[62] By neglecting their estates, and omitting to construct proper farm
buildings, and to make other necessary improvements, Irish landlords
relinquish their position in rural society, and give free scope to
the agrarian revolutionary plans which, under the disguise of “fixity
of tenure” and “tenant right,” would dispossess the landlord, without
conferring any permanent benefit on the tenant. In the smaller class of
holdings, the entire gross produce is insufficient to support a family,
without allowing for either rent, seed, or taxes; and even supposing
that, with the dangerous help of the potato, eked out by harvest-work
and begging, a rent is paid, the tendency to multiply and subdivide
is so strong, that if the whole rent were given up, the holders would
become in a generation or two much more numerous and equally poor. The
fact is, that the main hope of extrication from the slough of despond
in which the small holders in the centre and west of Ireland are at
present sunk, is from the enterprise and capital and improved husbandry
of the class of owners commonly known by the name of landlords.
[63] In what follows we must be understood as giving expression to
the practical conclusions of those who, having been charged with the
unenviable task of superintending the measures of relief, and assisting
to replace society on a permanent basis after it had been unsettled by
this great calamity, must be allowed to have had unusual advantages for
a close examination of the subject under a variety of aspects.
[64] The same results appeared in those parts of France, Switzerland,
Germany, and Sweden, in which the subdivision of the land has been
carried to the greatest extent. The following extract from a letter
received in January last from Brest, contains a correct description of
the manner in which that part of France was affected by the dearth:
“All the petty farmers are in the greatest distress, having been
obliged to sell their wheat and most of their other grain in October,
to pay their rents due on Michaelmas-day. The overplus in the crop of
buckwheat is not sufficient to compensate for the deficiency in their
stock of potatoes, and they are now living on cabbages, carrots, and a
very small proportion of buckwheat. Unless some stringent measures be
adopted to prevent the progressive subdivision of land in France, the
country must eventually be reduced to the present state of Ireland.”
It has been justly observed, that “in agriculture, as in every other
industrial process, prosperity must depend upon the application of
capital to production; and equal injury is done when such application
of capital is prevented, either by landlords refusing to give tenants
a beneficial interest in their improvements, or by a combination of
pauper occupants to prevent capitalists from obtaining possession of
land.” Those who take an interest in this important subject will do
well to read Mr. M‘Culloch’s excellent chapter on compulsory partition,
in his recently-published work “On the Succession to Property vacant by
Death.”
[65] The inferior condition of the peasantry in the West of England
is in a great degree owing to the increased use of the potato, the
cultivation of which by the poor was much encouraged by the gentry
and clergy as a cheap means of subsistence during the high prices of
corn in the last war. Somersetshire and Devonshire were, in fact, fast
becoming potato countries; and if the blight of that vegetable had
occurred twenty years later, their sufferings might have approached to
those of Ireland.
[66] Lord George Bentinck stated that 1500 miles of railroad would give
constant employment, either on the line or in the various occupations
connected with it, to 110,000 able-bodied labourers and artificers,
representing, with their families, 550,000 persons; but even supposing
that all these had been set to work at once, they would have been
selected from the classes of persons least likely to require charitable
assistance, while the weak and infirm would have been systematically
excluded. The number of persons for whom the Government had to provide
the means of subsistence at this crisis, was upwards of three millions;
and this had to be done in the neighbourhood of their own homes, which
could not be accomplished by means of railroads, employment on which is
confined to particular localities. The number of persons stated in the
House of Commons as likely to be employed on railroads in Ireland was
greatly overrated; the general surface of the country requires scarcely
any deep cuttings or embankments, and the eskars, through which the
cuttings are made, offer the finest possible material for ballasting.
[67] Speech of Mr. Richard Bourke, M.P. for Kildare, to his father’s
tenantry, September 1847.
[68] Although both did their best, it is fair to state that the
Protestant clergy had some advantages which the Roman Catholic clergy
did not possess. The Protestant clergy were assisted by liberal
subscriptions from England; and as their stipends are primary charges
on the rent, they were regularly paid even during the period of the
greatest distress. The Roman Catholic clergy, on the contrary, depend,
both for their own subsistence, and for the means of helping their poor
and ignorant people, upon the voluntary contributions of the people
themselves; and when these had nothing to give, owing to the failure
of their crops and the want of employment, the clergy were reduced to
great straits, which they bore with exemplary patience. The fees on
marriages and baptisms which are the principal source of the income of
the Roman Catholic clergy, almost entirely ceased in some parts of the
country. It is much to the credit of the poor Irish, that now that they
have been deprived of the potatoes on which they had been accustomed to
bring up their families, marriages have become much less frequent.
[69] “A great deal has been written, and many an account given, of
the dreadful sufferings endured by the poor, but the reality in most
cases far exceeded description. Indeed, none can conceive what it
was but those who were in it. For my part, I frequently look back on
it as a fearful and horrid dream, scarcely knowing how sufficiently
to express gratitude to the Almighty for having brought this country
through it, even as it is. If the first measures which prepared us
to meet the second and severest calamity had been neglected, it is
frightful to suppose what would have been the state of this afflicted
country. My opinion is, that there are but very few who will not
gratefully remember the generous and prompt relief afforded in this
time of trouble; such sufferings, and such help, cannot be easily
forgotten.”--CAPTAIN MANN’S NARRATIVE.
[70] The Irish peasant made up for the deficiency of nutritive
qualities in the potato, by the quantity he ate, amounting generally
to as much as fourteen pounds in a single day; and it was therefore
a general complaint at first, that the Indian corn left an uneasy
sensation, arising from the absence of the habitual distension of
the organs of digestion. The half raw state in which it was often
eaten, arising partly from ignorance of the proper mode of cooking it,
and partly from impatience to satisfy the cravings of hunger, also
concurred with the previous debilitated state of the people, to produce
sickness when it was first introduced. All this, however, has been
got over, and the people have now not only become accustomed to the
use of a grain food, but they prefer it, and declare that they feel
stronger and more equal to hard work under the influence of a meal
of stirabout, than of potatoes; and their improved appearance fully
bears out this conclusion. One main cause of the fact which has been
so often remarked, that the Irishman works better out of Ireland than
in it, is, that when he leaves his native country and obtains regular
employment elsewhere he commences at the same time a more strengthening
diet than the potato. It is commonly observed in Canada, that the
Irish emigrants, although a much larger race of men than the French
Canadians, are, for some time after their arrival, inferior to them
as farm labourers; and this difference is attributed to their food.
The Canadian labourer, who receives his food as part of his hire, has
an ample breakfast on bread and milk. He dines at midday on soupe aux
pois, with a full quantity of salt pork and bread à discrétion. At four
o’clock he is allowed a luncheon of bread and onions, and at night he
has a ragout of meat and vegetables for his supper. He however works
laboriously, and generally from sunrise to sunset, and is scarcely ever
absent a day from his work. An Irishman cannot endure this continuous
labour without better food than the potato; and in every way it is
desirable to teach him the use of a more substantial diet, both to
enable him to give a proper amount of labour for his hire, and in order
to raise him to a higher standard as a social being. We shall not
consider the object finally accomplished until the people of Ireland
live upon a bread and meat diet, like those of the best parts of
England and Scotland.
[71] The following is the proportion of agrarian crimes in each quarter
from January 1845, to November 1847: