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THE
IRISH CRISIS.
THE
IRISH CRISIS.
BY
C. E. TREVELYAN, ESQ.
REPRINTED FROM THE “EDINBURGH REVIEW.”
_No._ CLXXV., _January, 1848_.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN & LONGMANS.
1848.
THE IRISH CRISIS.
The time has not yet arrived at which any man can with confidence
say, that he fully appreciates the nature and the bearings of that
great event which will long be inseparably associated with the year
just departed. Yet we think that we may render some service to the
public by attempting thus early to review, with the calm temper of a
future generation, the history of the great Irish famine of 1847[1].
Unless we are much deceived, posterity will trace up to that famine
the commencement of a salutary revolution in the habits of a nation
long singularly unfortunate, and will acknowledge that on this, as on
many other occasions, Supreme Wisdom has educed permanent good out of
transient evil.
If, a few months ago, an enlightened man had been asked what he thought
the most discouraging circumstance in the state of Ireland, we do not
imagine that he would have pitched upon Absenteeism, or Protestant
bigotry, or Roman Catholic bigotry, or Orangeism, or Ribbandism, or
the Repeal cry, or even the system of threatening notices and midday
assassinations. These things, he would have said, are evils; but some
of them are curable; and others are merely symptomatic. They do not
make the case desperate. But what hope is there for a nation which
lives on potatoes?
The consequences of depending upon the potato as the principal article
of popular food, had long been foreseen by thinking persons; and the
following observations extracted from a paper on the native country of
the wild potato[2], published in the Transactions of the Horticultural
Society of London for the year 1822, are a fair specimen of the
opinions which prevailed on the subject previously to the great failure
of 1845.
“The increased growth of the potato, not only in these
kingdoms, but almost in every civilised part of the globe, has
so added to its importance, that any information respecting
it has become valuable. With the exception of wheat and
rice, it is now certainly the vegetable most employed as the
food of man; and it is probable that the period is at no
great distance, when its extensive use will even place it
before those which have hitherto been considered the chief
staples of life. The effect of the unlimited extent to which
its cultivation may be carried, on the human race, must be
a subject of deep interest to the political economist. The
extension of population will be as unbounded as the production
of food, which is capable of being produced in very small
space, and with great facility; and the increased number of
inhabitants of the earth will necessarily induce changes,
not only in the political systems, but in all the artificial
relations of civilised life. How far such changes may conduce
to or increase the happiness of mankind, is very problematical,
more especially when it is considered, that since the potato,
when in cultivation, is very liable to injury from casualties
of season, and that it is not at present known how to keep it
in store for use beyond a few months, a general failure of the
year’s crop, whenever it shall have become the chief or sole
support of a country, must inevitably lead to all the misery of
famine, more dreadful in proportion to the numbers exposed to
its ravages.”
The important influence which has been exercised by this root over
the destinies of the human race, arises from the fact that it yields
an unusually abundant produce as compared with the extent of ground
cultivated, and with the labour, capital, and skill bestowed upon its
cultivation. The same land, which when laid down to corn, will maintain
a given number of persons, will support three times that number when
used for raising potatoes. “A family in the West of Ireland, once
located on from one to three or four acres of land, was provided
for; a cabin could be raised in a few days without the expense of a
sixpence; the potatoes, at the cost of a very little labour, supplied
them with a sufficiency of food, with which, from habit, they were
perfectly content; and a pig, or with some, a cow, or donkey, or pony,
and occasional labour at a very low rate of wages, gave them what was
necessary to pay a rent, and for such clothing and other articles as
were absolutely necessary, and which, with a great proportion, were
on the lowest scale of human existence. The foundation of the whole,
however, was the possession of the bit of land; it was the one, and the
only one thing absolutely necessary; the rent consequently was high,
and generally well paid, being the first demand on all money received,
in order to secure that essential tenure; and only what remained
became applicable to other objects. Although of the lowest grade, it
was an easy mode of subsistence, and led to the encouragement of early
marriages, large families, and a rapidly-increasing population, and at
the same time afforded the proprietor very good return of profit for
his land[3].”
The relations of employer and employed, which knit together the
framework of society, and establish a mutual dependence and good-will,
have no existence in the potato system. The Irish small holder lives
in a state of isolation, the type of which is to be sought for in
the islands of the South Sea, rather than in the great civilized
communities of the ancient world. A fortnight for planting, a week
or ten days for digging, and another fortnight for turf-cutting,
suffice for his subsistence; and during the rest of the year, he is
at leisure to follow his own inclinations, without even the safeguard
of those intellectual tastes and legitimate objects of ambition which
only imperfectly obviate the evils of leisure in the higher ranks of
society. The excessive competition for land maintained rents at a
level which left the Irish peasant the bare means of subsistence; and
poverty, discontent, and idleness, acting on his excitable nature,
produced that state of popular feeling which furnishes the material
for every description of illegal association and misdirected political
agitation. That agrarian code which is at perpetual war with the
laws of God and man, is more especially the offspring of this state
of society, the primary object being to secure the possession of the
plots of land, which, in the absence of wages, are the sole means of
subsistence.
There is a gradation even in potatoes. Those generally used by the
people of Ireland were of the coarsest and most prolific kind, called
“Lumpers,” or “Horse Potatoes,” from their size, and they were, for
the most part, cultivated, not in furrows, but in the slovenly mode
popularly known as “lazy beds;” so that the principle of seeking the
cheapest description of food at the smallest expense of labour, was
maintained in all its force. To the universal dependence on the potato,
and to the absence of farmers of a superior class, it was owing that
agriculture of every description was carried on in a negligent,
imperfect manner[4]. The domestic habits arising out of this mode of
subsistence were of the lowest and most degrading kind. The pigs and
poultry, which share the food of the peasant’s family, became, in
course, inmates of the cabin also. The habit of exclusively living on
this root produced an entire ignorance of every other food and of the
means of preparing it; and there is scarcely a woman of the peasant
class in the West of Ireland, whose culinary art exceeds the boiling of
a potato. Bread is scarcely ever seen, and an oven is unknown.
The first step to improvement was wanting to this state of things. The
people had no incitement to be industrious to procure comforts which
were utterly beyond their reach, and which many of them perhaps had
never seen. Their ordinary food being of the cheapest and commonest
description, and having no value in the market, it gave them no command
of butcher’s meat, manufactures, colonial produce, or any other article
of comfort or enjoyment. To those who subsist chiefly on corn, other
articles of equal value are available, which can be substituted for it
at their discretion; or if they please, they can, by the adoption of a
less expensive diet, accumulate a small capital by which their future
condition may be improved and secured; but the only hope for those who
lived upon potatoes was in some great intervention of Providence to
bring back the potato to its original use and intention as an adjunct,
and not as a principal article of national food; and by compelling the
people of Ireland to recur to other more nutritious means of aliment,
to restore the energy and the vast industrial capabilities of that
country.
A population, whose ordinary food is wheat and beef, and whose ordinary
drink is porter and ale, can retrench in periods of scarcity, and
resort to cheaper kinds of food, such as barley, oats, rice, and
potatoes. But those who are habitually and entirely fed on potatoes,
live upon the extreme verge of human subsistence, and when they are
deprived of their accustomed food, there is nothing cheaper to which
they can resort. They have already reached the lowest point in the
descending scale, and there is nothing beyond but starvation or
beggary. Several circumstances aggravate the hazard of this position.
The produce of the potato is more precarious than that of wheat or
any other grain. Besides many other proofs of the uncertainty of this
crop, there is no instance on record of any such failure of the crops
of corn, as occurred in the case of potatoes in 1821, 1845, 1846,
and 1847; showing that this root can no longer be depended upon as a
staple article of human food. The potato cannot be stored so that the
scarcity of one year may be alleviated by bringing forward the reserves
of former years, as is always done in corn-feeding countries. Every
year is thus left to provide subsistence for itself. When the crop
is luxuriant, the surplus must be given to the pigs; and when it is
deficient, famine and disease necessarily prevail. Lastly, the bulk
of potatoes is such, that they can with difficulty be conveyed from
place to place to supply local deficiencies, and it has often happened
that severe scarcity has prevailed in districts within fifty miles of
which potatoes were to be had in abundance. If a man use two pounds
of meal a-day (which is twice the amount of the ration found to be
sufficient during the late relief operations), a hundredweight of meal
will last him for fifty-six days; whereas a hundredweight of potatoes
will not last more than eight days; and when it was proposed to provide
seed-potatoes for those who had lost their stock in the failure of
1845-6, the plan was found impracticable, because nearly a ton an acre
would have been required for the purpose.
The potato does not, in fact, last even a single year. The old crop
becomes unfit for use in July, and the new crop, as raised by the
inferior husbandry of the poor, does not come into consumption until
September. Hence, July and August are called the “meal months,” from
the necessity the people are under of living upon meal at that period.
This is always a season of great distress and trial for the poorer
peasants; and in the districts in which the potato system has been
carried to the greatest extent, as, for instance, in the barony of
Erris in the county of Mayo, there has been an annual dearth in the
summer months for many years past. Every now and then a “meal year”
occurs, and then masses of the population become a prey to famine and
fever, except so far as they may be relieved by charity.
In 1739 an early and severe frost destroyed the potatoes in the ground,
and the helplessness and despair of the people having led to a great
falling off of tillage in 1740, the calamity was prolonged to the
ensuing year, 1741, which was long known as the _bliadhain an air_, or
year of slaughter. The ordinary burial-grounds were not large enough
to contain those who died by the roadside, or who were taken from the
deserted cabins. The “bloody flux” and “malignant fever,” having begun
among the poor, spread to the rich, and numerous individuals occupying
prominent positions in society, including one of the judges (Mr.
Baron Wainwright), and the Mayor of Limerick (Joseph Roche, Esq.), and
many others of the corporation, fell victims. Measures were adopted
at Dublin on the principle of the English Poor Law, some of the most
essential provisions of which appear to have been well understood
in the great towns of Ireland in that day; and it was “hoped, since
such provision is made for the poor, the inhabitants of the city will
discourage all vagrant beggars, and give their assistance that they
may be sent to Bridewell to hard labour, and thereby free themselves
from a set of idlers who are a scandal and a reproach to the nation.”
Soup-kitchens and other modes of relief were established in different
parts of the country, in which Primate Boulter and the Society of
Friends took the lead; and numerous cargoes of corn were procured on
mercantile account from the North American Colonies, the arrival of
which was looked for with great anxiety. In only one point is there
any decided difference between what then took place in Ireland and the
painful events which have just occurred, after the lapse of upwards
of a century. The famine of 1741 was not regarded with any active
interest either in England or in any foreign country, and the subject
is scarcely alluded to in the literature of the day. No measures were
adopted either by the Executive or the Legislature for the purpose of
relieving the distress caused by this famine. There is no mention of
grants or loans; but an Act was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1741
(15 Geo. II, cap. 8), “For the more effectual securing the payment of
Rents, and preventing frauds by Tenants[5].”
The failure of 1822, in the provinces of Munster and Connaught, was
owing to a continued and excessive humidity, which caused the potatoes
to rot after they had been stored in the pits, so that the deficiency
of food was not discovered till late in the season. On the 7th May,
1822, a public meeting was held in London which was attended by the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the most eminent persons of the day,
when a committee of no less than 109 of the nobility and gentry was
formed, and a subscription was entered into, amounting, with the aid
of a king’s letter, to 311,081ℓ. 5s., 7d., of which 44,177ℓ. 9s. was
raised in Ireland. Many excellent principles were laid down for the
distribution of this large sum; and after reserving what was required
for immediate relief, the balance, amounting to 87,667ℓ., was granted
to various societies which had been established for the future and
permanent benefit of the Irish peasantry[6]. A committee also sat at
the Mansion House at Dublin, which collected 31,260ℓ. from various
quarters, independently of the grants it received from the London
Committee. Central Committees were established in each county town
in the distressed districts, and Sub-Committees in each parish. The
western portion of Ireland was also divided into three districts,
to each of which a civil engineer was appointed for the purpose of
employing the destitute in making roads, and the following sums were
voted by Parliament for carrying on these and other Public Works set on
foot with the same object of relieving the distress[7]:
On 24 June, 1822, £100,000,
“for the employment of the poor in Ireland, and other purposes
relating thereto as the exigency of affairs may require.”
On 23 July, 1822, £200,000,
“to enable His Majesty to take such measures as the exigency of
affairs may require.”
And on the 24 June, 1823, £15,000 was voted,
“to facilitate emigration from the south of Ireland to the Cape
of Good Hope.”
In 1831 another failure of the potato crop occurred in the counties
of Galway, Mayo, and Donegal, upon which another meeting was held in
the City of London, and one committee was established at the Mansion
House, and another at the West End. Great exertions were made to raise
subscriptions; a bazaar was held at the Hanover Square Rooms by many
of the ladies of the nobility, presided over by the Queen in person;
and there was a ball at Drury Lane Theatre, which was honoured by
the presence of the King and Queen. The whole amount collected was
74,410ℓ.; and besides this 40,000ℓ. was granted by Parliament, part of
which was expended on relief works, and part in the actual distribution
of food. Besides these London Committees, two other Committees were
formed at Dublin, through one of which (the Mansion House Committee[8])
8,569ℓ. was collected, and through the other (the Sackville Street
Committee) 21,526ℓ.
In each of the years 1835, 1836, and 1837, the potato crop failed
in one or other of the districts in the West of Ireland, and sums
amounting in the aggregate to 7,572ℓ. were expended from Civil
Contingencies in relieving the distress thereby occasioned, to which
was added the sum of 4,306ℓ. remaining from the English and Irish
subscriptions of 1831.
In 1839 another failure occurred; and in all the Western and Midland
Counties, the average price of potatoes in July and August was 7d. a
stone, and of oatmeal 18s. or 19s. a cwt.; the former double, and the
latter one-third more than the usual price at that time of the year.
On this occasion Captain Chads, R.N., was deputed by the Government
to assist the landlords in employing the destitute in constructing
roads and other useful public works; and it appears from a report
addressed by him to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dated the 22nd
of August, 1839, that 5,441ℓ. was expended in this way, of which
1840ℓ. was contributed by the Government, besides 1478ℓ. disbursed
through other channels. Towards the conclusion of his report Captain
Chads made the following remarks:--“A recurrence of these seasons of
distress, which have been almost periodical hitherto, must, I fear,
be necessarily expected, so long as the present condition of the poor
continues, and whilst they subsist on that species of food, which in
a year of plenty cannot be stored up for the next, which may be one
of scarcity. A very great alleviation, however, of this evil is most
confidently expected from the Poor Law now being established. I have
conversed on this subject with persons of every class of society, from
one end of the country to the other, and it is universally regarded
as the promise of a great blessing:--to the poor by inducing more
provident and industrious habits; and by making it the interest of the
landlords to give them employment; and to all other classes, comfort
and contentment, from the knowledge that the really distressed are
provided for, and that the country is generally improving by the
extension of employment.”
After this, urgent representations of distress were made in each year
to the Irish Government and to the Poor Law Commissioners, until the
summer of 1842, which was more than usually wet and unfavourable to
vegetation, and it therefore again became necessary to have recourse to
extensive measures of relief. On this occasion 3,448ℓ. was distributed
in aid of local subscriptions, in 121 separate districts; the aggregate
sums raised in each case being expended, partly in public works on
Captain Chads’ plan, and partly in giving gratuitous relief[9].
Besides the grants above enumerated, made for the immediate relief
of the Irish poor, when failures of the potato crop caused unusual
distress, large sums of money have been advanced or granted from the
Imperial Treasury from time to time since the Union, for various
purposes supposed to be conducive to the tranquillity and improvement
of the country, and to the removal of the causes of permanent distress,
as will be seen from the following specimens taken principally from a
return to an order of the House of Commons of the 12th February, 1847,
made on the motion of Mr. John O’Connell[10].
Works for Special Purposes under the Act 57
Geo. III., cap. 34 496,000
Do. for the Employment and Relief of the
Poor, under the 1 & 2 Wm. IV., cap. 33,
and previous Acts 1,339,146
Grants in aid of Public Works under various
Acts of Parliament 125,000
Advanced by the London Loan Commissioners
for sundry Works between 1826 and 1833 322,500
Do. do. for Poor Law Union Workhouses 1,145,800
Kingstown Harbour 1,124,586
Improvement of the River Shannon 533,359
Wide Street Commissioners, Dublin 267,778
Improving Post Roads 515,541
Gaols and Bridewells 713,005
Asylums for Lunatic Poor 710,850
Valuation of Lands and Tenements 172,774
Royal Dublin Society 285,438
Farming Society, Dublin 87,132
Linen Board, Dublin 537,656
Tithe (Relief of Clergy who did not receive
Tithes of 1831) 50,916
Tithe Relief (Million Act) 918,863
Tithe Relief Commissioners (establishing
Composition for Tithes) 279,217
Relief of Trade 178,070
Boards and Officers of Health (Cholera) 196,575
Police Purposes (Proclaimed Districts) 4,693,871
Police Purposes (Constabulary Police) 1,748,712
Other causes concurred with the natural tendency of every people to
have recourse to the cheapest description of food, in encouraging the
growth of a large population depending for its subsistence on the
potato. Ireland was essentially a grazing country until the artificial
enhancement of prices caused by the Acts of the Irish Parliament
passed in 1783 and 1784, for granting a bounty on the exportation,
and restricting the importation of corn, occasioned an immediate and
extraordinary increase of cultivation; and as, owing to the general
want of capital, it was impossible to find tenants for large tillage
farms, the stimulus intended to act exclusively on agriculture, had a
still more powerful effect in causing the subdivision of farms. The new
occupiers also, being, for the most part, exceedingly poor, instead of
paying their labourers in money, allowed them the use of small pieces
of ground whereon they might erect cabins and raise potatoes, and their
labour was set off, at so much a-day, against the annual rent. The plan
of dividing and subdividing for the purpose of making freeholders,
was carried to a great extent after 1792, when the elective franchise
was restored to the Roman Catholics; and although the practice was far
from being general, yet in some parts of the country, where particular
families made it their object to contest or secure the county, it
was carried to a very pernicious extent. Another powerful cause is
that the emoluments of the Roman Catholic priesthood, including the
bishops, depend not only on the extent of the population, but also on
its continual increase; and if the parish priests object to emigration
and the consolidation of small holdings, and look with favour on
early marriages, it is only what any other body of men, in their
circumstances, would equally do. Lastly, the small holding and potato
system offered the inducement of large rents, obtained at the smallest
possible amount of cost and trouble. The embarrassed and improvident
landlord, and the leaseholder whose only object it was to make the
most of his short tenure, equally found their account in this state of
things, and the result in both cases was, that the farms were covered
with hovels and miserable cottiers, in order, through them, to create
profit-rents. When the failure of the potato forced all the “squatters”
and “mock tenants” into notice, the owner of many a neglected estate
was surprised by the apparition of hundreds of miserable beings, who
had grown up on his property without his knowledge, and now claimed the
means of support at his hands. The subsistence of the tenant was at
the minimum; the rent was at the maximum; and the interval between the
ignorant excitable peasantry and the proprietor in chief, was filled
only by the middleman, whose business it was to exact rents and not to
employ labourers. The base and the capital of the column were there,
but the shaft was almost entirely wanting.
The extent to which the welfare of the agricultural population,
and through them of the rest of the community, is affected by the
conditions upon which landed property is held, has become fearfully
apparent during the present social crisis. The dependence for good
and evil of workman on master manufacturer, of subject on Government,
of child on father, is less absolute than that of the Irish peasant
upon the lord of the soil from which he derives his subsistence. This
is a subject to which, if we would save ourselves and our country,
it behoves us to give our most earnest and careful attention at
the present time. We cannot give landed proprietors the will and
disposition (where it is wanting) to fulfil the important part they
have to perform in the scheme of society, but we have it in our power
to strike off the fetters which at present impede every step of their
progress in the performance of the duty they owe to themselves and to
those dependent on them.
One half of the surface of Ireland is said to be let off in perpetuity
leases, with derivative and subderivative interests in an endless
chain, so as to obtain profit-rents at each stage; and these leases
are often open to the additional objection that they are unnecessarily
burthensome or uncertain from the particular mode in which they are
made; such as “leases for lives renewable for ever by the insertion
of other lives when the first-named are dead,” “for three lives _or_
thirty-one years,” and “for three lives _and_ thirty-one years.” Many
proposals have at different times been made for the redemption of these
various interests; but an arbitrary interference with the rights of
property is to be avoided, and our object should rather be to give
every prudent facility for the voluntary transfer of land and of
the various interests connected with it, which must lead, by a safe
but certain gradation, to that degree of improvement of the existing
tenures which is necessary for the encouragement of agriculture. In the
flourishing islands of Guernsey and Jersey, corn-rents of fixed amount
are charged upon the same farm one after another, like the coats of
an onion; but the lowest holder, who is the party really interested
in the improvement of the property, has every requisite security that
he will enjoy the whole profit of any outlay he may make, and the
most essential part of the benefit of ownership is thus obtained. In
Mayo and other western counties the old barbarous Irish tenure called
_Rundale_ (Scotch _runrigg_), still prevails, which stops short of the
institution of individual property, and by making the industrious and
thriving responsible for the short-comings of the idle and improvident,
effectually destroys the spring of all improvement. The cessation of
this antiquated system is an indispensable preliminary to any progress
being made in the localities where it exists; but this improvement may
be effected by the landlords without any change in the law.
The master evil of the agricultural system of Ireland, however, is the
law of Entail, and the Incumbrances which seldom fail to accumulate
upon entailed estates. “Proprietors of estates,” observes the author of
an excellent pamphlet which has recently appeared on this subject[11],
“are too often but mere nominal owners, without influence or power over
the persons holding under them. Their real condition is often pitiable,
nor is it possible, in the great majority of cases, to retrieve the
estates. The burthen of debt, or the evils of improvident leases, are
fastened upon the land in such a manner as to convert the owner into
a mere annuitant, often glad to obtain from a good estate a scanty
annuity (after payment of the incumbrances thereon and the public
burthens) for his own subsistence. Proprietor and tenant are equally
powerless for good; and the whole kingdom suffers from the disorders
which have resulted from this state of real property in Ireland.” And
the author of another valuable publication on the same subject[12]
observes as follows: “The evils resulting from settlements and entails
may be regarded as arising from insecurity or uncertainty of tenure;
because the possessor of the property is not in reality the owner; he
cannot deal with it as an owner; he is merely a trustee for others; he
has no interest in its future thorough permanent improvement, except
so far as he may wish to benefit his successors; he can never reap
the benefit himself; he cannot sell; he cannot dispose of a part,
even though the alienation of a part might greatly enhance the value
of the remainder; he holds it during his lifetime, as his predecessor
held it, unaltered, unimproved, to transmit it to his heir clogged
with the same restrictions alike injurious to him and to his country.
This is the case of an unembarrassed landlord[13]. But let us suppose,
as is unfortunately too often the case, that he has received the
estate incumbered under a settlement, with a jointure to the widow of
the late possessor, and a provision for daughters and younger sons.
In what difficulties is he at once involved! this owner for life of
a large tract of country with a long rent-roll, but in fact a small
property! He cannot maintain his position in society without spending
more than his income; debts accumulate; he mortgages his estate, and
insures his life for the security of the mortgagee. Of course he cannot
afford to lay out anything on improvements; on the contrary, though
perhaps naturally kind-hearted and just, his necessities force him to
resort to every means of increasing his present rental. He looks for
the utmost amount; he lets to the highest bidder, without regard to
character or means of payment. If his tenants are without leases, he
raises their rents. If leases fall in, he cannot afford to give the
preference to the last occupier. Perhaps, with all his exertions, he is
unable to pay the interest or put off his creditors. Proceedings are
commenced against him, and the estate passes during his lifetime under
the care of the worst possible landlord, a Receiver under the Court of
Chancery[14].”
The remedy for this state of things is simply the sale of the
encumbered estate, or of a sufficient portion of it to enable the owner
to discharge his encumbrances and to place him in a position to do his
duty towards the remainder. This is the master-key to unlock the field
of industry in Ireland. The seller, in all such cases, is incapable of
making a proper use of the land. The purchaser, on the other hand, may
safely be assumed to be an improver. It is a natural feeling in which
almost all men indulge, and purchases of land are seldom made without
a distinct view to further profitable investments in improvements. “To
give every prudent facility for the transfer by sale of real property
from man to man, by the adoption of a simple, cheap, and secure system
of transfer, in lieu of the present barbarous, unsafe, and expensive
system, so that real property could be bought and sold in Ireland with
as much freedom and security as other property[15],” is, therefore,
the object at which we ought to aim, and especially to encourage
the investment of small capitals in the land, it being through the
instrumentality of small capitalists chiefly that the country can
be civilized and improved. “The purchasers would give extensive and
permanent employment to numbers of people around them in carrying out
that natural desire of man, the improvement of newly-acquired landed
property; they would promote industry everywhere; they would greatly
increase the value of land generally. By their number, all property
in land would be rendered secure against revolutionary violence. The
habits and example of men who had made money by industry, and who might
invest their savings in land, would place the social system of Ireland
on a solid basis. The best of the Protestants and Roman Catholics,
those who had been careful and industrious, would be purchasers of
land, and all would have a common interest in peace and order. That
surplus population beyond the means of present employment, which now
oppresses and embarrasses the country, might gradually be absorbed, and
become a source of wealth and strength. Towns would everywhere improve,
and new ones might arise by the extension of the railway system,
spreading industry and civilization among men now sunk in indolence and
almost barbarism[16].”
All the parties concerned in these transfers would be benefited by
them. Lands are comparatively valueless to those who have no capital
to improve them, and they are often justly felt to be a burthen and a
disgrace, because they entail duties which the nominal owners have no
means of performing. The effect on the character and prospects of the
whole body of landed proprietors would be as described in the following
passage from the author to whom we are already so much indebted: “When
men, however young, act under responsibility, they usually proceed
with caution; if others will think and act for them, and provide
for their wants, and secure them from poverty and danger, their own
prudential faculties may become dormant; and a man or any class of men
so protected, are likely to exhibit deficiency in the qualities of
prudence and good management of their affairs. But owners of land would
not evince any such deficiency, if once they felt that they would be
ruined, and their families also, if they were not governed by the same
rules of prudence which other men must observe, and which necessarily
enter into the proper management of all other descriptions of property.
The present difficulties of sale of land, and the consequent protection
afforded to entailed properties, are the chief reasons why so many
persons of the class of proprietors are in difficulties. With more
liberty, there would be more prudence and more attention to estates
on the part of owners, from which they and the country would be great
gainers[17].”
The manner in which the interests of the public at large are affected,
is correctly described in the following passage from the other
pamphlet: “If these premises be correct; if employment with regular
wages must be found for the peasantry: if capital be necessary, and the
parties holding the land do not possess sufficient for this purpose;
it follows, either that Government must continue to supply the capital
required, not merely by a loan on an emergency, but as part of its
regular system of action; or else that the land must pass into the
hands of those who do possess the means of employing the people--of men
who will carry on agriculture as a business, and will bring to their
occupation the capital, the habits of business, and the energy and
intelligence which have raised the commerce and manufactures of this
nation to their present pre-eminence[18].”
Her Majesty’s Government being deeply impressed with the importance of
these views, introduced a bill into Parliament in the session of 1847,
the object of which was to enable the owners of encumbered estates in
Ireland to sell the whole or a portion of them, after the circumstances
of each estate had been investigated by a Master in Chancery with a
view to secure the due liquidation of every claim upon it. The sale
was not to take place without the consent of the first incumbrancer,
unless the Court of Chancery should consider the produce sufficient
to pay the principal and all arrears of interest, or unless the owner
or some subsequent incumbrancer should undertake to pay to the first
incumbrancer any deficiency which might exist, and give such security
for the performance of his undertaking as the court might direct. This
bill passed the House of Lords, but was withdrawn in the Commons, owing
to the opposition of some of the Irish proprietors, and to objections
entertained by the great Insurance Companies, who are the principal
lenders on Irish mortgages, to having their investments disturbed. The
failure of the bill was a national misfortune which cannot be too soon
remedied.
The Government, however, did what was in its power. A system has
existed in Ireland since the time of Queen Anne for the registration
of all deeds affecting landed property; and of late years a similar
registration has been established of all judgments relating to that
description of property. The attention of the Lord Lieutenant has been
called to the practicability of diminishing the delay and expense
attending transfers of landed property, by the adoption of two simple
practical measures, viz., that when searches have been made in the
office of the Registrar of Deeds, copies should be recorded in the
office, as well as given to the parties on whose behalf they are made;
and that when judgments, &c., recorded in the office of the Registrar
of Judgments have been satisfied, notice should be immediately sent to
the Registrar, in order that such satisfaction may be recorded in the
books of his office[19]. The consequence of the neglect of the first of
these obvious precautions was, that, after expensive searches had been
made in the Registry Office, the same searches often had to be made
again and again, at the same expense, at the instance of other parties,
however limited the transactions might be for the security of which
these inquiries into past transfers and incumbrances were made; and the
consequence of the neglect of the other precaution was, that if, after
a search had been made through the records deposited in the office of
the Registrar of Judgments, to ascertain whether any judgment had been
passed against the estate, it appeared that any such judgment had been
given, another search had to be made in the courts of law, involving
fresh loss of time and fresh expense, to ascertain whether it had been
satisfied[20].
But it is time that we should resume our narrative.
The potato disease, which had manifested itself in North America in
1844[21], first appeared in these islands late in the autumn of 1845.
The early crop of potatoes, which is generally about one-sixth of the
whole, and is dug in September and October, escaped; but the late,
or what is commonly called the “people’s crop,” and is taken up in
December and January, was tainted after it arrived at an advanced
stage of maturity. When the disease had once commenced, it made steady
progress, and it was often found, on opening the pits, that the
potatoes had become a mass of rottenness. Nevertheless, this year the
attack was partial; and although few parts of the country entirely
escaped, and the destruction of human food was, on the whole, very
great, a considerable portion of the crop, which had been a more than
usually large one, was saved. The wheat crop was a full average; oats
and barley were abundant; and of turnips, carrots, and green crops,
including a plentiful hay harvest, there was a more than sufficient
supply. On the Continent, the rye crops failed partially, and the
potato disease was very destructive in Holland, Belgium, France, and
the west of Germany.
In the following year (1846) the blight in the potatoes took place
earlier, and was of a much more sweeping and decisive kind. “On the
27th of last month (July), I passed,” Father Mathew writes in a letter
published in the Parliamentary Papers, “from Cork to Dublin, and this
doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest.
Returning on the 3rd instant (August), I beheld with sorrow one wide
waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were
seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands,
and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.” The
first symptom of the disease was a little brown spot on the leaf, and
these spots gradually increased in number and size, until the foliage
withered and the stem became brittle, and snapped off immediately when
touched. In less than a week the whole process was accomplished[22].
The fields assumed a blackened appearance, as if they had been burnt
up, and the growth of the potatoes was arrested when they were not
larger than a marble or a pigeon’s egg. No potatoes were pitted this
year. In many districts where they had been most abundant, full-grown
wholesome potatoes were not to be procured; and even in London and
other large towns, they were sold at fancy prices, and were consumed as
a luxury by the wealthy, rice and other substitutes being had recourse
to by the body of the people. The crop of wheat this year was barely
an average one, while barley and oats, and particularly the former,
were decidedly deficient. On the Continent, the rye and potato crops
again failed, and prices rose early in the season above those ruling
in England, which caused the shipments from the Black Sea, Turkey and
Egypt, to be sent to France, Italy, and Belgium; and it was not till
late in the season, that our prices rose to a point which turned the
current of supplies towards England and Ireland. The Indian corn crop
in the United States this year was very abundant, and it became a
resource of the utmost value to this country.
In the third year (1847) the disease had nearly exhausted itself. It
appeared in different parts of the country, but the plants generally
exerted fresh vigour and outgrew it. The result, perhaps, could not
have been better. The wholesome distrust in the potato was maintained,
while time was allowed for making the alterations which the new state
of things required. Although the potatoes sown in Ireland in the year
1847 were estimated only at 1/5th or 1/6th of the usual quantity,
it would have been a serious aggravation of the difficulties and
discouragements under which that portion of the empire was suffering,
if the disease had reappeared in its unmitigated form. The crops of
wheat, barley, and oats, in almost every part of the United Kingdom,
and in most of the neighbouring countries on the Continent, were this
year, to use the epithet generally applied to them, magnificent; and
it became more and more apparent on the brink of what a precipice we
had been standing, as the unusually small remaining stock of old corn
came to light, and the exhausted and embarrassed state to which every
description of business had been reduced, notwithstanding the advantage
of a good harvest, gradually declared itself.
Among the numerous causes which enhanced the difficulty of obtaining
adequate foreign supplies at moderate rates during the most exigent
period of the winter of 1846-7, one of the most embarrassing, was
the sudden and extraordinary advance in freights, which occurred
simultaneously in the ports of the United States of America, the
Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. Vessels were not obtainable in the
Black Sea and the Danube at less than 18s. and 22s. per quarter for
corn, whereas the usual rates are 9s. and 11s.; while in the United
States, where large shipments of grain, flour, and Indian corn, were
going forward to Europe, the comparatively limited number of vessels
caused the rates to run up to 9s. per barrel for flour, and 16s. and
18s. per quarter for Indian corn to British ports, the rates usually
given being 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per barrel of flour, and 8s. and 9s. per
quarter for Indian corn.
On the 27th January, 1846, Sir Robert Peel proposed his measure for
the relaxation of the duties on the importation of foreign corn, by
which the scale of duties payable on wheat was to range from 4s. to
10s. per quarter, and Indian corn, which had previously been charged
with the same duty as barley, was to pay only 1s. a-quarter. This was
to last till February 1849, when an uniform duty of 1s. a-quarter
was to be charged on every description of grain. The bill passed the
House of Lords on the 29th June, 1846; and Sir R. Peel announced his
resignation in the House of Commons on the same day.
Immediately on the meeting of Parliament in January, 1847, Lord J.
Russell introduced bills to suspend until the 1st September, 1847, the
duties on foreign corn, and the restrictions imposed by the Navigation
Laws on the importation of corn in foreign vessels; and he at the same
time moved a resolution permitting the use of sugar in breweries; all
which measures received the sanction of the Legislature. At the close
of the same session, the suspension of the Corn and Navigation Laws was
extended to the 1st March, 1848.
On the first appearance of the blight in the autumn of 1845, Professors
Kane, Lindley, and Playfair, were appointed by Sir Robert Peel to
inquire into the nature of it, and to suggest the best means of
preserving the stock of potatoes from its ravages. The result showed
that the mischief lay beyond the knowledge and power of man. Every
remedy which science or experience could dictate was had recourse to,
but the potato equally melted away under the most opposite modes of
treatment.
The next step was to order from the United States of America 100,000ℓ.
worth of Indian corn. It was considered that the void caused by the
failure of the potato crop might be filled, with the least disturbance
of private trade and market prices, by the introduction of a new
description of popular food. Owing to the prohibitory duty, Indian corn
was unknown as an article of consumption in the United Kingdom[23].
Private merchants, therefore, could not complain of interference with
a trade which did not exist, nor could prices be raised against the
home consumer on an article of which no stock was to be found in the
home market. Nevertheless, with a view to avoid as long as possible,
the doubts and apprehensions which must have arisen if the Government
had appeared as a purchaser in a new class of operations, pains were
taken to keep the transaction secret, and the first cargoes from
America had been more than a fortnight in Cork harbour before it became
generally known that such a measure was in progress.
In order to distribute the food so obtained, central depôts were
established in various parts of Ireland, under the direction of
officers of the Commissariat, with sub-depôts under the charge of the
Constabulary and Coast Guard; and, when the supplies in the local
markets were deficient, meal was sold from these depôts at reasonable
prices to Relief Committees, where any existed, and where they did not,
to the labourers themselves. In the time of the heaviest pressure (June
and July 1846), one sub-depôt retailed 20 tons of meal daily, and the
issues from a single main depôt to its dependencies amounted to 233
tons in one week.
The Relief Committees were formed, under the superintendence of a
Central Commission at Dublin, for the purpose of selling food in detail
to those who could buy it, and of giving it to those who could not; the
requisite funds being derived from private subscriptions, added to, in
certain proportions, by Government donations. The Relief Committees
also selected the persons to be employed on the Relief Works carried on
under the superintendence of the Board of Works.
If the Irish poor had been in the habit of buying their food, as is
the case in England, the object would have been attained when a cheap
substitute had been provided for the potato; but as the labouring class
in Ireland had hitherto subsisted on potatoes grown by themselves, and
money wages were almost unknown, it was necessary to adopt some means
of giving the people a command over the new description of food. This
was done by establishing a system of public works, in accordance with
the previous practice on similar occasions, both in Ireland and in
other countries.
These works, which consisted principally of roads, were undertaken on
the application of the magistrates and principal cess-payers, under
the Act 9 & 10 Vic., c. 1, which was passed for the purpose, and the
expense of executing them was defrayed by advances of public money,
half of which was a grant, and half a loan to be repaid by the barony.
The largest number of persons employed in this first season of relief
was 97,000, in August, 1846.
The first symptoms of neglected tillage appeared in the Spring of 1846,
and they were worst in those districts in which the Relief Works were
carried on to the greatest extent. The improvements in progress on the
Shannon and the arterial drainages were also impeded by the preference
which the labourers showed for the Relief Works.
The measures of which we have been speaking were brought to a close
on the 15th August, 1846, and they may be considered to have answered
their end. The scarcity being partial and local, the deficiency of one
part of the country was supplied from the superabundance of others,
and the pains taken to prevent the people from suffering want, led
to their being better off than in ordinary years. Above all, Ireland
was prepared by the course adopted during this probationary season of
distress, as it may be called, to bear better the heavy affliction of
the succeeding season. No misapplication of the funds deserving of
notice took place, except in the instance of the Relief Works, the
cause of which was as follows:--The landed proprietors of Ireland
had long been accustomed to rely upon Government loans and grants
for making improvements of various kinds, and the terms on which the
Relief Works were to be executed being more advantageous than any
which had been open to them for many years before, a rush took place
from all quarters upon this fund, and the special object of relieving
the people from the consequences of the failure of their accustomed
food, was to a great extent lost sight of in the general fear, which
in many cases was not attempted to be concealed, of being deprived of
what the persons interested called “their share of the grant.” This
description of relief, therefore, instead of acting as a test of real
distress, operated as a bounty on applications for public works from
a class of persons who were at once charged with the administration
of the relief and were interested in the execution of the works. The
result was that, while the applications amounted to 1,289,816ℓ., the
sum actually sanctioned and expended was only 476,000ℓ., and great part
even of this was merely yielded to the distressing appeals pressed on
the Lord Lieutenant on the plea of urgent local destitution, and of
the lamentable consequences to be expected from allowing it to remain
unrelieved. The other expenses connected with this season of relief
were as follows:--Loans on grand jury presentments, 130,000ℓ.; loss
on the purchase and sale of grain, 50,000ℓ.; given in aid of Relief
Committees, 69,845ℓ.; extra staff of the Board of Works, 7,527ℓ.; thus
making the whole sum expended in relief to Ireland, up to the 15th
August, 1846, 733,372ℓ., of which 368,000ℓ. was in loans, and 365,372ℓ.
in grants. The sum raised by voluntary subscription through the Relief
Committees was 98,000ℓ.
The new and more decisive failure of the potato crop called for great
exertions from Lord John Russell’s recently formed Government, and the
plan resolved upon was explained in the Treasury Minute dated the 31st
August, 1846, which was published for general information[24].
The system of public works was renewed by the Act 9 & 10 Vic., c.
107, which was passed without any opposition in either House of
Parliament. In order to check the exorbitant demands which had been
made during the preceding season, the whole of the expense was made a
local charge, and the advances were directed to be repaid by a rate
levied according to the Poor Law valuation, which makes the landlords
liable for the whole rate on tenements under 4ℓ. yearly value, and for
a proportion, generally amounting to one-half, on tenements above
that value, instead of according to the grand jury cess (the basis of
the repayments under the preceding Act), which lays the whole burden
upon the occupier. It was also determined that the wages given on the
Relief Works should be somewhat below the average rate of wages in the
district; that the persons employed, should, as far as possible, be
paid by task or in proportion to the work actually done by them; and
that the Relief Committees, instead of giving tickets entitling persons
to employment on the public works, should furnish lists of persons
requiring relief, which should be carefully revised by the officers of
the Board of Works; the experience of the preceding season having shown
that these precautions were necessary to confine the Relief Works to
the destitute, and to enforce a reasonable quantum of work.
The question which the Government had to decide, in regard to the
renewal of the Commissariat operations, was of the most momentous kind.
After all that had taken place during the last few months, it could not
be expected that private trade would return, as a matter of course,
to its accustomed channels. Neither the wholesale dealers in towns,
nor the retail dealers in the rural districts, would lay in even their
usual stocks of food; still less would they make the extraordinary
provision required to meet the coming emergency, while they had before
them the prospect of the Government throwing into the market supplies
of food of unknown extent, which might make their outlay so much loss
to them. The Government could not, therefore, calculate, as it did on
the former occasion, on finding the private trade, by means of which
the people are ordinarily supplied with food, proceeding as usual, and
on being able to add more or less, at its discretion, to the resources
which that trade afforded. Mercantile confidence in this branch of
business was, for the time, destroyed. The trade was paralysed; and
if this state of things had been suffered to continue, the general
expectation of the Government again interfering would inevitably have
created a necessity for that interference, on a scale which it would
have been quite beyond the power of the Government to support.
Under these circumstances it was announced,--1st. That no orders
for supplies of food would be sent by the Government to foreign
countries. 2ndly. That the interference of the Government would be
confined to those western districts of Ireland in which, owing to the
former prevalence of potato cultivation, no trade in corn for local
consumption existed. And 3rdly. That even in these districts, the
Government depôts would not be opened for the sale of food, while it
could be obtained from private dealers at reasonable prices, with
reference to those which prevailed at the nearest large marts. It was
also determined to adhere to the rule acted upon during the preceding
season, not to make any purchases in the local markets of Ireland,
where the appearance of the Government as a buyer must have had the
effect of keeping up prices and encouraging interested representations;
and a promise was given that every practicable effort would be made to
protect the supplies of food introduced by private traders, both while
they were in transit and when they were stored for future consumption.
The Relief Committees of the preceding season were re-organised;
the rules under which they had acted were carefully revised; and
inspecting officers were appointed to superintend their proceedings,
and keep the Government informed of the progress of events. A large
proportion of the people of Ireland had been accustomed to grow the
food they required, each for himself, on his own little plot of ground;
and the social machinery by which, in other countries, the necessary
supplies of food are collected, stored, and distributed, had no
existence there. Suddenly, without any preparation, the people passed
from a potato food, which they raised themselves, to a grain food,
which they had to purchase from others, and which, in great part, had
to be imported from abroad; and the country was so entirely destitute
of the resources applicable to this new state of things, that often,
even in large villages, neither bread nor flour was to be procured; and
in country districts, the people had sometimes to walk twenty miles
before they could obtain a single stone of meal. The main object for
which the Relief Committees were established, therefore, was to provide
a temporary substitute for the operations of the corn-factor, miller,
baker, and provision-dealer, and to allow time and furnish the example
for a sounder and more permanent state of things; but they were not
precluded from giving gratuitous relief in cases of more than ordinary
destitution. The agency of Relief Committees was this season almost
universally substituted for the coast guard and constabulary depôts
with the object of drawing out the resources of the country before
the Government depôts were had recourse to, of inducing the upper and
middle classes to exert themselves, and of preventing a direct pressure
of the mass of the people upon the Government depôts, which in a time
of real famine it would have been very difficult to resist.
Such was the plan resolved upon for the campaign of 1846-7 against the
approaching famine, and we shall now show the result of the struggle.
It was hoped that a breathing-time would have been allowed at the
season of harvest, to enable the Board of Works to reorganize their
establishments on a scale proportioned to the magnitude of the task
about to devolve on them, and to prepare, through their district
officers, plans and estimates of suitable works for the assistance of
the baronial sessions. This interval was not obtained. The general
failure of the potato crop spread despondency and alarm from one end
of Ireland to the other, and induced every class of persons to throw
themselves upon the Government for aid. On the 6th of September, the
Lord Lieutenant ordered all the discontinued works under the 9 & 10
Vic., c. 1, to be recommenced, and sessions were rapidly held in all
the southern and western counties of Ireland, at which roads were
presented in the mass, under the 9 & 10 Vic., c. 107, the cost of
which, in some cases, much exceeded the annual rental of the barony.
The resident gentry and rate-payers, whose duty it was to ascertain,
as far as possible, the probable amount of destitution in their
neighbourhood, the sum required to relieve it, and the works upon
which that sum could best be expended, and who had the necessary local
knowledge, in almost every case devolved these functions upon the
Board of Works, who could only act on such information as they could
obtain from naval and military officers and engineers, most of whom
were selected from among strangers to the district, in order to prevent
undue influence being used. After that, to advance the funds; to select
the labourers; to superintend the work; to pay the people weekly;
to enforce proper performance of the labour; if the farm works were
interrupted, to ascertain the quantity of labour required for them;
to select and draft off the proper persons to perform it; to settle
the wages to be paid to them by the farmers, and see that they were
paid; to furnish food, not only for all the destitute out of doors,
but in some measure for the paupers in the workhouses, were the duties
which the Government and its officers were called upon to perform. The
proprietors and associated rate-payers having presented _indefinitely_,
said it was the fault of the Government and its officers if the people
were not instantly employed, and these officers were blamed, even by
persons of character and understanding, if they were not at once equal
to execute the duties which in this country are performed in their
respective districts by thousands of country gentlemen, magistrates,
guardians, overseers, surveyors, &c., resident throughout the country,
and trained by the experience of years to the performance of their
various functions. The Board of Works became the centre of a colossal
organization; 5,000 separate works had to be reported upon; 12,000
subordinate officers had to be superintended. Their letters averaged
upwards of 800 a-day, and the number received on each of the following
days was--
January 4th, 3,104
February 15th, 4,900
April 19th, 4,340
May 17th, 6,033[25]
The strain on the springs of society from this monstrous system of
centralisation was fearful in the extreme. The Government, which ought
only to mediate between the different classes of society, had now to
bear the immediate pressure of the millions, on the sensitive points
of wages and food. The opposition to task-work was general, and the
enforcement of it became a trial of strength between the Government and
the multitude. The officers of the Board were in numerous instances
the objects of murderous attacks, and it became necessary for the
preservation of the whole community, to have recourse to the painful
expedient of stopping the works whenever cases of insubordination or
outrage occurred.
Meanwhile, the number of persons employed on the works was rapidly on
the increase. The utmost exertions of two sets of inspecting officers,
one under the Board of Works, and the other under Sir R. Routh, were
insufficient to revise the lists; and the Lord Lieutenant in vain
directed that no person rated above 6ℓ. for the Poor Law cess, should,
except under very special circumstances, be eligible for employment.
Thousands upon thousands were pressed upon the officers of the Board
of Works in every part of Ireland, and it was impossible for those
officers to test the accuracy of the urgent representations which were
made to them. The attraction of money wages regularly paid from the
public purse, or the “Queen’s pay,” as it was popularly called, led to
a general abandonment of other descriptions of industry, in order to
participate in the advantages of the Relief Works. Landlords competed
with each other in getting the names of their tenants placed on the
lists; farmers dismissed their labourers and sent them to the works;
the clergy insisted on the claims of the members of their respective
congregations; the fisheries were deserted; and it was often difficult
even to get a coat patched or a pair of shoes mended, to such an extent
had the population of the south and west of Ireland turned out upon
the roads. The average number employed in October was 114,000; in
November, 285,000; in December, 440,000; and in January, 1847, 570,000.
It was impossible to exact from such multitudes a degree of labour
which would act as a test of destitution. Huddled together in masses,
they contributed to each other’s idleness, and there were no means of
knowing who did a fair proportion of work and who did not. The general
enforcement of the system of task work had justly been considered
necessary to stimulate the industry of the labourers on the Relief
Works, but when this point had been carried, after a hard struggle, the
old abuse reappeared in the aggravated form of an habitual collusion
between the labourers and the overseers who were appointed to measure
their work; so that the labourers, if they could be so called, were not
only as idle as ever, but were enabled withal to enjoy a rate of wages
which ought only to have been the reward of superior industry.
The plan of the Labour Rate Act (9 & 10 Vic., c. 107) was based on the
supposition that the great majority of the landlords and farmers would
make those exertions and submit to those sacrifices which the magnitude
of the crisis demanded, leaving only a manageable proportion of the
population to be supported by the Board of Works; and the Act would
probably have answered its object, if a larger, instead of a smaller
number of persons than usual had been employed in the cultivation and
improvement of the land, and the Relief Committees had put only those
who were really destitute upon the lists. Including the families of the
persons employed, upwards of two millions of people were maintained by
the Relief Works, but there were other multitudes behind, including
often the most helpless portion of the community, for whom no work
could be found. The Relief Works did not always furnish a subsistence
even for those who were employed on them. The wages, paid regularly in
money, were higher than any which had ever been given for agricultural
labour in Ireland, but at the existing prices of food they were
insufficient for the support of a family, melancholy proof of which was
afforded by daily instances of starvation in connexion with the Relief
Works[26]. The fearful extent to which the rural population had been
thrown for support upon the Board of Works also threatened a disastrous
neglect of the ordinary tillage. If the people were retained on the
works, their lands must remain uncultivated; if they were put off the
works, they must starve. A change of system had become inevitable,
and when Parliament met in the end of January, it was announced that
the Government intended to put an end to the Public Works, and to
substitute for them another mode of relief, which will be hereafter
described.
