CHAPTER XIII.

HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND.

The government which followed the completion of the Revolution of

1688, pledged itself to discountenance the woollen manufacture of

Ireland, with a view to compel the export of raw wool to England,

whence its exportation to foreign countries was prohibited; the effect

of which was, of course, to enable the English manufacturer to

purchase it at his own price. From that period forward we find

numerous regulations as to the ports from which alone woollen yarn or

cloth might go to England, and the ports of the latter through which

it might come; while no effort was spared to induce the people of

Ireland to abandon woollens and take to flax. Laws were passed

prohibiting the export of Irish cloth and glass to the colonies. By

other laws Irish ships were deprived of the benefit of the navigation

laws. The fisheries were closed against them. No sugar could be

imported from any place but Great Britain, and no drawback was allowed

on its exportation to Ireland; and thus was the latter compelled to

pay a tax for the support of the British government, while maintaining

its own. All other colonial produce was required to be carried first

to England, after which it might be shipped to Ireland; and as Irish

shipping was excluded from the advantages of the navigation laws, it

followed that the voyage of importation was to be made in British

ships, manned by British seamen, and owned by British merchants, who

were thus authorized to tax the people of Ireland for doing their

work, while a large portion of the Irish people were themselves

unemployed.

While thus prohibiting them from applying themselves to manufactures

or trade, every inducement was held out to them to confine themselves

to the production of commodities required by the English

manufacturers, and wool, hemp, and flax were admitted into England

free of duty. We see thus that the system of that day in reference to

Ireland looked to limiting the people of that country, as it limited

the slaves of Jamaica, and now limits the people of Hindostan, to

agriculture alone, and thus depriving the men, the women, and the

children of all employment except the labour of the field, and of all

opportunity for intellectual improvement, such as elsewhere results

from that association which necessarily accompanies improvement in the

mechanic arts.

During our war of the Revolution, freedom of trade was claimed for

Ireland; and as the demand was made at a time when a large portion of

her people were under arms as volunteers, the merchants and

manufacturers of England, who had so long acted as middlemen for the

people of the sister kingdom, found themselves obliged to submit to

the removal of some of the restrictions under which the latter had so

long remained. Step by step changes were made, until at length, in

1783, Ireland was declared independent, shortly after which duties

were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with

the intention of enabling her people to employ some of their surplus

labour in converting her own food and wool, and the cotton wool of

other countries, into cloth. Thenceforward manufactures and trade made

considerable progress, and there was certainly a very considerable

tendency toward improvement. Some idea of the condition of the country

at that time, and of the vast and lamentable change that has since

taken place, may be obtained from the consideration of a few facts

connected with the manufacture of books in the closing years of the

last century. The copyright laws not extending to Ireland, all books

published in England might there be reprinted, and accordingly we find

that all the principal English law reports of the day, very many of

the earlier ones, and many of the best treatises, as well as the

principal novels, travels, and miscellaneous works, were republished

in Dublin, as may be seen by an examination of any of our old

libraries. The publication of such books implies, of course, a

considerable demand for them, and for Ireland herself, as the sale of

books in this country was very small indeed, and there was then no

other part of the world to which they could go. More books were

probably published in Ireland in that day by a single house than are

now required for the supply of the whole kingdom. With 1801, however,

there came a change. By the Act of Union the copyright laws of England

were extended to Ireland, and at once the large and growing

manufacture of books was prostrated. The patent laws were also

extended to Ireland; and as England had so long monopolized the

manufacturing machinery then in use, it was clear that it was there

improvements would be made, and that thenceforth the manufactures of

Ireland must retrograde. Manchester had the home market, the foreign

market, and, to no small extent, that of Ireland open to her; while

the manufacturers of the latter were forced to contend for existence,

and under the most disadvantageous circumstances, on their own soil.

The one could afford to purchase expensive machinery, and to adopt

whatever improvements might be made, while the other could not. The

natural consequence was, that Irish manufactures gradually disappeared

as the Act of Union came into effect. By virtue of its provisions, the

duties established by the Irish Parliament for the purpose of

protecting the farmers of Ireland in their efforts to bring the loom

and the anvil into close proximity with the plough and the harrow,

were gradually to diminish, and free trade was to be fully

established; or, in other words, Manchester and Birmingham were to

have a monopoly of supplying Ireland with cloth and iron. The duty on

English woollens was to continue twenty years. The almost prohibitory

duties on English calicoes and muslins were to continue until 1808;

after which they were to be gradually diminished, until in 1821 they

were to cease. Those on cotton yarn were to cease in 1810. The effect

of this in diminishing the demand for Irish labour, is seen in the

following comparative view of manufactures at the date of the Union,

and at different periods in the ensuing forty years, here given:--

Dublin, 1800, Master woollen manufacturers. 91... 1840, 12

" Hands employee............. 4918... " , 602

" Master wool-combers........ 30... 1834, 5

" Hands employed............. 230... " , 63

" Carpet manufacturers....... 13... 1841, 1

" Hands employed............. 720... " none

Kilkenny, 1800, Blanket manufacturers...... 56... 1822, 42

" Hands employed............. 3000... 1822, 925

Dublin, 1800, Silk-loom wearers at work.. 2500... 1840, 250

Balbriggan, 1799, Calico looms at work..... 2500... 1841, 226

Wicklow, 1800, Hand-looms at work......... 1000... 1841, none

Cork, 1800, Braid weavers.............. 1000... 1834, 40

" Worsted weavers............ 2000... " 90

" Hoosiers................... 300... " 28

" Wool-combers............... 700... " 110

" Cotton weavers............. 2000... " 220

" Linen cheek weavers........ 600... " none

" Cotton spinners, bleachers,

calico printers....... thousands... " none

"For nearly half a century Ireland has had perfectly free trade with

the richest country in the world; and what," says the author of a

recent work of great ability,--

"Has that free trade done for her? She has even now," he continues,

"no employment for her teeming population except upon the land. She

ought to have had, and might easily have had, other and various

employments, and plenty of it. Are we to believe," says he, "the

calumny that the Irish are lazy and won't work? Is Irish human nature

different from other human nature? Are not the most laborious of all

labourers in London and New York, Irishmen? Are Irishmen inferior in

understanding? We Englishmen who have personally known Irishmen, in

the army, at the bar, and in the church, know that there is no better

head than a disciplined Irish one. But in all these cases that master

of industry, the stomach, has been well satisfied. Let an Englishman

exchange his bread and beer, and beef, and mutton, for no breakfast,

for a lukewarm lumper at dinner, and no supper. With such a diet, how

much better is he than an Irishman--a Celt, as he calls him? No, the

truth is, that the misery of Ireland is not from the human nature

that grows there--it is from England's perverse legislation, past and

present."[118]

Deprived of all employment, except in the labour of agriculture, land

became, of course, the great object of pursuit. "Land is life," had

said, most truly and emphatically, Chief Justice Blackburn; and the

people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land,

_at any rent_, or _starvation_. The lord of the land was thus enabled

to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard

of the payment of five, six, eight, and even as much as ten pounds per

acre. "Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by

rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, to be

relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among

the wretched starvers on potatoes and water," led to a constant

succession of outrages, followed by Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, and

Coercion Acts, when the real remedy was to be found in the adoption of

a system that would emancipate the country from the tyranny of the

spindle and the loom, and permit the labour of Ireland to find

employment at home.

That employment could not be had. With the suppression of Irish

manufactures the demand for labour had disappeared. An English

traveller, describing the state of Ireland in 1834, thirteen years

after the free-trade provisions of the Act of Union had come fully

into operation, furnishes numerous facts, some of which will now be

given, showing that the people were compelled to remain idle, although

willing to work at the lowest wages--such wages as could not by any

possibility enable them to do more than merely sustain life, and

perhaps not even that.

CASHEL.--"Wages here only _eightpence a day_, and numbers altogether

without employment."

CAHIR.--"I noticed, on Sunday, on coming from church, the streets

crowded with labourers, with spades and other implements in their

hands, standing to be hired; and I ascertained that any number of

these men might have been engaged, on constant employment, at

_sixpence per day_ without diet."

WICKLOW.--"The husband of this woman was a labourer, at _sixpence_ a

day, _eighty_ of which sixpences--that is, eighty days' labour--were

absorbed in the rent of the cabin." "In another cabin was a decently

dressed woman with five children, and her husband was also a labourer

at _sixpence a day_. The pig had been taken for rent a few days

before." "I found some labourers receiving only _fourpence per day_."

KILKENNY.--"Upward of 2000 persons totally without employment." "I

visited the factories that used to support 200 men with their

families, and how many men did I find at work? ONE MAN! In place of

finding men occupied, I saw them in scores, like spectres, walking

about, and lying about the mill. I saw immense piles of goods

completed, but for which there was no sale. I saw heaps of blankets,

and I saw every loom idle. As for the carpets which had excited the

jealousy and the fears of Kidderminster, not one had been made for

seven months. To convey an idea of the destitution of these people, I

mention, that when an order recently arrived for the manufacture of

as many blankets for the police as would have kept the men at work

for a few days, bonfires were lighted about the country--not bonfires

to communicate insurrection, but to evince joy that a few starving

men were about to earn bread to support their families. Nevertheless,

we are told that Irishmen will not work at home."

CALLEN.--"In this town, containing between four and five thousand

inhabitants, at least one thousand are without regular employment,

six or seven hundred entirely destitute, and there are upward of two

hundred mendicants in the town--persons incapable of

work."--_Inglis's Ireland_ in 1834.

Such was the picture everywhere presented to the eye of this

intelligent traveller. Go where he might, he found hundreds anxious

for employment, yet no employment could be had, unless they could

travel to England, there to spend _weeks_ in travelling round the

country in quest of _days_ of employment, the wages for which might

enable them to pay their rent at home. "The Celt," says the _Times_,

"is the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to the Saxon; The great

works of this country," it continues "depend on _cheap labour_." The

labour of the slave is always low in price. The people of Ireland were

interdicted all employment but in the cultivation of the land, and

men, women, and children were forced to waste more labour than would

have paid twenty times over for all the British manufactures they

could purchase. They were passing rapidly toward barbarism, and for

the sole reason that they were denied all power of association for any

useful purpose. What was the impression produced by their appearance

on the mind of foreigners may be seen by the following extract from

the work of a well-known and highly intelligent German traveller:--

"A Russian peasant, no doubt, is the slave of a harder master, but

still he is fed and housed to his content, and no trace of mendicancy

is to be seen in him. The Hungarians are certainly not among the

best-used people in the world; still, what fine wheaten bread and

what wine has even the humblest among them for his daily fare! The

Hungarian would scarcely believe it, if he were to be told there was

a country in which the inhabitants must content themselves with

potatoes every alternate day in the year.

"Servia and Bosnia are reckoned among the most wretched countries of

Europe, and certainly the appearance of one of their villages has

little that is attractive about it; but at least the people, if badly

housed, are well clad. We look not for much luxury or comfort among

the Tartars of the Crimea; we call them poor and barbarous, but, good

heavens! they look at least like human creatures. They have a

national costume, their houses are habitable, their orchards are

carefully tended, and their gayly harnessed ponies are mostly in good

condition. An Irishman has nothing national about him but his

rags,--his habitation is without a plan, his domestic economy without

rule or law. We have beggars and paupers among us, but they form at

least an exception; whereas, in Ireland, beggary or abject poverty is

the prevailing rule. The nation is one of beggars, and they who are

above beggary seem to form the exception.

"The African negroes go naked, but then they have a tropical sun to

warm them. The Irish are little removed from a state of nakedness;

and their climate, though not cold, is cool, and extremely humid. * *

*

"There are nations of slaves, but they have, by long custom, been

made unconscious of the yoke of slavery. This is not the case with

the Irish, who have a strong feeling of liberty within them, and are

fully sensible of the weight of the yoke they have to bear. They are

intelligent enough to know the injustice done them by the distorted

laws of their country; and while they are themselves enduring the

extreme of poverty, they have frequently before them, in the manner

of life of their English landlords, a spectacle of the most refined

luxury that human ingenuity ever invented."--_Kohl's Travels in

Ireland_.

It might be thought, however, that Ireland was deficient in the

capital required for obtaining the machinery of manufacture to enable

her people to maintain competition with her powerful neighbour. We

know, however, that previous to the Union she had that machinery; and

from the date of that arrangement, so fraudulently brought about, by

which was settled conclusively the destruction of Irish manufactures,

the _annual_ waste of labour was greater than the whole amount of

capital then employed in the cotton and woollen manufactures of

England. From that date the people of Ireland were thrown, from year

to year, more into the hands of middlemen, who accumulated fortunes

that they _would_ not invest in the improvement of land, and _could_

not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in

machinery of any kind calculated to render labour productive; and all

their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment. An

official document published by the British government shows that the

transfers of British securities from England to Ireland, that is to

say, the investment of Irish capital in England, in the thirteen years

following the final adoption of free trade in 1821, amounted to as

many millions of pounds sterling; and thus was Ireland forced to

contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up "the great

works of Britain." Further, it was provided by law that whenever the

poor people of a neighbourhood contributed to a saving fund, the

amount should not be applied in any manner calculated to furnish local

employment, but should be transferred for investment in the British

funds. The landlords fled to England, and their rent followed them.

The middlemen sent their capital to England. The trader or the

labourer that could accumulate a little capital saw it sent to

England; and he was then compelled to follow it. Such is the history

of the origin of the present abandonment of Ireland by its

inhabitants.

The form in which rents, profits, and savings, as well as taxes, went

to England, was that of raw products of the soil, to be consumed

abroad, yielding nothing to be returned to the land, which was of

course impoverished. The average export of grain in the first three

years following the passage of the Act of Union was about 300,000

quarters, but as the domestic market gradually disappeared, the export

of raw produce increased, until, at the close of twenty years it

exceeded a million of quarters; and at the date of Mr. Inglis's visit

it had reached an average of two and a half millions, or 22,500,000 of

our bushels. The poor people were, in fact, selling their soil to pay

for cotton and woollen goods that they should have manufactured

themselves, for coal which abounded among themselves, for iron, all

the materials of which existed at home in great profusion, and for a

small quantity of tea, sugar, and other foreign commodities, while the

amount required to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees,

was estimated at more than thirty millions of dollars. Here was a

drain that no nation could bear, however great its productive power;

and the whole of it was due to the system which forbade the

application of labour, talent, or capital to any thing but

agriculture, and thus forbade advance in civilization. The inducements

to remain at home steadily diminished. Those who could live without

labour found that society had changed; and they fled to England,

France, or Italy. Those who desired to work, and felt that they were

qualified for something beyond mere manual labour, fled to England or

America; and thus by degrees was the unfortunate country depleted of

every thing that could render it a home in which to remain, while

those who could not fly remained to be, as the _Times_ so well

describes it, mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Saxon,"

happy when a full-grown man could find employment at _sixpence a day_,

and that, too, without food.

"Throughout the west and south of Ireland," said an English traveller

in 1842, four years before the exhaustion of the soil had produced

disease among the potatoes--

"The traveller is haunted by the face of the _popular starvation_. It

is not the exception--it is _the condition_ of the people. In this

fairest and richest of countries, men are suffering and _starving by

millions_. There are thousands of them, at this minute, stretched in

the sunshine at their cabin doors with _no work_, scarcely any food,

no hope seemingly. Strong countrymen are lying in bed, '_for the

hunger_'--because a man lying on his back does not need so much food

as a person afoot. Many of them have torn up the unripe potatoes from

their little gardens, and to exist now must look to winter, when they

shall have to suffer starvation and cold too."--_Thackeray_.

"Everywhere," said the _Quarterly Review_, "throughout all parts,

even in the best towns, and in Dublin itself, you will meet men and

boys--not dressed, not covered--but hung round with a collection of

rags of unrivalled variety, squalidity, and filth--walking dunghills.

* * * No one ever saw an English scarecrow with such rags."

The difference in the condition of these poor people and that of the

slave--even the slave of Jamaica at that day--consisted in this, that

the negro slave was worth buying, whereas the others were not; and we

know well that the man who pays a good price for a commodity, attaches

to it a value that induces him to give some care to its preservation;

whereas he cares nothing for another that he finds himself forced to

accept. "Starving by millions," as they are here described, death was

perpetually separating husbands and wives, parents and children, while

to the survivors remained no hope but that of being enabled at some

time or other to fly to another land in which they might be permitted

to sell their labour for food sufficient to support life.

The existence of such a state of things was, said the advocates of the

system which looks to converting all the world outside of England into

one great farm, to be accounted for by the fact that the population

was too numerous for the land, and yet a third of the surface,

including the richest lands in the kingdom, was lying unoccupied and

waste.

"Of single counties," said an English writer, "Mayo, with a

population of 389,000, and a rental of only £300,000, has an area of

1,364,000 acres, of which 800,000 are waste! No less than 470,000

acres, being very nearly equal to the whole extent of surface now

under cultivation, are declared to be reclaimable. Galway, with a

population of 423,000, and a valued rental of £433,000, has upward of

700,000 acres of waste, 410,000 of which are reclaimable! Kerry, with

a population of 293,000, has an area of 1,186,000 acres--727,000

being waste, and 400,000 of them reclaimable! Even the Union of

Glenties, Lord Monteagle's _ne plus ultra_ of redundant population,

has an area of 245,000 acres, of which 200,000 are waste, and for the

most part reclaimable, to its population of 43,000. While the Barony

of Ennis, that abomination of desolation, has 230,000 acres of land

to its 5000 paupers--a proportion which, as Mr. Carter, one of the

principal proprietors, remarks in his circular advertisement for

tenants, 'is at the rate of only one family to 230 acres; so that if

but one head of a family were employed to every 230 acres, there need

not be a single pauper in the entire district; a proof,' he adds,

'THAT NOTHING BUT EMPLOYMENT IS WANTING TO SET THIS COUNTRY TO

RIGHTS!' In which opinion we fully coincide."

Nothing but employment _was_ needed, but that could not be found under

the system which has caused the annihilation of the cotton manufacture

of India, notwithstanding the advantage of having the cotton on the

spot, free from all cost for carriage. As in Jamaica, and as in India,

the land had been gradually exhausted by the exportation of its

products in their rudest state, and the country had thus been drained

of capital, a necessary consequence of which was that the labour even

of men found no demand, while women and children starved, that the

women and children of England might spin cotton and weave cloth that

Ireland was too poor to purchase. Bad, however, as was all this, a

worse state of things was at hand. Poverty and wretchedness compelled

the wretched people to fly in thousands and tens of thousands across

the Channel, thus following the capital and the soil that had been

transferred to Birmingham and Manchester; and the streets and cellars

of those towns, and those of London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, were

filled with men, women, and children in a state almost of starvation;

while throughout the country, men were offering to perform the farm

labour for food alone, and a cry had arisen among the people of

England that the labourers were likely to be swamped by these starving

Irishmen: to provide against which it was needed that the landlords of

Ireland should be compelled to support their own poor, and forthwith

an act of Parliament was passed for that purpose. Thence arose, of

course, an increased desire to rid the country of the men, women, and

children whose labour could not be sold, and who could therefore pay

no rent. The "Crowbar Brigade" was therefore called into more active

service, as will be seen by the following account of their labours in

a single one of the "Unions" established under the new poor-law

system, which in many cases took the whole rent of the land for the

maintenance of those who had been reduced to pauperism by the

determination of the people of Manchester and Birmingham to continue

the colonial system under which Ireland had been ruined.

"In Galway Union, recent accounts declared the number of poor

evicted, and their homes levelled within the last two years, to equal

the numbers in Kilrush--4000 families and 20,000 human beings are

said to have been here also thrown upon the road, houseless and

homeless. I can readily believe the statement, for to me some parts

of the country appeared like an enormous graveyard--the numerous

gables of the unroofed dwellings seemed to be gigantic tombstones.

They were, indeed, records of decay and death far more melancholy

than the grave can show. Looking on them, the doubt rose in my mind,

am I in a civilized country? Have we really a free constitution? Can

such scenes be paralleled in Siberia or Caffraria?"

A single case described in a paper recently published by Mr. Dickens

in his "_Household Words_," will convey to the reader some idea of an

eviction, that may be taken as a specimen, and perhaps a fair one, of

the _fifty thousand_ evictions that took place in the single year

1849, and of the hundreds of thousands that have taken place in the

last six years.

"Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready after a

summer's cutting and drying. Presently, patches of cultivation

presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet

wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where

potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more ragwort than

grass, enclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a

brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The

ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the

village, where was it? Blotches of burnt-ground, scorched heaps of

rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden

plots were trodden down and their few bushes rent up, or hung with

tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by, with gloomy

visages, uttered no more than the single word--EVICTION!"

The scenes that had taken place at the destruction of that village,

are thus described to the author of the sad work, by a poor servant:--

"Oh, bless your honour! If you had seen that poor frantic woman when

the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought

she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband

and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his

sword and bade them troop off. Oh, but your honour it was a killing

sight! * * * I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg

when the soldiers and police cried, 'Down with them! down with them

even to the ground!'--and then the poor little cabins came down all

in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures.

Oh, it was a fearful sight, your honour--it was indeed--to see the

poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born

burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bed-ridden man

lie on the ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his

gracious God above! Oh, your honour, you never saw such a sight,

or--you--sure a--it would never have been done."

This is certainly an awful picture of the slavery resulting from

compelling a whole nation to devote itself to agriculture, and thus

annihilating the power of association--from compelling a whole people

to forego all the advantages resulting from proximity to market for

the sale of their products or the purchase of manure--and from

compelling men, women, and children to be idle, when they would desire

to be employed. In reading it, we are forcibly reminded of the

_razzias_ of the little African kings, who, anxious for a fresh supply

of slaves, collect their troops together and invade the neighbouring

territories, where they enact scenes corresponding exactly with the

one here described. In Africa, however, the slave is fed by those who

have burned and destroyed his house and his farm; but in Ireland, as

labour is valueless, he is turned into the roads or the grave-yards

to die of famine, or of pestilence. And yet, even now, the _Times_

asks the question--

"How are the people to be fed and employed? That is the question

which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the

world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet

never yet seen. There is the question which founders both the bold

and the wise."

Up to this time there had been repeated cases of partial famine, but

now the nation was startled by the news of the almost total failure of

the crop of potatoes, the single description of food upon which the

people of Ireland had been reduced to depend. Constant cropping of the

soil, returning to it none of the manure, because of the necessity for

exporting almost the whole of its products, had produced disease in

the vegetable world--precisely as the want of proper nourishment

produces it in the animal world--and now a cry of famine rang

throughout the land. The poor-houses were everywhere filled, while the

roads, and the streets, and the grave-yards were occupied by the

starving and the naked, the dying and the dead; and the presses of

England were filled with denunciations of English and Irish

landholders, who desired to make food dear, while men, women, and

children were perishing by hundreds of thousands for want of food.

Thus far, Ireland had been protected in the market of England, as some

small compensation for the sacrifice she had made of her manufacturing

interests; but now, small as has been the boon, it was to be

withdrawn, precisely as we see to have been the case with the poor

people of Jamaica. Like them, the Irish had become poor, and their

trade had ceased to be of value, although but seventy years before

they had been England's _best_ customers. The system had exhausted all

the foreign countries with which England had been permitted to

maintain what is denominated free trade--India, Portugal, Turkey, the

West Indies, and Ireland herself--and it had become necessary to make

an effort to obtain markets in the only prosperous countries of the

world, those which had to a greater or less extent placed the consumer

by the side of the producer, to wit--this country, France, Belgium,

Germany, and Russia--and the mode of accomplishing this was that of

offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which Ireland had

been ruined. The farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil

by sending its products to England to be consumed; and the corn-laws

were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish

themselves by entering into competition with the starving Irishman,

who was thus at once deprived of the market of England, as by the Act

of Union he had been deprived of his own. The cup of wretchedness was

before well nigh full, but it was now filled. The price of food fell,

and the labourer was ruined, for the whole product of his land would

scarcely pay his rent. The landlord was ruined, for he could collect

no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of

enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land

was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was

high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid

of which property could be summarily disposed of at public sale, and

the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it. The

landholder of Jamaica, exhausted by the system, had had his property

taken from him at a price fixed by Parliament, and the proceeds

applied to the discharge of debts incurred to his English agents, and

now the same Parliament provided for the transfer of Irish property

with a view to the payment of the same class of debts. The

impoverished landholder now experienced the same fate that had

befallen his poor tenant, and from that date to this, famine and

pestilence, levellings and evictions, have been the order of the day.

Their effect has everywhere been to drive the poor people from the

land, and its consequences are seen in the fact that the population

numbered, in 1850, _one million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand

less than it did in_ 1840; while the starving population of the towns

had largely increased. The county of Cork had diminished 222,000,

while Dublin had grown in numbers 22,000. Galway had lost 125,000,

while the city had gained 7422. Connaught had lost 414,000, while

Limerick and Belfast had gained 30,000. The number of inhabited houses

had fallen from 1,328,000 to 1,047,000, or more than twenty per cent.

Announcing these startling facts, the London _Times_ stated that "_for

a whole generation man had been a drug in Ireland, and population a

nuisance_." The "inexhaustible Irish supply had," as it continued,

"kept down the price of English labour," but this cheapness of labour

had "contributed vastly to the improvement and power" of England, and

largely to "the enjoyment of those who had money to spend." Now,

however, a change appeared to be at hand, and it was to be feared that

the prosperity of England, based as it had been on cheap Irish labour,

might be interfered with, as famine and pestilence, evictions and

emigration, were thinning out the Celts who had so long, as it is

said, been "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Saxon."

Another of the advocates of the system which has exhausted and ruined

Ireland, and is now transferring its land to the men who have enriched

themselves by acting as middlemen between the producers and consumers

of the world, rejoicing in the great number of those who had fled from

their native soil to escape the horrors of starvation and pestilence,

declares that this is to be regarded as the joyful side of the case.

"What," it asks,

"Will follow? This great good, among others--that _the stagnant

weight of unemployed population_ in these insulated realms is never

likely again to accumulate to the dangerous amount which there was

sometimes cause to apprehend that, from unforeseen revulsions in

industry or foreign trade, it might have done. A natural vent is now

so thoroughly opened, and so certain to grow wider and clearer

everyday, that the overflow will pass off whenever a moderate degree

of pressure recurs. Population, skill, and capital, also, will no

longer wait in consternation till they are half spent with watching

and fear. The way is ready. They will silently shift their quarters

when the competition or depression here becomes uncomfortable. Every

family has already friends or acquaintances who have gone before them

over sea. Socially, our insulation as a people is proved, by the

census of 1851, to be at an end."--_Daily News_.

The _Times_, too, rejoices in the prospect that the resources of

Ireland will now probably be developed, as the Saxon takes the place

of the Celt, who has so long hewn the wood and drawn the water for his

Saxon masters. "Prosperity and happiness may," as it thinks,

"Some day reign over that beautiful island. Its fertile soil, its

rivers and lakes, its water-power, its minerals, and other materials

for the wants and luxuries of man, may one day be developed; but all

appearances are against the belief that this will ever happen in the

days of the Celt. That tribe will soon fulfil the great law of

Providence which seems to enjoin and reward the union of races. It

will mix with the Anglo-American, and be known no more as a jealous

and separate people. Its present place will be occupied by the more

mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which has long borne

the yoke of sturdy industry in this island, which can submit to a

master and obey the law. This is no longer a dream, for it is a fact

now in progress, and every day more apparent."

Commenting upon the view thus presented, an American journalist most

truly says--

"There is a cold-blooded atrocity in the spirit of these remarks for

which examples will be sought in vain, except among the doctors of

the free-trade school. Naturalists have learned to look with

philosophical indifference upon the agonies of a rabbit or a mouse

expiring in an exhausted receiver, but it requires long teaching from

the economists before men's hearts can be so steeled, that after

pumping out all the sustenance of vitality from one of the fairest

islands under the sun, they can discourse calmly upon its

depopulation as proof of the success of the experiment, can talk with

bitter irony of 'that _strange_ region of the earth where such a

people, affectionate and hopeful, genial and witty, industrious and

independent, was produced and _could not stay_,' and can gloat in the

anticipation that prosperity and happiness may some day reign over

that beautiful island, and its boundless resources for the wants and

luxuries of man be developed, not for the Celt, but 'for a more

mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which can submit to a

master and obey the law.'"--_Albany Journal_.

The _Times_ rejoices that the place of the Celt is in future to be

occupied by cattle, as sheep already occupy the place of the

Highlander expelled from the land in which, before Britain undertook

to underwork all other nations and thus secure a monopoly for "the

workshop of the world," his fathers were as secure in their rights as

was the landowner himself. Irish journals take a different view of the

prospect. They deprecate the idea of the total expulsion of the native

race, and yet they fear that

"There is no doubt that in a few years more, if some stop is not put

to the present outpouring of the people to America, and latterly to

Australia, there will not be a million of the present race of

inhabitants to be found within the compass of the four provinces."

"No thoughts of the land of their birth," it continues, "seems to

enter their minds, although the Irish people have been proverbial for

their attachment to their country."--_Connaught Western Star_.

A recent journal informs us that

"The Galway papers are full of the most deplorable accounts of

wholesale evictions, or rather exterminations, in that miserable

country. The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a

time. As many as 203 men, women, and children have been driven upon

the roads and ditches by way of one day's work, and have now no

resource but to beg their bread in desolate places, or to bury their

griefs, in many instances for ever, within the walls of the Union

workhouse. Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a

large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the

latter, 'the Crowbar Brigade' advances to the devoted township, takes

possession of the houses, such as they are, and, with a few turns of

the crowbar and a few pulls at a rope, bring down the roof, and leave

nothing but a tottering chimney, if even that. The sun that rose on a

village sets on a desert; the police return to their barracks, and

the people are nowhere to be found, or are vainly watching from some

friendly covert for the chance of crouching once more under their

ruined homes.

"What to the Irish heart is more painful than even the large amount

and stern method of the destruction, is that the authors this time

are Saxon strangers. It is a wealthy London company that is invading

the quiet retreats of Connemara, and robbing a primitive peasantry of

its last hold on the earth; The Law Life Assurance Company having

advanced, we believe, £240,000 on the Martin estates, has now become

the purchaser under the Encumbered Estates Acts, and is adopting

these summary but usual measures to secure the forfeited pledge. That

gentlemen, many of whom have never set foot in Ireland, and who are

wealthy enough to lend a quarter of a million of money, should exact

the last penny from a wretched peasantry who had no hand, or voice in

the transaction which gave them new masters, seems utterly

intolerable to the native Irish reason."

With the growth of the value of land, man has always become free. With

the decline in its value, man has always become enslaved. If we desire

to find the cause of the enormous destruction of life in Ireland, even

in this day of boasted civilization--if we desire to find the cause of

the eviction of tenant and landlord, and the decline in the value of

land, we need scarcely look beyond the following paragraph:--

"The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives,

has been destroyed; the 3400 silk-looms of the Liberty have been

destroyed; the stuff and serge manufacture, which employed 1491

operatives, have been destroyed; the calico-looms of Balbriggan have

been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of Rathdrum has been

destroyed; the blanket manufacture of Kilkenny has been destroyed;

the camlet trade of Bandon, which produced £100,000 a year, has been

destroyed; the worsted and stuff manufactures of Waterford have been

destroyed; the rateen and frieze manufactures of Carrick-on-Suir have

been destroyed. One business alone survives! One business alone

thrives and flourishes, and dreads no bankruptcy! That fortunate

business--which the Union Act has not struck down, but which the

Union Act has stood by--which the absentee drain has not slackened,

but has stimulated--which the drainage Acts and navigation laws of

the Imperial Senate have not deadened but invigorated--that favoured,

and privileged, and patronized business is the Irish

coffin-maker's."[119]

To the separation of the consumer from the producer resulting from the

adoption of the system which has for its object the establishment of a

monopoly of the machinery of manufacture for the world, are due the

exhaustion of Ireland, the ruin of its landholders, the starvation of

its people, and the degradation in the eyes of the world of the

country which has furnished to the continent its best soldiers, and to

the empire not only its most industrious and intelligent labourers,

but also its Burke, its Grattan, its Sheridan, and its Wellington. And

yet we find the _Times_ rejoicing at the gradual disappearance of the

native population, and finding in

"The abstraction of the Celtic race at the rate of a quarter of a

million a year, a surer remedy for _the inveterate Irish disease_,

than any human wit could have imagined."

The "inveterate Irish disease" here spoken of is a total absence of

demand for labour, resulting from the unhappy determination of the

people of England to maintain the monopoly of the power to manufacture

for the world. The sure remedy for this is found in famines,

pestilences, and expatriation, the necessary results of the exhaustion

of the land which follows the exportation of its raw products. A

stronger confirmation of the destructive character of such a course of

policy than is contained in the following paragraph could scarcely be

imagined:--

"When the Celt has crossed the Atlantic, he begins for the first time

in his life to consume the manufactures of this country, and

indirectly to contribute to its customs. We may possibly live to see

the day when the chief product of Ireland will be cattle, and English

and Scotch the majority of her population. The nine or ten millions

of Irish, who by that time will have settled in the United States,

cannot be less friendly to England, and will certainly be much better

customers to her than they now are."--London _Times_.

When the Celt leaves Ireland he leaves an almost purely agricultural

country, and in such countries man generally approaches nearly to the

condition of a slave. When he comes here he comes to a country in

which to some little extent the plough and the loom have been enabled

to come together; and here he becomes a freeman and a customer of

England.

The nation that commences by exporting raw products must end by

exporting men; and if we desire evidence of this, we need only look to

the following figures, furnished by the last four censuses of

Ireland:--

1821........ 6,801,827

1831........ 7,767,401----Increase, 965,574

1841........ 8,175,124----Increase, 407,723

1851........ 6,515,794----Decrease, 1,659,330

To what causes may this extraordinary course of events be attributed?

Certainly not to any deficiency of land, for nearly one-third of the

whole surface, including millions of acres of the richest soils of the

kingdom, remains in a state of nature. Not to original inferiority of

the soil in cultivation, for it has been confessedly among the richest

in the empire. Not to a deficiency of mineral ores or fuel, for coal

abounds, and iron ores of the richest kind, as well as those of other

metals, exist in vast profusion. Not to any deficiency in the physical

qualities of the Irishman, for it is an established fact that he is

capable of performing far more labour than the Englishman, the

Frenchman, or the Belgian. Not to a deficiency of intellectual

ability, for Ireland has given to England her most distinguished

soldiers and statesmen; and we have in this country everywhere

evidence that the Irishman is capable of the highest degree of

intellectual improvement. Nevertheless, while possessed of every

advantage that nature could give him, we find the Irishman at home a

slave to the severest taskmasters, and reduced to a condition of

poverty and distress, such as is exhibited in no other portion of the

civilized world. No choice is now left him but between expatriation

and starvation, and therefore it is that we see him everywhere

abandoning the home of his fathers, to seek elsewhere that subsistence

which Ireland, rich as she is in soil and in her minerals, in her

navigable rivers, and in her facilities of communication with the

world, can no longer afford him.

That the process of eviction is still continued on an extensive scale

is shown by the following extracts from Sir Francis Head's work on

Ireland, just issued from the press:--

"Here almost immediately I first met with that afflicting spectacle,

or rather spectre, that almost without intermission haunted me

through the whole remainder of my tour, namely, stout stone-built

cabins; unroofed for the purpose of evicting therefrom their

insolvent tenants."--P. 110

"On conversing with the master, I ascertained from him that Lord

Lucan's evictions have ceased, but that Lord Erne evicted on Saturday

last."[120]--P. 115

"'Is this system of eviction,' said I to the driver, pointing to a

small cluster of unroofed cabins we were passing at the moment, 'good

or bad?' 'Well! yere Arn'r!' he replied, 'ut's good and ut's bad.

Ut's good for them that hould large lands, bad for the small. Ut

laves nothing for tham but the workhouse.'"--P. 121.

The tendency of the system which looks to the exportation of raw

produce and the exhaustion of the soil is always toward the

consolidation of the land, because the exportation of population,

whether from Ireland, India, or Virginia, always follows in the wake

of the exportation of food and other raw commodities.

"Among the men were only four that could fairly be called

'able-bodied;' each of them told me he had been evicted by Lord Lucan.

I asked the master what had become of the rest. His answer was very

instructive. 'Most of them,' said he, 'if they can scrape up

half-a-crown, go to England, from whence, after some little time,

they send from 2s. 6d. to 10s. and, as soon as their families get

_that_, they are off to them.'

"'Does the father go first?' I thoughtlessly asked.

"'Oh, no! we keep _him_ to the last. One daughter went off to England

from here a short time ago, and sent 7s. 6d. _That_ took out the

mother and another sister. In a few weeks the mother and sister sent

enough to get over the remaining two sons and the father. Total of

the family, 6.'"--P. 127.

In the above passage we have the equivalent of the exportation of the

negro from the Northern Slave States. Husbands and wives, parents and

children, are forced to fly from each other, never to meet again

unless those who emigrate can save means to send for those who are

left behind.

"We were now joined by the head-steward--a sedate, highly

intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland

thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been

ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord

Lucan, who had given most of them cottages."

"We passed a cabin, and, closing my umbrella and leaving it on the

car, I walked in.

"'Will yere Arn'r take a sate?' said a woman about thirty-eight, with

a fine, open countenance, her eyes being listlessly fixed on the

daylight.

"I sat down. On her lap was an infant. Three bare-footed children, as

if hatching eggs, sat motionless on the edge of a peat fire, which

appeared to be almost touching their naked toes; above the embers was

demurely hanging a black pot. Opposite sat, like a bit of gnarled

oak, the withered grandmother. The furniture was composed of a

dingy-coloured wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one

bed close to the fire. There was no chimney but the door, on the

threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping

wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on

which stood an ass.

"'Where is your husband, my good woman?' I said to the youngest of

the women.

"'In England, yere Arn'r,' she replied, 'saking work.'"--P. 132.

"Seeking work!" and yet Ireland abounds, in the richest land

uncultivated, and mineral wealth untouched, because the system forbids

that men should combine their efforts together for the improvement of

their common condition.

"After trotting on for about a mile, and after I had left Lord

Lucan's property, I came as usual to a small village of unroofed

cabins, from the stark walls of which, to my astonishment, I saw here

and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld

a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all

evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the

children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a

temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the

interstices of the walls of their ancient homes.

"'This is a quare place, yere Arn'r!' said a fine, honest-looking

woman, kindly smiling to me, adding, 'Sit down, yere Arn'r!'

"One of her four children got up and offered me his stool.

"Under another temporary shed I found a tall woman heavy with child,

a daughter ahout sixteen, and four younger children--_her_ husband

was also in England, 'sakin work.' I entered two or three more of

these wretched habitations, around which were the innumerable tiny

fields; surrounded by those low tottering stone walls I have already

described.* * *--P. 136.

"They were really good people, and from what I read in their

countenances, I feel confident, that if, instead of distributing

among them a few shillings, I had asked them to feed _me_, with the

kindest hospitality they would readily have done so, and that with my

gold in my pocket I might have slept among them in the most perfect

security.

"The devotional expressions of the lower class of Irish, and the

meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortune or

affliction, struck, me very forcibly. 'I haven't aten a bit this

blessed day, glory be to God!' said one woman, 'Troth, I've been

suffering lhong time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God!'

said another. On entering a strange cabin, the common salutation is,

'God save all here!' On passing a gang of comrades at labour, a man

often says, 'God bless the work, boys!'"--P. 137.

The extirpation of the people results necessarily in the decay of the

towns, as is here shown:--

"When my bill came,--for one's bill at an inn, like death, is sure to

come,--I asked the waiter what effect the evictions in the

neighbourhood had had on the town.

"'They have ruined it,' he replied; 'the poor used to support the

rich; now that the poor are gone the rich shopkeepers are all

failing. Our town is full of empty shops, and, after all, the

landlord himself is now being ruined!'"--P. 147.

Cheap labour and cheap land are always companions. In Jamaica and

India, land, as we have seen, is almost valueless. How it is in

Ireland may be seen by the following passage:--

"Adjoining is a similar property of about 10,000 acres, purchased, I

was informed, by Captain Houston, a short time ago, at the rate of

2-1/2d. an acre."--P. 153.

In a paper recently read before the statistical section of the British

Association, it is shown that the estates recently purchased in

Ireland by English capital embraced 403,065 acres, and that the

purchase money had been £1,095,000, or about £2 15s. ($13.20) per

acre, being little more than is paid for farms with very moderate

improvements in the new States of the Mississippi Valley.

Why land is cheap and labour badly rewarded may easily be seen on a

perusal of the following passages:--

"'Chickuns are about 5d. a couple, dooks 10d. A couple of young gaise

10d; when auld, not less than 1s. or 14d.'

"'And turkeys?' I asked.

"'I can't say; we haven't many of thim in the counthry, and I don't

want to tell yere Arn'r a lie. Fish, little or nothing. A large

turbot, of 30 lbs. weight, for 3s. Lobsters, a dozen for 4d. Soles,

2d. or 3d. a piece. T'other day I bought a turbot, of 15 lbs. weight,

for a gentleman, and I paid 18d. for ut.'"--P. 178.

"'What do you pay for your tea and sugar here?' I inquired.

"'Very dare, sir,' he replied. 'We pay 5s. for tea, 5d. for brown

sugar, and 8d. for white; that is, if we buy a single

pound.'"--P.187.

The sugar of the labourer of Jamaica exchanges in Manchester for three

shillings, of which he receives perhaps one, and he perishes because

of the difficulty of obtaining machinery, or clothing. The Hindoo

sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back in the form of

cloth at eighteen or twenty pence. The Virginia negro raises tobacco

which exchanges for six shillings' worth of commodities, of which he

and his owner obtain three pence. The poor Irishman raises chickens

which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives pence, and

thus a pound of sugar which had yielded the free negro of Jamaica two

pence, exchanges in the West of Ireland for a pair of chickens or a

dozen lobsters. The reader who may study these facts will readily

understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labour

resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where

the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the

doctrines of Adam Smith, to take their places by the side of each

other. More than seventy years since he denounced the system which

looked to compelling the exports of raw produce as one productive of

infinite injustice, and certainly the histories of Jamaica and

Virginia, Ireland and India, since his time, would afford him, were he

now present, little reason for a change of opinion.

It is common to ascribe the state of things now existing in Ireland to

the rapid growth of population; and that in its turn is charged to the

account of the potato, the excessive use of which, as Mr. McCulloch

informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living and tended to

the multiplication of men, women, and children. "The peasantry of

Ireland live," as he says, "in miserable mud cabins, without either a

window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture," and

are distinguished from their fellow labourers across the Channel by

their "filth and misery," and hence it is, in his opinion, that they

work for low wages. We have here effect substituted for cause. The

absence of demand for labour causes wages to be low, and those wages

will procure nothing but mud cabins and potatoes. It is admitted

everywhere throughout the continent of Europe that the introduction of

the potato has tended greatly to the improvement of the condition of

the people; but then, there is no portion of the continent in which it

is used, where it constitutes an essential part of the governmental

policy to deprive millions of people of all mode of employment except

agriculture, and thus placing those millions at such a distance from

market that the chief part of their labour and its products is lost in

the effort to reach that market, and their land is exhausted because

of the impossibility of returning to the soil any portion of the crop

yielded by it. Commercial centralization produces all these effects.

It looks to the destruction of the value of labour and land, and to

the enslavement of man. It tends to the division of the whole

population into two classes, separated by an impassable gulf--the mere

labourer and the land-owner. It tends to the destruction of the power

of association for any purpose of improvement, whether by the making

of roads or by the founding of schools, and of course to the

prevention of the growth of towns, as we see to have been the case

with Jamaica, so barbarous in this respect when compared with

Martinique or Cuba, islands whose governments have not looked to the

perpetual divorce of the hammer and the harrow. The decay of towns in

Ireland, subsequent to the Union, led to absenteeism, and thus added

to the exhaustion of the land, because Irish wheat was now needed to

pay not only for English cloth but for English services; and the more

the centralization resulting from absenteeism, the greater necessarily

was the difficulty of maintaining the productive powers of the soil.

Mr. McCulloch, however, assures his readers that "it is not easy to

imagine any grounds for pronouncing the expenditure of the rent at

home "more beneficial" to the country than if it had been expended

abroad. (_Principles_, 157.) Another distinguished political economist

says--

"Many persons, also, perplexed by the consideration that all the

commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee's

income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as

much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign

state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. This

is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is

unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition,

destroyed, without producing any return"--_Senior's Political

Economy_, 160.

This view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total

destruction of the commodities consumed. Were it even correct, it

would still follow that there had been transferred from Ireland to

England a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a

rise in the price of labour in the one and a fall in the other;--but

if it were altogether incorrect, it would then follow, necessarily,

that the loss to the country _would_ be as great as if the remittances

were "a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were

periodically thrown into the sea." That it is altogether incorrect the

reader may readily satisfy himself. Man consumes much, but he destroys

nothing. In eating food he is merely acting as a machine for preparing

the elements of which it is composed for future production; and the

more he can take out of the land the more he can return to it, and the

more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the

soil. If the market be at hand, he can take hundreds of bushels of

turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land,

and he can vary the character of his culture from year to year, and

the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it,

the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more

readily he can exchange for improved machinery by aid of which to

obtain still increased returns. If, however, the market be distant, he

must raise only those things that will bear carriage, and which from

their small yield command a high price, and thus is he limited in his

cultivation, and the more he is limited the more rapidly he exhausts

his land, the less is his power to obtain roads, to have association

with his fellow-men, to obtain books, to improve his mode of thought,

to make roads, or to purchase machinery. Such is the case even when he

is compelled to sell and buy in distant markets, but still worse is it

when, as in the case of the rent of the absentee, nothing is returned

to the land, for then production diminishes without a corresponding

diminution of the rent, and the poor cultivator is more and more

thrown upon the mercy of the land-owner or his agent, and becomes, as

we see to have been the case in Jamaica and India, practically a

slave. This state of things has in all countries been followed by a

diminution of population resulting from starvation or from

exportation; and hence it is that we see the destruction of life in

Ireland, India, and the West Indies, while from the two former vast

numbers are annually exported, many of them to perish in the new

countries to which they are driven. Out of 99,000 that left Ireland

for Canada in a single year, no less than 13,000 perished on

shipboard, and thousands died afterward of disease, starvation, and

neglect; and thus it is that we have the horrors of "the middle

passage" repeated in our day. It is the slave trade of the last

century reproduced on a grander scale and on a new theatre of action.

We are told of the principle of population that men increase faster

than food, and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are

pointed to the fact that when men are few in number they always

cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant, but as population

increases they are forced to resort to the poor soils, and then food

becomes scarce. That the contrary of all this is the fact is shown by

the history of England, France, Italy, Greece, India, and every other

nation of the world, and is proved in our own day by all that is at

this moment being done in this country. It is proved by the fact that

Ireland possesses millions of acres of the most fertile soil remaining

in a state of nature, and so likely to remain until she shall have

markets for their produce that will enable their owners readily to

exchange turnips, potatoes, cabbages, and hay, for cloth, machinery,

and MANURE.

It is singular that all the political economists of England should so

entirely have overlooked the fact that man is a mere borrower from the

earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all

other creditors, that is, she expels him from his holding. England

makes of her soil a grand reservoir for the waste yielded by all the

sugar, coffee, wool, indigo, cotton and other raw commodities of

almost half the world, and thus does she raise a crop that has been

valued at five hundred millions of dollars, or five times more than

the average value of the cotton crop produced by so many millions of

people in this country; and yet so important is manure that she

imports in a single year more than two hundred thousand tons of guano,

at a cost of almost two millions of pounds, and thus does she make

labour productive and land valuable. Nevertheless, her writers teach

other nations that the true mode of becoming rich is to exhaust the

land by sending from it all its products in their rudest state, and

then, when the people of Ireland attempt to follow the soil which they

have sent to England, the people of the latter are told by Mr.

McCulloch that

"The unexampled misery of the Irish people is directly owing to the

excessive augmentation of their numbers; and, nothing can be more

perfectly futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment of

their situation until an effectual check has been given to the

progress of population. It is obvious too," he continues, "that the

low and degraded condition into which the people of Ireland are now

sunk is the condition to which every people must be reduced whose

numbers continue, for any considerable period, to increase faster

than the means of providing for their comfortable and decent

subsistence."--_Principles_, 383.

The population of Ireland did increase with some rapidity, and the

reason for this was to be found in the fact that poverty had not yet

produced that demoralization which restricts the growth of numbers.

The extraordinary morality of the women of Ireland is admitted

everywhere. In England it is remarked upon by poor-law commissioners,

and here it is a fact that cannot fail to command the attention of the

most superficial observer. How it is at home we are told by Sir

Francis Head, whose statements on this subject cannot be read without

interest:--

"As regards the women of Ireland, their native modesty cannot fail to

attract the observation of any stranger. Their dress was invariably

decent, generally pleasing, and often strikingly picturesque. Almost

all wore woollen petticoats, dyed by themselves, of a rich madder

colour, between crimson and scarlet. Upon their shoulders, and

occasionally from their heads, hung, in a variety of beautiful folds,

sometimes a plaid of red and green, sometimes a cloak, usually dark

blue or dingy white. Their garments, however, like those of the men,

were occasionally to be seen in tatters."--P. 119.

Anxious to be fully informed on the subject, the traveller took

occasion to interrogate various police-officers and gentlemen, and the

result of his inquiries will be seen on a perusal of the following

questions and answers:--

Q. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"

A. "Above nine years."

Q. "Have you much crime here?"

A. "Very little; it principally consists of petty larcenies."

Q. "Have there been here many illegitimate children?"

A. "Scarcely any. During the whole of the eight years I have been on

duty here I have not known of an illegitimate child being reared up

in any family in the town."

Q. "What do you mean by being reared up?"

A. "I mean that, being acquainted with every family in Galway, I have

never known of a child of that description being born."--P. 208.

Q. "How long have you been on duty here?"

A. "Only six months."

Q. "During that time have you known of any instance of an

illegitimate child being born in the village of the Claddagh?"

A. "Not only have I never known of such a case, but I have never

heard any person attribute such a case to the fisherwomen of

Claddagh. I was on duty in the three islands of Arran, inhabited

almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never

heard of one of their women--who are remarkable for their

beauty--having had an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it

attributed to them; indeed, I have been informed by Mr. -----, a

magistrate who has lived in Galway for eight years, and has been on

temporary duty in the island of Arran, that he also had never heard

there of a case of that nature."--P. 209.

A. "I have been here better than two years, and during that time I

have never known of any woman of Claddagh having had an illegitimate

child--indeed, I have never even heard of it."

Q. "Have you ever known of any such case in Galway?"

A. "Oh, I think there have been some cases in _town_. Of my own

knowledge I cannot say so, but I have _heard_ of it."--_Ibid_.

Q. "How long have you been in charge of the Claddagh village?"

A. "I have been nine years here, for five years of which last March I

have been in charge of Claddagh."

Q. "During that time has there been an illegitimate child born

there?"

A. "No, I have never heard of it, and if it had happened I should

have been sure to have heard of it, as they wouldn't have allowed her

to stop in the village."--P. 210.

The reader will now be pleased to recollect that the production of

food, flax, cotton, and other raw commodities requires hard labour and

exposure, and it is for such labour men are fitted--that the

conversion of food, flax, and cotton into cloth requires little

exertion and is unattended with exposure, and is therefore especially

fitted for the weaker sex--and that when the work of conversion is

monopolized by people who live at a distance from the place of

production, the woman and the child must be driven to the labour of

the field; and therefore it is that we see the women and the children

of Jamaica and Carolina, of Portugal and Turkey, of India and of

Ireland, compelled to remain idle or to cultivate the land, because of

the existence of a system which denies to all places in the world but

one the power to bring the consumer to the side of the producer. It

was time for woman to take up the cause of her sex, and it may be

hoped that she will prosecute the inquiry into the causes of the

demoralization and degradation of the women of so large a portion of

the world, until she shall succeed in extirpating the system so long

since denounced by the greatest of all economists, as "a manifest

violation of the most sacred rights of man [and woman] kind."

* * * * *

SCOTLAND.

Centralization tends everywhere to the exhaustion of the land, and to

its consolidation in fewer hands, and with every step in this

direction man becomes less and less free to determine for whom he will

work and what shall be his reward. That such has been the tendency in

Jamaica, India, and Ireland, has been shown, and it is now proposed to

show that the same tendency exists in Scotland, the Northern part of

which has become exclusively agricultural as even its home

manufactures have passed away, and must look to a distance for a

market for all its products, involving, of course, a necessity for

exhausting the land.

The Highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the

clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at

will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the

hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the

power so obtained. The payment of money rents was claimed by them

eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the

following passage from a work of that date:--

"The rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent,

but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will

perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland

feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the

richest provinces."--_Stewart's Political Economy_, vol. i. chap.

xvi.

Of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch

is furnished by a recent English writer:--

"Even in the beginning of the 19th century the rental imposts were

very small, as is shown by the work of Mr. Lock, (1820,) the steward

of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her

estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate

for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was

obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few

fowls, and some days' work, at the highest.

"It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was

enacted, the forcible, transformation of _clan-property_ into the

_private property_, in the modern sense, _of the chief_. The person

who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the Countess

of Sutherland and Marchioness of Stafford.

"Let us first state that the ancestors of the marchioness were the

'great men' of the most northern part of Scotland, of very near

three-quarters of Sutherlandshire. This county is more extensive than

many French departments or small German principalities. When the

Countess of Sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward

brought to her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of

Sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to 15,000. The

countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined

upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. From

1814 to 1820, these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3000 families, were

systematically expelled and exterminated. All their villages were

demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into

pasturage. British soldiers were commanded for this execution, and

came to blows with the natives. An old woman refusing to quit her

hut, was burned in the flames of it. Thus the countess appropriated

to herself _seven hundred and ninety-four thousand acres of land_,

which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. She allotted to

the expelled natives about six thousand acres--two acres per family.

These six thousand acres had been lying waste until then, and brought

no revenue to the proprietors. The countess was generous enough to

sell the acre at 2s. 6d. on an average, to the clan-men who for

centuries past had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the

unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into twenty-nine

large sheep-farms, each of them inhabited by one single family,

mostly English farm-labourers; and in 1821 the 15,000 Gaels had

already been superseded by 131,000 sheep.

"A portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and

attempted to live by fishing. They became amphibious, and, as an

English author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after

all did not half live upon both."

Throughout the North of Scotland the tenants of the small grazing

farms into which the Highland counties had been divided, have been

ousted for the purpose of creating sheep-walks, and to such an extent

has this been carried, that where once, and at no distant period, were

numerous black-cattle farms, not an inhabitant is now to be seen for

many miles.[121] The work, too, is still going on. "The example of

Sutherland," says Mr. Thornton,[122] "is imitated in the neighbouring

counties."

The misery of these poor people is thus described:--

"Hinds engaged by the year are seldom paid more than two-thirds of

what they would receive in the South, and few of them are fortunate

enough to obtain regular employment. Farm-servants, however, form

only a small proportion of the peasantry, a much greater number being

crofters, or tenants of small pieces of ground, from which they

derive almost their whole subsistence. Most of them live very

miserably. The soil is so poor, and rents in some instances so

exorbitant, that occupiers of four or five acres can do little more

than maintain themselves, yet it is their aid alone that saves their

still poorer brethren from starvation. This is true even of

Sutherland, which is commonly represented as a highly improved

county, and in which a signal change for the better is said to have

taken place in the character and habits of the people.[123] Recent

inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for

fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into

a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hillsides

fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as thin

and pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London

alley.[124] Still more deplorable are the scenes exhibited in the

Western Highlands, especially on the coasts and in the adjoining

islands. A large population has there been assembled, so ill provided

with any means of support, that during part of almost every year from

45,000 to 80,000 [125] of them are in a state of destitution, and

entirely dependent upon charity. Many of the heads of families hold

crofts from four to seven acres in extent, but these, notwithstanding

their small size, and the extreme barrenness of the soil, have often

two, three, and sometimes even four families upon them. One estate in

the Hebrides, the nominal rent of which is only £5200 a year, is

divided into 1108 crofts, and is supposed to have more than 8300

persons living upon it. In another instance a rental of £1814 is

payable (for little is really paid) by 365 crofters, and the whole

population of the estate is estimated at more than 2300. In Cromarty,

1500 persons are settled upon an estate let nominally for £750, but

"paying not more than half that sum."--_Thornton_, 74.

"Of course, they live most wretchedly. Potatoes are the usual food,

for oatmeal is considered a luxury, to be reserved for high days and

holidays, but even potatoes are not raised in sufficient abundance.

The year's stock is generally exhausted before the succeeding crop is

ripe, and the poor are then often in a most desperate condition, for

the poor-law is a dead letter in the North of Scotland, and the want

of a legal provision for the necessitous is but ill supplied by the

spontaneous contributions of the land-owners."--_Ibid_. 76.

At the moment of writing this, the journals of the day furnish

information that famine prevails in the Hebrides, and that "in the

Isle of Skye alone there are 10,000 able-bodied persons at this time

without work, without food, and without credit."

The condition of these poor people would certainly be much improved

could they find some indulgent master who would purchase them at such

prices as would make it to his interest to feed, clothe, and lodge

them well in return for their labour.

In the days of Adam Smith about one-fifth of the surface of Scotland

was supposed to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages of the

system to be so great that he denounced the system as being "founded

upon the most absurd of all suppositions--the supposition that every

successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and

all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation

should be retained and regulated according to the fancy of those who

died perhaps five hundred years ago." Instead of changing the system,

and doing that which might tend to the establishment of greater

freedom of trade in land, the movement has been in a contrary

direction, and to such an extent that one-half of Scotland is now

supposed to be entailed; and yet, singularly enough, this is the

system advocated by Mr. McCulloch, a follower in the foot-steps of

Adam Smith, as being the one calculated "to render all classes more

industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and

the scale of enjoyment."

The effects of the system are seen in the enormous rents contracted to

be paid for the use of small pieces of land at a distance from market,

the failure in the payment of which makes the poor cultivator a mere

slave to the proprietor. How the latter use their power, may be seen

by the following extract from a Canadian journal of 1851:--

"A Colonel -----, the owner of estates in South Uist and Barra, in

the highlands of Scotland, has sent off over 1100 destitute tenants

and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring

them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at

Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to Upper Canada,

where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and

receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. Seventy-one

of the last cargo of four hundred and fifty have signed a statement

that some of them fled to the mountains when an attempt was made to

force them to emigrate. 'Whereupon,' they add, 'Mr. Fleming gave

orders to a policeman, who was accompanied by the ground officer of

the estate in Barra, and some constables, to pursue the people who

had run away among the mountains, which they did, and succeeded in

capturing about twenty from the mountains and from other islands in

the neighbourhood; but only came with the officers on an attempt

being made to handcuff them, and that some who ran away were not

brought back; in consequence of which four families, at least, have

been divided, some having come in the ships to Quebec, while other

members of the same families are left in the highlands.'"

"On board the Conrad and the Birman were 518 persons from Mull and

Tyree, sent out by his grace the Duke of -----, who provided them

with a free passage to Montreal, where on arrival they presented the

same appearance of destitution as those from South Uist, sent out by

Colonel -----, that is, 'entirely destitute of money and

provisions.'"

Numbers of these people perished, as we are told, of disease and want

of food in the winter which followed their arrival in Canada; and that

such would have been the case might naturally have been anticipated by

those who exported them.

The wretched cotters who are being everywhere expelled from the land

are forced to take refuge in cities and towns, precisely as we see now

to be the case in Ireland. "In Glasgow," says Mr. Thornton--

"There are nearly 30,000 poor Highlanders, most of them living in a

state of misery, which shows how dreadful must have been the

privations to which such misery is preferred. Such of them as are

able-bodied obtain employment without much difficulty, and may not

perhaps have much reason to complain of deficiency of the first

requisites of life; but the quarter they inhabit is described as

enclosing a larger amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease, than

could have been supposed to exist in one spot in any civilized

country. It consists of long lanes called 'wynds,' so narrow that a

cart could scarcely pass through them, opening upon 'closes,' or

courts, about 15 or 20 feet square, round which the houses, mostly

three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a

dunghill. The houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of

the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is

filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most

revolting state of filth. Amid such scenes and such companions as

these, thousands of the most intelligent of the Highlanders are

content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best

educated and best informed that are most impatient of the penury they

have to endure at home.

"The inhabitants of the Glasgow wynds and closes may be likened to

those of the Liverpool cellars, or to those of the worst parts of

Leeds, St. Giles's, and Bethnal Green, in London; and every other

class of the Scottish urban labouring population may likewise be

delineated with the same touches (more darkened, however,) which have

been used in describing the corresponding class in English towns.

Manufacturing operatives are in pretty much the same position in both

countries. Those of Scotland shared even more largely than their

Southern brethren in the distress of 1840-2, when Paisley in

particular exhibited scenes of wo far surpassing any thing that has

been related of Bolton or Stockport."--P. 77.

The extent to which these poor people have been driven from the land

may be judged by the following statement of population and

house-accommodation:--

Persons to

Population. Inhabited houses. a house.

----------- ----------------- ----------

1841...... 2,628,957...... 503,357...... 5.22

1851...... 2,870,784...... 366,650...... 7.83

Intemperance and immorality keep pace with the decline in the power of

men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of

the consumption of British spirits, under circumstances almost

precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:--

Duty. Gallons.

----- --------

1802.............. 3.10-1/2..... 1,158,558

1831.............. 3.4 ........ 5,700,689

1841.............. 3.8 ........ 5,989,905

1851.............. 3.8 ........ 6,830,710

In 1801 the population was 1,599,068, and since that time it has

increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has

grown almost six hundred per cent.!

The poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. The

hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from

children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and

prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more

deplorable. In the five years preceding 1840, every fifth person in

Glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted

to almost five thousand.

It is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the United

Kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly

being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the

latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and

becoming more and more slaves to the former. Centralization tends

here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and "absenteeism," says Dr.

Forbes of Glasgow [126] --

"Is in its results everywhere the same. All the transactions and

communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus

substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of

that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained,

the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every

case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * Where the power of

sympathy has been altogether or nearly abolished among the different

ranks of society, one of the first effects appears in a yawning and

ever-widening gulf of poverty which gathers round its foundations. As

the lofty shore indicates the depth of the surrounding ocean, the

proud pinnacles of wealth in society are the indices of a

corresponding depression among the humbler ranks. The greatest misery

of man is ever the adjunct of his proudest splendour."

Such are the results everywhere of that system which looks to

converting England into a great workshop and confining the people of

all other nations to the labours of the field. In Jamaica, it

annihilated three-fifths of all the negroes imported, and it is now

rapidly driving the remainder into barbarism and ultimately to

annihilation. In the Southern States, it causes the export of men,

women, and children, and the breaking up of families. In India, it has

caused famines and pestilences, and is now establishing the slave

trade in a new form. In Ireland, it has in half a century carried the

people back to a condition worthy only of the darkest part of the

Middle Ages, and is now extirpating them from the land of their

fathers. In Scotland, it is rapidly dividing the population into two

parts--the master on one hand, and the slave on the other. How it has

operated, and is now operating, in England itself, we may how examine.