to make canals and railroads and harbours, and open mines for the

antipodes, often with little or no return; not unfrequently with total

loss; surely as much risk ought to be taken for home improvements, in

which patriotism should come to the aid of commercial enterprise. The

Chinese have, after their own fashion, devoted themselves to this kind

of improvement for centuries; so have the enlightened Dutch, the most

recent example of which is that noble engineering achievement, the

draining of the lake of Haarlem; and although the sale of the drained

land did not recoup the Government for the outlay, yet they felt the

work was a great national benefit, inasmuch as it added forty-three

thousand acres to the arable soil of Holland. So pleased indeed are they

with the result, that they have at present under consideration another

undertaking of the same kind, and of far greater extent, namely, the

draining of the Zuider Zee.

It would seem, then, to be a question well worthy the consideration of

statesmen, whether or not, in the reclamation of wastes, it would be the

true and enlightened policy to act upon the commercial idea alone.

Mr. Fagan, a commercial man of sound practical ability, who sat in the

House of Commons for the County Wexford, put forward, in the famine

period, a scheme for the reclamation of the waste lands.[254] It was

mainly based upon the principle, that the men whose labour reclaimed

those lands should have a beneficial interest in them. The wealth--the

capital of the poor man, he said, lie in the health and strength with

which God has endowed him, and if he be denied the means of employing

this capital profitably, what matters it to him that the harvest is

bountiful--that the corn stores are full? Mr. Fagan discusses several

plans according to which Irish waste lands might be reclaimed. 1.

Individual exertion. This, in his opinion, would not answer, because it

would be too slow, too isolated, to do the work in a broad,

comprehensive manner, and within a reasonable time. 2. The next plan

which he passes in review is what he terms joint-stock enterprise. This

he also rejects, as being expensive in management, and therefore

unremunerative. 3. Reclamation by the Government, so commonly advocated,

he also rejects, because he did not think such an undertaking within the

legitimate sphere of the Government, and that it would be inconsistent

with sound policy.

Having set aside these three modes of reclamation, he puts forward his

own.

1. He was of opinion that the principle of _individual_ industry should

be applied to the reclamation of the waste lands, and that a reasonable

share of the fruits of the industry of the reclaimer should be secured

to him. Where enlightened proprietors have done this, their wastes, he

says, became fertile, and agrarian outrages were unknown. Give, in a

word, the Irish peasant the same interest in reclaiming the waste at

home, that he gets in reclaiming the waste abroad, and the same

beneficial results will follow.

2. For the right working of this principle, the waste lands should be

resumed by the State. This he regarded as an indispensable preliminary.

Pay the proprietors fully for them, let the ground be valued as it is

valued for railways; paid for at its present, not its prospective value,

and let it be vested in Commissioners. Lots of convenient size should be

made, and sold, when reclaimed; but at no higher price than twenty-four

years' purchase. The State should also empower the Commissioner to sell

waste, in lots of not less than ten acres; ten acres to be the minimum

of reclaimed lots also. Existing proprietors should have the option of

reclaiming or selling; but in the former case security should be given

that the work would be immediately proceeded with.

Mr. Fagan would ask no pecuniary aid from the Government to carry out

his plan; he would meet the expenses of it by an agency tax, that is, a

tax upon house and land agencies, and upon all agencies. In saying this

he must have meant, that he would not ask money out of the Consolidated

Fund; for he could not but have seen that in carrying it out by a tax of

any kind, he would be doing so by the aid of the Government. The effect

of Mr. Fagan's plan would have been, to create, to a certain extent, a

peasant proprietary.

Mr. Poulett Scrope, then representing the borough of Stroud in

Parliament, took much interest in Irish questions, more especially

during the Famine; at which time he, in a series of letters addressed to

Lord John Russell, put forward his views on the legislation which he

considered necessary under the existing circumstances of this country.

Three Bills in his opinion, should have been at once proceeded with in

Parliament; one to facilitate the sale of encumbered estates; one to

improve the relations between landlord and tenant; and the third for

commencing without delay the reclamation of the waste lands. This last

he considered as of the most pressing urgency. Strange enough, that

since Mr. Scrope wrote, laws have been passed on the two former

subjects, whilst the one considered by him the most necessary, still

remains unlegislated on. His great object was, he said, to create

employment, and to create it in the production of food, if possible.

Surely, says Mr. Scrope, if this can be created for the people at home,

it is much better, for a thousand reasons, than to attempt to find it

for them in America. "I cannot refrain," he writes, "from expressing

astonishment at the degree to which the almost inexhaustible resources

offered by the waste lands of Ireland for the production of employment

of the wretched and unwillingly idle labourers of that country, have

been overlooked and neglected, no less by statesmen than individual

proprietors."[255]

From whatever cause, Irish landowners did not, to any considerable

extent, take up, in earnest, the question of the reclamation of waste

lands. Roused by the pressure of the times and the impending poor-rate,

the majority of them looked, says Mr. Scrope, "for salvation" to other

means--to the eviction of their numerous tenantry--the clearing of their

estates from the seemingly superfluous population by emigration or

ejectment. "Yet," he continues, "nothing can be more true or more

capable of demonstration than the assertion that there is no real

redundancy of population in Ireland. Nay, that even in the most

distressed and apparently overcrowded districts, a wise and prudent

management of their natural resources might find profitable employment

for all, to the great advantage of the proprietors themselves, and the

still greater benefit of the people and the public, which is so deeply

interested in the result."[256]

The readers of these pages cannot forget that Mayo suffered as much as,

if not more than, any other county, during the Famine; yet here was the

state of its surface at the time of that dreadful visitation: entire

area of the County Mayo, 1,300,000 acres; of these only 500,000 acres

were under cultivation, 800,000 acres being unreclaimed; of which

800,000 acres, Griffith says, nearly 500,000 could be reclaimed with

profit;--that is, just half the county was cultivated. The Dean of

Killala gave the following evidence about the same county before the

Devon Commission: _Quest. 73_. "Is there sufficient employment for the

people in the cultivation of the arable land?" _Answ._ "No; it does not

employ them half the year." _Quest. 74_. "But there would be employment

for them in reclaiming the waste?" _Answ._ "Yes; more than ample, if

there was encouragement given. Where I reside there are many thousands

of acres waste, because it would not be let at a moderate rent." _Quest.

75_. "Is the land with you termed waste, capable of being made

productive?" _Answ._ "Yes; every acre of it."

On this same question of the reclamation of Irish waste lands and

redundant population, Commissary-General Hewetson, one of the principal

assistants of Sir Randal Routh, writes, in the height of the Famine:

"The transition from potatoes to grain requires tillage in the

proportion of _three_ to _one_. It is useless, then, to talk of

emigration, _when so much extra labour_ is indispensable to supply the

extra food. Let that labour be first applied, and it will be seen

whether there is any surplus population. _If the waste lands are taken

into cultivation_, and industrious habits established, it is very

doubtful whether there will be any surplus population, _or even_ whether

it would be equal to the demand." "Providence," he adds, "has given

everything needful, and nothing is wanting but industry to apply it."

"Yes!" to use the words of Mr. Scrope, "there are two things more

wanted--namely, that Irish industry should have leave to apply itself to

the improvement of the Irish soil, and be assured of reaping the

undivided fruits of such application."[257]

From causes which can be only guessed at, there seems to have been

always a passive but most influential opposition to the reclamation of

the waste lands of Ireland. Its opponents never met the question in the

field of logical argument, yet, somehow, they had power enough to

prevent its being carried into effect. When Lord John Russell proposed

the million grant to begin the work, Sir Robert Peel said he thought

some more useful employment could be found for that sum, but he did not

even hint at what it was. A writer, who published in 1847 a work on

Ireland "Historical and Statistical," thus deals with the reclamation

question: "The Irish waste lands being of considerable extent have long

attracted the notice of speculators and improvers. They are about to

receive the attention of her Majesty's Government, and a sum of one

million is promised to the Irish landlords as an aid towards their

reclamation. But there is much room to doubt the policy of such a

proceeding at any time, and especially at the present time."[258] Here

is a pretty decided opinion against reclamation, but there is no reason

whatever vouchsafed for it.

On the other hand those who were favourable to the reclamation of our

waste lands were rich in facts and arguments. In the Parliamentary

Session of 1835, a Committee of the House of Commons on public works

reported that "no experiment was necessary to persuade any scientific

man of the possibility of carrying into effect the reclamation of

bogs." Nor is this strongly expressed opinion to be wondered at,

founded, as it was, upon such evidence as the following:--

Mr. Griffith deposed that--

"The mountain bog of the south of Ireland--the moory bog--varies in

depth from nine inches to three feet, below which there is a clayey or

sandy subsoil. On the average, about £4 per statute acre is required to

bring it from a state of nature to one of cultivation, and then it will

fetch a rent of from 5s. to 10s. per English acre."

Again:

"£1 4s. an acre is the highest estimate for the draining of this land in

covered drains; the remainder of the expense consists in the trenching

up the surface, turning up the subsoil, and mixing it with the bog; no

manure is wanted, a portion of the bog being burned for that purpose."

With regard to deep bogs, his testimony was as follows:

"The expense of reclaiming deep bogs per acre may be estimated

thus:--Drainage of an English acre, in the most perfect way, about £1

4s., which is about 40s. the Irish acre; that includes the under drain:

the levelling and digging comes to about £1 10s.; and afterwards the

claying comes to about £6 12s. per statute acre."

Finally, he said:

"The reclamation of mountain land is very profitable, and easily

effected; but the reclamation of deep bog land is attended with a much

greater expense, and requires both care and judgment. But both are

certainly reclaimable, and would give a successful return when

judiciously treated."

Mr. Featherstone, a practical and successful farmer, told the Committee

that he had reclaimed the worst sort of bog land for £13 an acre, and

some cushbog land for, £6 an acre: the former, when reclaimed, was worth

£1 an acre, and the latter £2 an acre. "It took me," he said, "£13 an

acre to reclaim the first red bog I tried my hand on: and it would take

to reclaim, on the average, the red bog of Ireland, £10 an acre."

The soundness of the views put forward by Sir Richard Griffith and Mr.

Featherstone is proved by the reclamation of similar wastes in England.

With regard to Chat-moss, on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, Mr.

Baines writes from Barton Grange, in Lancashire, which he calls "a house

standing in the midst of a tract of 2,000 acres of peat moss, within a

few years past as wet and barren as any morass in Ireland, but now

covered with luxuriant crops." He averages the sum expended in

reclaiming the Lancashire mosses at £10 an acre, _all spent in_ manual

labour.[259] One thousand acres of Rawcliffe-moss in Lancashire was

reclaimed for £9,000, although high wages were paid to the labourers. It

pays, says Mr. Scrope, ten per cent. on the outlay, and now gives

constant employment to seventy labourers. In Ireland, he adds, private

enterprise cannot do such work. There is no capital. With regard to

reclamations made on the estate of Sir Charles Styles, in the county

Donegal, Captain Kennedy, the manager, testified before the Devon

Commission that the original cost of reclamation was refunded in three

years. And he further expressed his conviction that an outlay of £5 an

acre would pay ten per cent. on those lands.

What grave mysterious reasons of State, then, have prevented the Irish

wastes from being reclaimed? In the Famine, our roads were torn up and

made impassable to apply a labour test to destitution; food was next

served out without any such test; M Soyer was sent over to make cheap

soup for the million; the bone and sinew of the country were shipped off

to spend themselves in trying to subdue the wildernesses of another

hemisphere, or die _in transitu_, or on Grosse Isle and such

charnel-houses, whilst nearly five millions of reclaimable acres in

their own fertile load were still left as nature had left them.

The second report of the Relief Commissioners bears date the 15th of

May. For practical purposes it may be looked upon as the first report,

the one called the first being merely preliminary. We learn from it that

only 1,248 electoral divisions had come under the operation of the Act

up to that date, a state of things with which the Commissioners

expressed themselves dissatisfied, for they say the Act should have

been, at the time of their report, in full operation over the whole

country. They found a difficulty in establishing soup kitchens, because

dry meal was universally preferred; and they further say that relief by

food instead of by public works was extremely unpopular with every

class. All works, they announce, had been stopped on the first of May.

To this general stoppage, some exceptions, it would seem, were

permitted. Memorandum No. 12 of the Relief Department (marked

"confidential") vests certain relief officers with a discretionary power

to continue the works in those baronies where it would be dangerous to

stop them, either because the new measures of relief had not come into

operation, or on account of the absence of employment, either public or

private, in such baronies. From the general outcry at the stoppage of

the works, it would appear that this memorandum was very little, if at

all, acted upon.

The second report of the Relief Commissioners, embracing a most trying

period of over two months, is very curt and unsatisfactory. The

dismissal, within six weeks, of nearly three quarters of a million of

workmen, representing more than three millions of people, could scarcely

be effected without the infliction of considerable suffering. The

Government were right in compelling labour to apply itself to the

production of food by the cultivation of the land, and they began this

movement in the Spring, the proper time for it, but they began too late.

The 20th of March was far too late for the fast dismissal of twenty per

cent., for much of the Spring work ought to have been done then. They

should have begun a month earlier at least, which arrangement would have

had the further advantage of enabling them, to make the dismissals more

gradually, and therefore with less inconvenience to the people.[260]

It was either great negligence or a very grave error on the part of the

Government, that they began to close the public works against the people

before any other means of getting food was open to them. The Relief Act,

10 Vic. c. 7, was intended to take the place of the public works, _and

that immediately on their cessation_; but this was far from being the

case,--a point upon which this second report is not at all satisfactory.

In it the Commissioners express their regret that on the 15th of May

there were only 1,248 electoral divisions under the operation of the

Act, whilst all relief works had ceased on the first of May. That was

bad enough; but what the report makes no mention of is that the Act was

not in operation in any part of Ireland on the 20th of March, the day on

which twenty per cent--146,000 individuals--of those who were employed

on the public works were dismissed. On introducing that Act in

Parliament, both the Prime Minister and the Irish Secretary promised

that employment on the public works should be continued until the new

system of relief would be in full operation, whilst this report tells us

that on the 15th of May, a full fortnight after _all_ public works had

been stopped, out of 2,049 electoral divisions only 1,248 were under the

operation of the Act. Besides, "under the operation of the Act" is

itself a doubtful phrase: How long were they under it? How far was their

machinery complete and efficient? Did the Act, to the full extent,

supply the place of the public works, where it had come into operation?

These are questions to which we have no answers from the Commissioners.

On the 23rd of March, three days after the twenty per cent were

dismissed, a Dublin newspaper said, with regard to the new Relief

Act:--"It is not in operation in any district of Ireland. Even in

Dublin--the head quarters of the Relief Commissioners--the residence of

the official printer--the requisite forms for arranging the

preliminaries could not be supplied to the relief committees yesterday,

they not having been as yet printed."[261]

On the 25th of March, some of the Irish members appealed, in the House

of Commons, to the Irish Secretary not to allow the labourers on the

public works to be dismissed until provision could be made for their

support under the new Act. It was understood by both sides of the House,

Mr. Smith O'Brien said, that the Government had given instructions

against any dismissals taking place until other means had been provided

to enable the people to procure subsistence. Unless this were done, he

said, the greatest confusion must follow the putting in force of the

order for dismissing persons from the public works, which was to come

into operation on the 20th inst. Seven weeks had elapsed since the

temporary relief bill had become law, and he could not conceive why

relief committees had not been constituted. Mr. Labouchere said in reply

that the greatest caution was necessary in removing the labourers from

the works, and that although twenty per cent. of them were ordered to be

struck off on the 20th instant, that did not mean that twenty per cent.

of the people employed in every district on public works should be

dismissed, but that in the aggregate twenty per cent. of those employed

should be put off, leaving to the Irish Government to decide upon the

proportion to be removed from each district. It would be necessary and

proper to make a general reduction, but the Irish Government was left to

the exercise of its discretion in making the several reductions by

districts, as the executive in Ireland could best decide where it might

be dangerous or improper to make any change, and where a change might be

made with propriety and safety.

Four days later, on the question that the Irish Poor Relief Bill should

be re-committed, Mr. O'Brien again adverted to the discharge of the

labourers from the public works. He repeated, that the House and others

had been led to believe, that the dismissal would not take place until

new measures for temporary relief should come into operation; that,

nevertheless, in various parts of Ireland labourers had been dismissed

before any other relief had been provided; and he had, he said, received

from a part of the county he represented a letter from a Protestant

clergyman, stating that not only twenty per cent., but many more

labourers had been dismissed, and were, therefore, on the verge of

starvation. No one, he admitted, could justly object to the general

proposition of the gradual withdrawal of the people from the public

works; but it appeared to him that such withdrawal, until some other

mode of subsistence was ready for them, was nothing short of sentencing

the people to death from starvation.

To Smith O'Brien's remarks, Mr. Labouchere gave the following reply, a

more formal and elaborate one than the above. He said:--"Her Majesty's

Government were satisfied, after the best inquiry they were able to make

upon the subject, that it was expedient and proper that on a certain day

the number of persons employed on the public works throughout Ireland

should be reduced by twenty per cent. They thought that was a step

which, upon their responsibility, they were bound to adopt, and in that

respect they left no discretion whatever with any one connected with the

Irish Government; but the rule laid down was this--they required that

twenty per cent. should be reduced on the aggregate number of the

persons employed throughout the whole of Ireland, leaving to the Board

of Works in Ireland a discretion as to whether, in each particular

instance, that precise number should be the proportion to be reduced or

not. The Board of Works in Ireland thought they should best meet the

views of the Government, by striking off twenty per cent. from the

number of persons employed in each district, but it was not the case

that the rule had been applied strictly and invariably on every public

work in Ireland; and as a proof that such was the case, he read the

following extract from a report which had been received from Captain

O'Brien, the inspecting officer for Clare, and which was dated the 20th

of March, inst.:--'As in some districts the numbers hitherto employed

are much less than in others, it would be unjust to strike off the same

percentage from all. I have, therefore, directed that the number in each

district shall be reduced to a certain proportion of the population, so

that at least twenty per cent, of the population will be reduced on the

whole.' With regard to the alleged promise of the Government that there

should be no dismissals from the public works until the new Relief Act

was in operation, Mr. Labouchere said 'he believed if the Government

had made any such statement, they would have acted very improperly. They

could not disguise from themselves the fact, that in most parts of

Ireland a great preference was shown for the public works over the new

relief system, and if her Majesty's Government had made such an

announcement as that attributed to them by the honourable gentleman, the

greatest delay would assuredly have taken place in bringing the new Act

into operation.' He also read a letter that had been received that day,

addressed from Colonel Jones, the chairman of the Board of Works, to Mr.

Trevelyan:--'Upon reading the Dublin journals,' writes Colonel Jones,

'it would be supposed that the men discharged from the works had been

deprived in an instant of their daily food; the fact is, that they were

not entitled to be paid until the Tuesday or Wednesday following, and

the payments so made were to be the means of procuring subsistence for

another week, so that with the time between the publishing of the order

and the moment when the money would be expended, ample time was afforded

for procuring other employment, or for the electoral division committees

to have made the necessary preparations for supplying the destitute with

food.' He (Mr. Labouchere) trusted the House would be satisfied that as

much consideration had been shown for the people as it was in their

power to bestow, and he had the satisfaction to think that on the whole

this great reduction had been carried into effect with as little

temporary suffering and embarrassment as possible."

The first thing that strikes one with regard to the above reply is, that

the Board of Works used the discretion given to them with reference to

the dismissals, in opposition to what Mr. Labouchere says was the

intention of the Government. Government wished the dismissals to be

twenty per cent, in the aggregate, which means ten or fifteen per cent.

of a reduction in one district, and twenty-five or thirty per cent. in

another, according to circumstances. But the Secretary _naively_ adds,

that the Board of Works thought they should best meet the views of the

Government by striking off twenty per cent, of those employed _in each

district._ Probably the Government and the Board of Works understood

each other well enough on this point. Even assuming the extract from

Captain O'Brien's report to have the meaning attached to it by Mr.

Labouchere, as it is the only case of the kind he brings forward, we

must receive it as the exception which proves the rule. The Secretary

next tells us that employment on the public works was far more popular

with the people than the new system of relief. This he asserted in the

House of Commons on the 29th of March. We know the official printed

forms for putting the new Relief Act into operation were not ready for

delivery, even in Dublin, on the 22nd of March, just one week before.

How, in that one week they were got ready, and sent by tons and hundreds

weight to all parts of the country; how the new committees were

organized; how the boilers were set up, the fires lighted, and the soup

made and distributed to three quarters of a million of people; how those

people discussed its flavour and qualities, and how they had had time to

give expression to their views, and how those views reached the Irish

Secretary in London before the 29th of March, are things which could be

only explained by the Irish Secretary himself. This fact, however, was

known to the general public, that on the 23rd of March there was not a

quart of the new relief-system soup yet made in Ireland; and that on the

29th, at the moment the Secretary was answering Smith O'Brien, it is

more than probable that the fact was still the same.

The promise which Mr. O'Brien said the Government was understood to have

made, and which Mr. Labouchere treats so cavalierly in his reply, was

contained in the following words, spoken by the First Minister on

bringing forward the new Relief Bill:--"We must take care--and the Lord

Lieutenant is prepared to take care--that the substitution of this

system for public works shall be made as easy in the transition as

possible. There will be no rude dismissal of the people at once, who

otherwise might find great difficulty in obtaining subsistence; but when

the arrangements are made for carrying the scheme I have described into

effect, it will be provided that no further presentments shall be made,

and no new public works undertaken."[262] These are strong words, and

were certainly meant to convey that there was to be no interregnum in

which the people would be left to starve between the cessation of the

public works and the establishment of the new system of relief.

But the most curious part of Mr. Labouchere's explanation is the extract

from Colonel Jones's letter. In the Colonel's opinion it was a great

mistake of the Dublin press to assume that the men discharged from the

works had been deprived, in an instant, of their daily food. No such,

thing: it was gross ignorance or wilful calumny to assert it. The

dismissed labourers, Colonel Jones tells us, had no right to claim their

wages till Tuesday or Wednesday, yet he generously pays them on the

Saturday--two or three days before! But did he pay them for the Monday

and the Tuesday?--not a word about that. Then where was the generosity?

The order was that the men were to be dismissed on Saturday, the 20th of

March, and Colonel Jones's vast bounty consisted in paying them the day

he dismissed them, instead of compelling them to loiter about two or

three days waiting to be paid. It well became Colonel Jones, indeed, to

brag of such an act, in face of the many inquests at which such verdicts

as this were returned:--"Died of hunger, in consequence of not being

paid by the Board of Works, a fortnight's wages being due at the time of

death."

Some time previous to this, the Irish Secretary said in the House of

Commons that there was an organized combination amongst the people not

to till their farms. Such a combination could hardly exist to any

considerable extent, but there can be little doubt that a strong feeling

had sprung up in the minds of the people against tilling their farms,

not because they were opposed to tillage, but for quite another reason:

they felt that whatever labour they might expend upon their farms would

be thrown away, as far as they were concerned, because they knew full

well that the landlords would seize the produce of their farms for rent,

so that after expending their labour they would be still left to

starve,--in fact, that they would be tilling the land for others instead

of for themselves. Rents at the time were, of course, over due, and the

landlords' power to seize was unlimited. At a meeting of the Claremorris

deanery it was declared, that the assertion in the House of Commons,

that there was a systematic combination not to till the ground, was a

great calumny; and further, that there should be legal security that the

people would get the fruit of their labour in autumn. A petition to

Parliament from Ballinrobe says:--"Your petitioners have read with the

utmost alarm the letter of the Secretary of the Board of Works,

directing that twenty out of every hundred should be put out of

employment on Saturday, the 20th inst., as we are convinced that death

by starvation to thousands will be the result of such a fatal measure.

That we pray your honourable House, to direct the Board of Works to have

the persons now employed on the public works transferred to labour on

their own holdings, at the same rate of wages as if on the public works,

from the 25th of March, inst., to the 1st of May next, enabling them, at

the same time, to have seed on reasonable terms sufficient to sow their

little farms, to prevent the recurrence of famine next year."

The effect of the dismissals soon began to manifest itself in

complaints and remonstrances. Of Balla, in the county of Mayo, we read

that the order was rigidly enforced there, that the people had no seed

to sow their land, and that there was no provision for supplying them

with food. All remonstrance with the inspecting officer, writes a

correspondent from Ballyglass, in the same county, is useless; he said

the Government orders were peremptory. No seed. No food.

Ballnigh, Co. Cavan: Twenty per cent. dismissed, no provision whatever

having been made for their support.

Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford: No provision made to supply food to the

dismissed labourers.

Clones, Co. Monaghan: No provision.

Maryborough, Queen's Co.: No means of support.

Clonmel, Tipperary: No provision. The relief committee under the new Act

is in course of organization, but some time must elapse before it can

afford relief.

From persons who were in possession of some land, the first twenty per

cent., as we have seen, were to be selected for dismissal, but in

Kilnaleck, in the County of Cavan, all those employed on the public

works were about equally destitute, so that the twenty per cent. with

land could not be furnished: lots had to be cast, and those on whom the

lot for dismissal fell received it like a sentence of death. Of course

the Board of Works felt they were best carrying out the intentions of

Government by dismissing the full twenty per cent. at Kilnaleck.

The state of things in Cashel was this: the twenty per cent. were

dismissed before the committee had any preparation made, or was, in

fact, appointed. The old committee had emphatically protested against

the dismissal, and published a resolution condemnatory of it, as an

inexcusable cruelty. Although twenty per cent. of the labouring

population were turned adrift in that locality, not one supernumerary

was disemployed. No pay-clerk lost his salary, though his labour was

diminished by one-fifth; no check-clerk was dismissed, though there

were twenty per cent. fewer to check; no steward or under-steward was

displaced. Such are specimens of the accounts from nearly every part of

the country.

Threatening meetings of the disemployed began to be held. Towards the

end of April we read of vast crowds assembling in the neighbourhood of

Drone, county Tipperary, crying aloud for food and employment. They

consisted chiefly of the dismissed labourers. Their wretched emaciated

children were clinging to them for sustenance, but they had not

wherewith to satisfy their hunger. Large numbers also assembled near

Thurles, crying out for bread and employment; they proceeded to that

town, and had an interview with the head officer under the Board of

Works.[263]

The news from Galway was, that the funds of the old relief committee

were completely exhausted, and although it was the 5th of May, the new

one had not completed the lists, so as to procure food for distribution

to the unemployed destitute. Some of the public works were stopped for

want of money; the labourers on the others were dismissed, with a very

few exceptions. The labourers paraded the streets with a white flag

bearing the inscription, "We are starving;" "Bread or employment." They

conducted themselves with the utmost order.

About four hundred men who had been employed on the public works near

Ballygarvan assembled and marched in procession into Cork. Having drawn

up before the door of the Board of Works' office, they sent a deputation

to confer with Captain Broughton, to state the distress they were

suffering, in consequence of being suddenly dismissed off the works. He

assured them he could do nothing for them.

The _Limerick Reporter_ says: "On Monday morning the people of Meelick

and its neighbourhood, who had been lately discharged from the public

works, assembled at Ahernan Cross, to the number of two hundred, and

afterwards proceeded to the residence of Mr. Delmege, J.P., of Castle

Park, with whom they had an interview, declaring that they should get

work; that they were ready and willing to work, but that they would not

put up with nor endure the use of soup or porridge; that they could not,

nor would they live upon one pound of meal in the twenty-four hours."

They proceeded to the soup-kitchen of the parish, broke the boiler and

all utensils belonging to the kitchen, and tore the books which

contained the names of those to be relieved. Their numbers increased to

about six hundred, when they proceeded to demolish the soup-kitchen at

Ardnacrusha, quite close to the police barrack. The police succeeded in

taking a man named Pat Griffin in the act of breaking the boiler with a

large stone hammer, and succeeded in getting him into the barracks. The

crowd attempted to rescue him. They broke the windows, and were

demolishing the doors, when the police began to fire from within. Two

men were severely wounded. The police discharged forty rounds before the

people dispersed. Griffin stated that neither himself, nor many of the

people assembled, had eaten any food for two or three days.

In several other places the soup-kitchens were attacked, and the boilers

broken or attempted to be broken. At Kilfenora, the people carried off

the boiler and threw it into a lough. So that in the matter of the new

relief system, the Government were not only very slow in getting it into

operation, but when they did so, it was distasteful to the people in

various places. How slow they were appears from an answer given to a

question asked by Lord Fitzwilliam in the House of Lords, so late as the

11th of May. On that day he asked the Government to what extent the new

Act--commonly known as the Soup-kitchen Act--had been brought into

operation. Lord Lansdowne, in reply, said that "there had been

preparations in various places under the auspices of the relief

committees, and with the aid of voluntary contributions they were

putting the Act into operation; but _the Act had been so recently

passed_, the Government had no exact information upon the subject;

inquiries, however, should be instituted." The Act had become law on the

26th of February, nearly three months before; besides which, the

Government were, or said they were, organizing beforehand the machinery

by which it was to be carried out, and it was specially intended to take

the place of the relief works, all of which had ceased on the 1st of

May, so that Lord Lansdowne's reply was a very cool one under the

circumstances.

Although the spring work must have absorbed a very considerable portion

of the dismissed labourers, it did not absorb them all, nor anything

near it; whilst those who failed to get employment, or were unfit for

it, had not the new relief to turn to. The poorhouses became dangerously

crowded. The poorlaw statistics of 1847 show this in a striking manner:

in the beginning of the year--that is in mid-winter, a time when there

is scarcely any employment--the total number receiving relief in the

Irish workhouses was 52,626. One month after the dismissals of the 20th

of March--namely, on the 17th of April, perhaps the very busiest period

in the farmer's year--the number in the workhouses had doubled; the

figure standing on that day at 104,200; being about 11,000 more than

they were built to accommodate; nor did this suffer any notable

diminution until the harvest came in.

The Relief Commissioners published their third report on the 17th of

June, at which time 1677 electoral divisions were under the operation of

the Relief Act; being 429 more than at the date of the second report,

the 15th of May. They were then distributing 1,923,361 rations per day

gratuitously, at an average cost of 2-1/2d. per ration; and 92,326

rations were sold, making in all 2,015,687 rations. Of the 1677

electoral divisions under the Act, 1479 had received loans or grants,

198 had not applied for any advances, and 312 had not sent in any return

up to the time the report was published. The Commissioners make this

calculation: If, they say, the number of rations necessary for the

returns still to be received shall be in proportion to those of which we

have already cognizance, the entire number of rations will be 2,388,475;

and if the ordinary proportion for children at half rations be added,

the number of persons to receive relief will be 2,729,684, of whom

2,622,684 will receive relief gratuitously.

The springing up of abuses under such an extensive system of relief was

unavoidable, some of which the Commissioners mention in their third

report. Cases occurred in which more rations were demanded than there

were individuals in the whole district. Hundreds of names were struck

off by the inspecting officers, including servants and men in the

constant employ of persons of station and property; these latter were

frequently themselves members of the committees; and in some cases the

very chairmen, being magistrates, have sanctioned the issue of rations

to tenants of their own of considerable holdings, possessed of live

stock, and who, it was found, had paid up their last half year's rent.

The intimidation attempted in various places, say the Commissioners, was

generally successfully resisted, although to this there were exceptions

deserving of notice. It was reported to them that the introduction of

cooked food had produced the best effects on the health and appearance

of the people.

An inspector asks this question: "Is a man who owns a horse, or a cow,

or such things, destitute?" The Commissioners answer: "No, in the

abstract; but better give him relief than to drive him to permanent

destitution." On the 27th of May an inspector, who appears to have been

in a state of worry and excitement, writes to head-quarters:--"Entirely

deserted by the landlords and their representatives; the working of the

Committee [he names a particular committee] has fallen into the hands of

a class who insist on '_Universal Relief!_' who will not think of

scrutinizing lists to prevent fraud, and who are eager to have brothers,

cousins, and dependants employed in the distribution." Alluding to the

violence on the part of the people, another inspector writes: "I have

spoken to the Roman Catholic Clergymen on this subject, and take this

opportunity of stating that I have received great assistance from those

gentlemen." Another says: "The people who ought to have an interest in

checking abuses are mostly absentees, and the few who are living in the

country try all they can to provide for their own tenants." Another:

"All jobbing and intrigue here." Another: "A day or two since I found

the wife of a coachman of a magistrate of £2,000 a year on the relief

list." The Commissioners, however, were strongly of opinion that the

introduction of cooked food was a great means of checking fraud.

Up to the 17th of June there were 570 electoral divisions which had

received neither grant nor loan; some of these were the richest, and

some were the poorest in the country. Perhaps, says the Report, the rich

ones had other means, and the poor ones could not get the loan, and may

have had the remains of subscriptions. The Commissioners had much

difficulty in getting the accounts from committees; the clerks in rural

districts were, for the most part, totally inefficient, and the weekly

stipend of twenty-one shillings was not sufficient to induce any person

accustomed to keep accounts to quit the towns and undertake such duties.

Ireland, it would seem, was destined at this time to have sorrow upon

sorrow; her great Liberator, O'Connell, died in May, 1847. For some time

his powers had been evidently failing, and no wonder, after the life of

hard work he had gone through. Besides, he was in his seventy-second

year. Many members of his family lived to be much older, and he used to

say, good-humouredly, that they had a trick of living till ninety. But

they did not labour as he did. The writer heard him in Conciliation

Hall, shortly before he went to England for the last time, and his

feebleness was painful, especially to any one who remembered his proud,

defiant energy in earlier years. The quarrels and dissensions, which had

arisen amongst the national party teased, and depressed him, and must

have affected his health. It was observed, too, by his friends, and

indeed by all, that his imprisonment in Richmond told considerably upon

him; his speeches, after his liberation, lacking that buoyant pleasantry

for which they were wont to be remarkable. The famine also weighed

heavily upon his spirits; every question, he frequently said, must be

postponed but the one of saving the lives of the people. We need not,

however, go in search of causes for his death; he had done the work of a

host of men, he was seventy-two, and it was natural he should die; but

the Irish people were not at all prepared for his death: no, in their

affection for him, they had made up their minds that their Liberator was

to live up to that ninety, which he had so often promised them,--and,

with the vigour of forty-five.

In the last days of March, 1847, O'Connell left Dublin for London, to

attend his parliamentary duties. He presented some petitions on the 1st

of February, and spoke at some length about the Famine on the 8th; his

speech, the last he ever made, occupying about one hundred lines of a

newspaper column. He was imperfectly heard. One report says, "Mr.

O'Connell rose, but spoke very indistinctly, and directed his voice very

much to the lower part of the house." The opening remark in Hansard

is,--"Mr. O'Connell was _understood to_ say." He was very kindly

received by the house; hears and cheers are thickly strewn through his

speech as reported. This was in part, no doubt, the kindness of pity

for the great old man, in the hour of his feebleness and humiliation.

For he, who in the day of his might, had hurled "his high and haughty

defiance" at them all, was there to crave bread, to save the lives of

those millions with whom he had so often threatened them. His last words

were an appeal to their charity; they also contained a prophecy, which

was, alas! but too strictly verified. "She is in your hands," he said,

"she is in your power. If you don't save her, she can't save herself;

and I solemnly call upon you to recollect that I predict, with the

sincerest conviction, that one-fourth of her population will perish,

unless you come to her relief. (Cheers from both sides)."

So ended the public career of the great leader of the Irish nation, to

be followed in two short months by his death. Two days after he had

spoken in the House of Commons, the rumour reached the Clubs that he was

dangerously ill. This was contradicted, and a letter from himself to the

Repeal Association, which was read at their next meeting, reassured the

public. Next, the news came that writing fatigued him, and that his

physicians forbade it; so, for the future his son John wrote, in his own

name, to the Association, always, as might be expected, taking the

sanguine view of his father's health. A month passed. His physicians

ordered him to Hastings, and after spending a fortnight there he sailed

for France. His intention was to go to Rome. At Lyons, he felt so poorly

that he was obliged to refuse audiences to the various deputations of

that Catholic city, which crowded to his hotel to do him honour. He

arrived at Genoa, his final stage, on the 6th of May, and breathed his

last in that city on the evening of the 15th, with the tranquillity of a

child. His faithful friend, the Rev. Dr. Miley, and several of the

principal clergy of the place were kneeling in prayer around his bed

when he expired.

O'Connell's character has been traced by many eloquent pens, some

friendly, some the reverse, but all are forced to admit that the powers

with which he was gifted were of the highest order. He first became

distinguished as a lawyer; soon after being called, he distanced those

of his own standing, and in time, his legal opinion was regarded as

oracular. Crown lawyers, and even judges feared him, as well they might,

for he never spared them when they were wrong. In the early part of his

career, his admiring countrymen loved to call him, "the counsellor," and

it was their highest delight to hear him cross-examine a witness.

Anecdotes of his wit, humour, and keen penetration whilst so engaged,

are very numerous, very amusing, and full of character. As a

cross-examiner he had no rival at all; lawyers of his time there were,

who might dispute the palm with him for profound knowledge of the laws

and constitution of the country, yet some how or other it came to be

admitted, openly or tacitly, that no other lawyer could see so far into

an Act of Parliament as Dan, nor drive a coach and six through it so

triumphantly.

But it was in the political arena he made his enduring fame. When he

entered public life, the Catholics of Ireland were a despised, enslaved

race: not only were they enslaved, but through custom, or by tradition,

they thought, and spoke, and acted, like slaves. Their leaders were the

few Catholic peers that Ireland possessed, and the heads of those old

Catholic families, who, by some means, managed to retain a portion of

their property. These were called "the natural leaders of the people."

They were not remarkable for talents; they were timid; they were

prostrate in the dust, and they half accepted the situation. They had

been so long regarding the Protestants as a superior race, that they

came to believe it at last, and, hence, in the presence of Protestants,

they always bore themselves with the humble downcast manner which became

inferiors. The young counsellor, fresh from the Kerry Mountains--an

athlete in mind and body--had no notion to submit so such degradation

from men who were his inferiors in every respect, and, consequently, his

language was full of manly independence. His high spirit appeared in his

whole manner, and as he walked through Dame Street, Parliament Street,

and along the quays to the Four Courts, he looked the noblest and

proudest man in Dublin--a very king of men.

In attack and denunciation he was terrible. What he said of Peel, when

Irish Secretary, is an example of this. At an aggregate meeting in 1815,

he alluded to him, as the worthy champion of Orangeism. At the mention

of Mr. Peel's name, says the report, there was much laughing. "You

mistake me, said Mr. O'Connell. I do not--indeed I do not intend, this

day, to enter into the merits of that celebrated statesman. All I shall

say of him, by way of parenthesis, is, that I am told he has, in my

absence, and in a place where he was privileged from any account,

grossly traduced me. I said, at the last meeting, in the presence of the

notetakers of the police, who are paid by him, that he was too prudent

to attack me in my presence. I see the same police informers here now,

and I authorize them carefully to report these my words, that Mr. Peel

would not DARE, in my presence, or in any place where he was liable to

personal account, use a single expression derogatory to my interest, or

my honour."

This passage led to the affair of honour between himself and Peel. No

hostile meeting, however, took place.

His best friends thought his propensity of arraigning and denouncing

those who differed from him, was often carried to excess, but he refused

to give it up or modify it. The defence he once made for it was, that it

was not _irritation_, it was _calculation_ that made him adopt that

style of animadversion.[264] The Catholic aristocracy and the older

leaders of the Catholics were offended with it, and soon retired from

any active part in Catholic affairs. This may have been one of

O'Connell's calculations. Although his aggressive propensities were

sometimes indulged to an extreme degree, he was right in the main, for,

the "whispering humbleness" of the older Catholic leaders would have

never won emancipation; and this was handsomely and honourably confessed

to Mr. P.V. Fitzpatrick by Lord Fingal, shortly before his death. Lord

Fingal having sent for Mr. Fitzpatrick, that gentleman repaired

immediately to his lordship's residence, and having been shown into the

library, where the dying nobleman was reclining in an easy chair, feeble

in body, but bright and vigorous in mind, his lordship addressed him as

follows: "Mr. Fitzpatrick, I have been for some time thinking whom I

should pitch upon, to discharge my conscience of a heavy debt, and I

have fixed upon you, as the most appropriate person, because you not

only know me and Mr. O'Connell, but you knew us all who were connected

with Catholic politics for years, and well. You know, too, that I went

forward to an extent, that caused me to be sometimes snubbed by those of

my own order in that body; but, notwithstanding, I, like them was

criminally cowardly. We never understood that we had a nation behind

us--O'Connell alone comprehended that properly, and used his knowledge

fitly. It was by him the gates of the Constitution were broken open for

us; we owe everything to his rough work, and, to effect further services

for Ireland, there must be more of it. I never understood this properly

until they made me a peer of parliament, and I feel myself bound to make

the avowal under the circumstances in which you now see me, preparatory

to my passing into another world. You will communicate this to

O'Connell, and my most earnest wish, that he will receive the avowal as

an atonement for my not having always supported him, as I now feel he

should have been supported."[265]

O'Connell, as an orator, aimed at being what he was called for many

years, "The Man of the People." In some of his earlier speeches there

are marks of care and preparation, but during three-fourths of his

career, his only preparation was to master his subject; words of the

best and most effective kind never failed him. There is little doubt,

that elaborate preparation would have marred the effect of O'Connell's

oratory. He, like all great men, had a quick, intuitive mind--one, in

fact, that could scarcely bear the tedium of careful preparation, and

the true character of which came out in cross-examining and in reply;

for although great and lucid in statement, he was still more powerful in

reply. Woe to the man who provoked the lion to anger,--he pawed him to

death. His gesture was not very demonstrative, but it was sometimes very

energetic, and when he wanted a cheer for a man or a principle, he

called for it, by a bold flourish of his hand above his head. But

O'Connell stood in little need of the aids which gesture commonly gives

the public speaker; his fine presence and unrivalled voice did

everything for him. It is said he had no ear for music, but his voice

when speaking in public, was the most musical that could be heard: great

in power and compass, rich in tone, ever fresh in the variety of its

cadences, it was as unique and striking as the great man to whom it

belonged; nor was the charming brogue which accompanied it, the least of

its attractions. Another advantage possessed by him has not been so much

remarked upon--the rapid, changeful expression of his features. By

observing O'Connell's face, as he spoke, one could be sure of the tone

and temper of what was coming. Was he about to make an adversary

ridiculous by an anecdote or a witticism? His eyes, his lips, his whole

face suddenly became expressive of humour. Did he intend to turn from

pleasantries to solemn warning, or fierce denunciation? (a usual habit

of his); the dark cloud was sure to cast its shadow across his manly

features, before the thunder came forth.

His style was simple and forcible. He very seldom quoted the classics,

although he was fond of giving passages from the English poets, more

especially from Moore; but the lines which expressed the guiding

principle of his life were taken from Byron:

"Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow."

The moment I read that passage, he once said, I saw it was the motto for

Ireland; and up to 1829, the year of Emancipation, he seldom spoke

without quoting it. He avoided figurative language. He amused his

audience with stories and old sayings which they understood and

appreciated. He brought the shrewd apothegms, familiar at their own

firesides, to bear upon the principles he was inculcating, but flowers

of rhetoric he knew would be feeble weapons for the warfare in which he

was engaged. He once indeed complimented Sheil, by calling him "the

brightest star that ever rose in the murky horizon of his afflicted

country;" but that suited the man and the occasion.

He had a true conception of what a great teacher ought to be; and for

this reason he kept repeating his principles and his arguments in the

same or almost the same words. Many an admirer of his thought he dosed

his countrymen far too much with, "first flower of the earth," and

"Hereditary bondsmen;" but, as he said about his attacks on men, it was

_calculation_ made him do it, and he proclaimed this so late as 1846, at

the Repeal Association, in the following words: "I have often said, and

repeated it over and over again, that I had found, that it was not

sufficient in politics to enunciate a new proposition, one, or two, or

three times. I continue to repeat it, until it comes back like an echo

from the different parts of the country; then I know it is understood,

and I leave it to its fate." The lesson had been learned.

Physically, O'Connell was a very powerful man. He was taller than he

seemed, his muscular frame taking away, in appearance, from his height.

The earliest portraits of him make him a soft-faced athletic young man,

very likely to be a dangerous antagonist in the prize ring, but his

features, as given at the time, bear scarcely any resemblance to later

portraits of him. His shoulders were broad, and in walking he pushed

them forward alternately in a rather remarkable manner. This

peculiarity, arising more from physical necessity than from choice, gave

him a sort of slinging gait, which caused a Tory print to call him,

derisively, "Swaggering Dan." This nickname of their favourite did not

offend the people, they even thought it appropriate, there was such a

dashing independence in his whole manner; and Shiel never wrote anything

more felicitously true, than when he said of him--"He shoulders his

umbrella like a pike, and throws out his legs, as if he were kicking

Protestant ascendancy before him."

O'Connell was a liberal in the highest sense; he loved toleration; but

he was also a Catholic to the heart's core--thorough, uncompromising:

proud of the down-trodden Church to which he belonged, with--at first,

perhaps, an intuitive feeling; later on, the proud consciousness, that

his name would be linked with her struggles and her triumphs.

"One of my earliest aspirations," he more than once said, "was to do

something for the good of my country, and write my name on the page of

her history." He was fervently devoted to the holy practices of the

Catholic Church. The fatal result of his duel with Captain D'Esterre,

seems to have exercised a marked influence upon his whole life, and he

frequently alluded to it in terms of the profoundest regret. It was a

sight not to be forgotten, to see him attend Mass and receive Holy

Communion in Clarendon Street. When he was at home, his habit was to

walk from Merrion Square to that, his favourite chapel, to eight o'clock

Mass. On those occasions he usually wore a very ample cloak, the collar

of which concealed the lower half of his face. Thus enveloped, he

entered the sanctuary with an expression of recollection so profound,

that it might have been a Trappist who had entered. So it was during the

hour he remained: he seemed perfectly unconscious of any human creature

being in the place, except the priest at the altar before him. He seldom

used a prayer-book, and his eyes were never once raised during the whole

time. Buried in his great cloak, he moved noiselessly out, as he had

entered--a bright example,--a very model,--to the whole congregation.

The remaining reports of the Relief Commissioners do not call for any

very lengthened notice. The fourth of the series was published on the

19th of July, at which time 1,823 electoral divisions were receiving

relief under the Act. They say: "By an arrangement with the Commissary

General, we are clearing out the Government depôts of provisions, by

orders on them in lieu of so much money. These depôts were established

at an anxious period of a prospect of great deficiency of supplies,

which no longer exists." It is needless to repeat here what has been

abundantly proved before, that the people died of starvation within the

shadow of those sealed up depôts, and they would not be opened;--they

were opened when the supplies they contained were not required, there

being plenty in the market.

From the accountant's department we learn that 2,643,128 rations were

being daily issued, which it was hoped would be the maximum relief that

the Commissioners would be called on to administer; 79,636 of these were

sold. This shows an increase of daily rations from last report of

291,028. The fall in provisions had reduced the price of each ration

from 2-1/2d. to 2d. The amount given in loans and grants was now reduced

by about £3,000 a day, the expenditure in that way being then about

£20,000 a day. The aggregate amount of money issued up to the 19th of

July was £1,010,184 7s. 10d. to 1,803 electoral divisions. The cost of

the Government staff for superintending the issuing of relief, is set

down at two and a half per cent.--6d. in the pound,--a low figure,

indeed, but it must be taken into account that they only

_superintended_; the committees did the actual work of giving out the

relief. The issue of cooked food was opposed by the people in some

places, and this opposition was punished, by a reduction being made in

the quantity of rations issued in such places. In a fortnight, about

8,000 tons of the food in the Government depôts were given in lieu of

money, the money value of which was £98,728, the daily market price

being that charged by the Commissary General. The arrangement was

carried out in this way: There was issued on the 1st of June a circular

to the inspecting officer of each Union, by virtue of which an order on

the Government depôt was given to the Finance Committee of the Union,

instead of the amount (in cash) of the fortnightly estimate sent in of

the sum required for each electoral division of that Union; but the

whole fortnightly estimate was not usually supplied in meal only, to any

one electoral division; it was given partly in meal and partly in money.

At this time there were thirty-three Commissariat depôts, and sixteen

British Association depôts.

By circular No. 58 it was announced that after the 15th of August the

support of destitute persons was to be provided for under the new Poor

Law, 10 Vic., c. 31. All relief committees were warned to be prepared to

close their arrangements for the issue of rations, when the funds

provided for the estimates, ending on the 13th of August, would be

expended.

The hope expressed in the fourth report, that the Commissioners had

arrived at the maximum daily relief which the country required, was not

verified by fact. The fifth report was published on the 17th of August.

At that date there were 1,826 electoral divisions under the Act. The

maximum relief within the period embraced in the report was: Gratuitous

rations per day, 2,920,792; sold, 99,920; total, 3,020,712 rations

daily![266] Thus, considerably more than one-third of the whole

population was living on what may be termed out-door relief. This, the

highest point, was reached on the 3rd of July; the daily rations had, on

the 1st of August, come down to 2,467,989 gratuitous, and 52,387 sold

rations, being a total of 2,520,376 rations.

The absolute termination of advances on account of temporary relief was

fixed by the Act of Parliament for the end of September. The number of

temporary fever hospitals established under the Act 10 Vic., c. 22,

amounted at the date of the fifth report to 326.

The Relief Commissioners published their sixth report on the 11th of

September. It was a hopeful one. The crops were abundant, and a rapid

decrease in the number of rations issued was the result, more especially

from the middle of August. Out of 127 Unions, which were under the Act,

fifty-five had had no advances made to them, on estimate, for any period

after the 15th of August; twenty-six more ceased to call for advances on

the 29th of August; and the remainder were to cease on the 12th of

September, with the exception of the advances to the fever hospitals,

which were continued to the 30th of September.

The Commissioners expressed the opinion that the discontinuance of

relief had not been attended by the suffering which might have been

apprehended. They say the relief "was made a system of bonus rather than

of necessity, which increased the expenditure in an enormous degree."

We learn from this sixth report that the Commissioners had expended a

sum approaching £2,000.000 within a period of eight months, through the

agency of upwards of two thousand committees, constituted by general

regulation, and subject only to a very general control. Such being the

case, the testimony borne by the inspecting officers to those

committees, is highly creditable to them; the inspecting officers, says

the report, "express their belief that there has been almost a total

absence of misappropriation of _money_ by committees."

On the 28th of August the number of daily rations issued was down to

967,575.

The seventh and last report of the Commissioners under the Relief Act,

bears date the 15th of October. In it they say, they have the

satisfaction of believing, that the Act was thoroughly successful in its

primary object; and they did not consider the expenditure excessive in

proportion to the object. The entire outlay under the Act was £1,676,268

11s. 7d.,[267] a part of which was a free gift from the State, the

remainder a charge to be repaid by the Unions, by a percentage on the

rateable property, which, in the opinion of the Commissioners, should in

no case exceed three shillings in the pound. The summary of the accounts

department informs us that the rations issued on the 11th of September,

the day previous to the final stoppage of relief under the Act, were

442,739, being a decrease from the 28th of August of 599,816 daily

rations.