Meanwhile, the pressure on the Relief Works was continually on the
increase, and the persons daily employed, who in January had been
570,000, became in February 708,000, and in March amounted to the
enormous number of 734,000[27], representing, at a moderate estimate
of the average extent of each family, upwards of three millions of
persons. At last, the Government, seeing that the time suited for
agricultural operations was rapidly passing away, and that the utmost
exertions made on the spot had failed in keeping the numbers in check,
took the matter into its own hands, and directed that on the 20th
March, 20 per cent. of the persons employed should be struck off the
lists; after which, successive reductions were ordered, proportioned
to the progress made in bringing the new system of relief into
operation in each district. These orders were obeyed, and the crisis
passed without any disturbance of the public peace or any perceptible
aggravation of the distress. The necessary labour was returned to
agriculture, and the foundation was laid of the late abundant harvest
in Ireland, by which the downward progress of that country has been
mercifully stayed, and new strength and spirits have been given for
working out her regeneration. In the first week in April, the persons
employed on the Relief Works were reduced to 525,000; in the first
week in May to 419,000; in the first week in June to 101,000; and in
the week ending the 26th June to 28,000. The remaining expenditure
was limited to a sum of 200,000ℓ. for the month of May, and to the
rate of 100,000ℓ. a-month for June, July, and the first fifteen days
of August, when the Act expired. These sums were afterwards permitted
to be exceeded to a certain extent, but the object was attained of
putting a curb on this monstrous system and of bringing it gradually
and quietly to a close. Great exertions were made, and a heavy expense
was incurred, to leave the roads and other works in progress in a safe
and passable state as far as they had gone; but their completion must
depend upon the parties locally interested in them. From the first
commencement of the Relief Works in February 1846, repeated warnings
were given that the object was not the works themselves, but the relief
of the prevailing destitution through the employment afforded by them;
that the works would be closed as soon as they were no longer required
for that purpose; and that if the proprietors desired to complete them,
they might do so under the ordinary system of Government loans made on
the security of county presentments[28].
This system threw off a shoot, the history of which it is necessary to
trace. In order to impose some limits on what threatened to become a
gigantic system of permanently supporting one portion of the community
at the expense of the remainder, and of making provision out of the
taxes for classes of undertakings which properly belong to the economy
of private life, the application of the public money under the Labour
Rate Acts was strictly limited to works of a public character, which
were not likely to be undertaken except for the purpose of giving
relief. This condition was generally objected to in Ireland; and
although no disposition was evinced to take advantage of the loans
which the Government was ready to make under the General Improvement
and Drainage Acts, a great desire was expressed that the funds advanced
under the Labour Rate Act should be employed on what were called
reproductive works. The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained the sanction
of the Government, yielded to this general feeling, and authorized
presentments to be made for the drainage and subsoiling of the estates
of individuals, provided they consented to their estates being charged
with the repayment of the sums advanced. This was the arrangement which
acquired so much notoriety under the name of “Labouchere’s Letter,”
owing to its having been announced by the publication of a letter from
Mr. Labouchere, who then held the office of Secretary for Ireland, to
the Board of Works, dated 5th October, 1846; but the result did not
answer the expectations which had been formed. The aggregate amount
presented “under the Letter,” was 380,607ℓ., of which presentments were
acted on to the gross amount of 239,476ℓ. The sum actually expended
was about 180,000ℓ.; and the largest number of persons at any one time
employed was 26,961 in the month of May, 1847. Some incidental good
was done by the example of the advantages of thorough draining, and of
the proper mode of executing it; but, as a remedy for the wide-spread
calamity, the plan totally failed.
Upon this, a two-fold agitation sprang up. Some landed proprietors
required that their liability should be confined to the relief of the
destitute on their own estates; while others demanded that, instead of
being employed on the roads, the people should be paid for working on
their own farms. Both these movements were steadily resisted by the
Government. The objection to the first was, that if the inhabitants
of the pauperised districts had been separated from the rest in the
administration of the measures of relief, they must either have starved
or have become entirely dependent on the Consolidated Fund; while,
if the other plan had been adopted, the entire cost of carrying on
the agriculture of the country would have been transferred to the
Government, without its being possible either to test the applications
for assistance, or to enforce a proper amount of exertion. This last
scheme was most clamorously urged in the county of Clare, and it may
be considered as the masterpiece of that system of social economy
according to which the machine of society should be worked backwards,
and the Government should be made to support the people, instead of
the people the Government. The Government was also to provide tools
and seed as well as wages, but the rent was to be received by the same
parties as before.
Baronial presentments were authorized for the construction of railway
earthworks, as relief works under the 9 & 10 Vic., c. 107, subject
to the conditions required for the fulfilment of the object of the
Act[29]; but advantage was taken of this permission only in two
baronies of the county of Cork, where the Waterford and Limerick
Railway was aided from this source.
The silver currency which had previously sufficed for a people who
lived upon potatoes grown by themselves, and paid their rent by so many
days’ labour, fell short of what was required to pay the labourers
employed on the numerous Relief Works carried on simultaneously in
different parts of the country, and a large supply was therefore
distributed, by means of a Government steamer, among the principal
towns on the coast of Ireland. On the cessation of the Relief Works,
the greater part of this coin accumulated in the banks, which were
relieved by the transmission of the surplus to the Cape of Good Hope to
aid in carrying on the Caffre war.
In the Commissariat branch of the operations, every pledge which
had been given was strictly adhered to, and confidence having been
re-established, prodigious efforts were made by the mercantile
community to provide against the approaching scarcity. The whole world
was ransacked for supplies; Indian corn, the taste for which had by
this time taken root in Ireland, rose to a higher price than wheat;
and the London and Liverpool markets were again and again swept by
the enterprising operations of the Irish dealers, who, from an early
period, appreciated the full extent of the calamity, and acted upon the
principle that the gulf which had opened in Ireland would swallow all
that could be thrown into it, and remain still unsatisfied. In February
1847, the beneficial effect of these measures began to be apparent. On
the 24th of that month, Mr. N. Cummins, a respectable merchant of Cork,
wrote as follows to Mr. Trevelyan:
“From this gloomy picture I turn to the supply of food, and
am happy to say that in this quarter the importations, both
direct and from England, during the past month, have been very
large; heavy cargoes of maize continue almost daily to arrive,
and I feel persuaded that the stocks of bread stuffs generally
are accumulating here to a much larger amount than some of
our dealers would have it believed. Prices cannot, however, be
quoted at more than a turn below the extreme point yet; they
stand as follows,--say Indian corn, by retail, 17ℓ. 15s. and
18ℓ. per ton; Indian meal to 19ℓ.; oatmeal, 25ℓ.; wheaten meal,
19ℓ. to 20ℓ. per ton.”