The expenditure under the Act is thus detailed:--

To Sir R. Routh for provisions

from depôts ... £136,795 0 8

_Money_ advanced fortnightly to

the several electoral divisions

for relief ... £1,420,417 14 11

To fever hospitals ... £119,055 16 0

The advances at one time exceeded £60,000 a-day, distributed over nearly

two thousand accounts.

The sum given to Sir R. Routh for the food in the depôts shows there

were about twelve thousand tons of provisions in them.

The sum set down to the fever hospitals includes the erection and

furnishing of the fever sheds. In addition to this amount, £4,479 was

expended in providing proper medical inspection and superintendance in

localities in which great sickness prevailed, and £60,000 was advanced

for the enlargement of the Workhouses, principally by the erection of

fever wards.[268]

In the appendix to this, their last report, the Commissioners bear

honourable testimony to the manner in which the people behaved. They

say: "The order and good conduct of the peasantry, and of the people

generally, notwithstanding the great influx of paupers into the towns,

is highly to be commended. All admit, that the resignation and

forbearance of the labouring classes was _astonishing_, when it is

remembered with what rapidity the real famine encompassed them."

FOOTNOTES:

[246] The following were the Commissioners appointed under the Act: Sir

John F. Burgoyne, Thomas N. Redington, Esq., Under Secretary; Edward

T.B. Twistleton, Esq., Colonel Duncan M'Gregor, Commissary-General Sir

Randolph J. Routh, and Colonel Harry D. Jones.

[247] The number of electoral divisions is, at present, 3,438, embraced

within 163 Unions.

[248] _Sunday Observer_; which journal should, for the information of

posterity, have placed upon record what, if any, were the other courses

in the _carte_ at the Reform Club, the day on which M. Soyer's Irish

Soup No. 1 was so highly approved of.

[249] _The comparative nutritive and pecuniary value of various kinds of

cooked food_, by John Aldridge, M.D., M.R.I.A., read at a meeting of the

Royal Dublin Society on the 6th of April, 1847.

[250] _Freeman's Journal_, April 6th.

[251] _Evening Packet_.

[252] He did not even escape the shafts of ridicule. A writer in the

Dublin _Nation_, imitating the Witches' scene in Macbeth, thus attacked

him:--

_1st Cook_--Round about the boiler go,

In twice fifty gallons throw--

Water that in noisome tank

Mossed with verdure rich and rank.

_2nd Cook_--Shin of beef from skinny cow

In the boiler then you'll throw;

Onion sliced and turnip top,

Crumb of bread and cabbage chop.

_3rd Cook_--Scale of cod fish, spiders' tongues,

Tomtits' gizzards, head and lungs

Of a famished, French-fed frog,

Root of phaytee digged in bog, etc.

It is only just to M. Soyer to say that his soup kitchen was regarded by

good judges as a clever and convenient contrivance for its purpose. The

building in which it was placed was constructed of wood, and was about

forty feet by twenty. It consisted of one apartment. In the centre was a

large steam boiler mounted on wheels, and arranged around were a number

of metallic box-shaped vessels, also mounted on wheels, in which the

materials for the soup were placed. These were heated by steam conveyed

by iron pipes from the central boiler, and by a slow digestive process

the entire of the nutriment contained in the materials were supposed to

be extracted without having its properties deteriorated. When the soup

was ready, the recipients were admitted by a narrow entrance at one side

of the house, one by one, each receiving a large bowl of soup, and,

having drank it, [five minutes was the time allowed for drinking it,]

they received an allowance of bread or a biscuit, and were dismissed by

another door in the rere of the building. In this manner M. Soyer

calculated he would be able to give one meal every day to at least five

thousand persons, from an establishment the size of the one at the Royal

Barracks. At the entrance, in the centre, was the weighing machine.

There was what was called a glaze-pan over the steam boiler capable of

holding three hundred gallons, and, at the end, an oven to bake one

hundred weight of bread at a time, and all heated by the same fire.

Round the two supports of the roof were circular tin boxes for the

condiments. Seven feet from the ground at each corner was placed a safe

five feet square and seven feet high, with sides of wire for

ventilation, which contained respectively meat, vegetables, grain, and

condiments. At the same elevation as the safes were sixteen butts,

containing _seventeen hundred and ninety-two gallons of water_.

[253] The Commission of 1809 on the reclamation of the bogs of Ireland

returned as improvable:

1,576,000 acres of flat bog;

1,254,000 acres of mountain top bog;

2,070,000 acres of convertible mountain bog.

---------

4,900,000 acres in all.

[254] "Waste Lands of Ireland: Suggestions for their immediate

reclamation, as a means of affording reproductive employment for the

able-bodied destitute. By James Fagan, Esq., M.P. for the Co. Wexford."

Dublin: James McGlashan, 1847. Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1991.

[255] Letters to Lord John Russell, p. 9.

[256] _Ib._, p. 12.

[257] Commissariat Correspondence, p. 452. G.P. Scrope's letters to Lord

John Russell, p. 58.

[258] Ireland: Historical and Statistical. By George Lewis Smyth, vol.

2, p. 452.

[259] "In the neighbourhood of Mullinahone I witnessed the daily painful

sight of the perversion of the labour of this country to the most

profitless ends. Roads, which are now more than ever necessary to be

kept in order, are in the course of obstruction, whilst waterlogged

lands, reclaimable bottoms, and mountain slopes stand out in damning

evidence of the indolence, neglect, and folly of man."--_Letter of

Lieut.-Colonel Douglas to Sir S. Routh, dated Clonmel, 28th January,

1847. Commissariat Series, part 2._ Strong language from a Government

official.

"Some persons recommend emigration as a panacea for the distress in

Ireland--that is, in plain English, to send the bone and sinew of our

country to cultivate foreign lands, when countless acres are at their

doors untilled, undrained, and therefore unremunerative."--_The Case of

Ireland: in two letters to the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, Chief

Secretary for Ireland. By the Rev. Wm. Prior Moore, A.M., Cavan._

Dublin: Wm. Curry and Co., 1847.

[260] The number of persons employed on the public works reached its

highest point in March, 1847, viz., 734,000. But this was the average

for the whole month. Before the Committee of the House of Lords on

"Colonization from Ireland," Captain Larcom, one of the Commissioners of

Public Works, said that the Commissioners expected the number employed

on those works to rise to 900,000 in June and July, having risen to

740,000 when the first stoppage took place on the 20th of March, at

which time they were increasing at the rate of 20,000 weekly.--_Answer_

to _Question_ 2,547, p. 265.

[261] _Freeman's Journal._

[262] Hansard, vol. clv., p. 436.

[263] 1847, March 11--Food riots occurred in the Highlands. May 19:

Alarming food riots took place in various parts of England, at Taunton

and in Jersey, and also in France and Spain.--_Census of Ireland for

1851, Tables of Deaths. Vol. 1. p. 289._

[264] Fagan's "Life of O'Connell," vol. I, p. 111.

[265] Fagan's "Life of O'Connell", vol. I, p. 161.

[266] "At length, in seventh month, this system of relief reached its

height. In that month, 3,020,712 persons received daily rations. Even

under this gigantic system of relief, we found that our distribution

could not be discontinued. There were several classes of persons whose

claims we were bound to recognise, and in these cases relief was still

afforded, though on a reduced scale, and with considerable

caution."--_Transactions during the Famine in Ireland. By the Society of

Friends_.

[267] This was up to the 16th of October only, but on the 31st of

December, when the account was finally closed, Mr. Bromley, the head

accountant, says,--Total expended to this day, £1,724,631 17s. 3d.

[268] Irish Crisis.