From the speeches that have been delivered in this debate, and from what
we know of Ireland, it is clear that Ireland is so entirely
disorganised, that it is extremely difficult to suggest any means by
which relief can be extensively given without causing two evils: first,
the waste of a great portion of the money which is granted; and next,
the demoralization of a large number of those to whom the relief is
given. It is on account of these difficulties that I am disposed to make
great allowance for the measures which the Government have undertaken,
as well as for any propositions which may be made by the hon. Member for
Stroud, even when they appear somewhat inconsistent with correct
economical principles.
As this is probably the last opportunity during this Session when the
question of the condition of Ireland can be discussed, I am anxious to
avail myself of it to offer a few observations to the House, and to
explain briefly what I conceive to be the course which ought to be taken
with regard to that country, to enable its population to place
themselves in a position of comfort and independence. The past of
Ireland is known to us all; it is a tale of idleness, and poverty, and
periodical insurrection; the present of Ireland is like the past, except
that at this moment all its ordinary evils are exhibited in an
aggravated form. But there are one or two points with regard to this
subject to which I wish especially to ask the attention of the House.
Have you ever fully considered the effect which this state of things in
Ireland has upon the condition of certain districts in England? We have
had some threatenings of disturbances in England, and of disaffection--I
hope it is not wide-spread--here and there in various parts of the
country. Take the county of Lancaster as an example, and you will see
something of the consequences of a large influx of the Irish population
into that district. In Liverpool and Manchester, and in all the belt of
towns which surround Manchester, there is a large Irish population--in
fact, there is an Irish quarter in each of these towns. It is true that
a great number of these persons are steady, respectable, and
industrious, but it is notorious that a portion of them are, in some
degree, the opposite of all this. They bring to this country all the
vices which have prevailed so long in Ireland; their influence on the
people of Lancashire is often of an unfavourable character, and the
effect of their example on the native population must necessarily be
injurious. We find that crimes attended with violence prevail too
generally in Lancashire and Yorkshire. These crimes to a large extent
are committed by persons who are not natives of those counties, but who
come from Ireland, because it is impossible for them to find subsistence
in that country.
There is another point which seems to me important. Driven forth by
poverty, Irishmen emigrate in great numbers, and in whatever quarter of
the world an Irishman sets his foot, there stands a bitter, an
implacable enemy of England. That is one of the results of the wide-
spread disaffection that exists in Ireland. There are hundreds of
thousands--I suppose there are millions--of the population of the United
States of America who are Irish by birth, or by immediate descent; and
be it remembered, Irishmen settled in the United States have a large
influence in public affairs. They sometimes sway the election of Members
of the Legislature, and may even affect the election of the President of
the Republic. There may come a time when questions of a critical nature
will be agitated between the Governments of Great Britain and the United
States; and it is certain that at such a time the Irish in that country
will throw their whole weight into the scale against this country, and
against peace with this country. These are points which it is necessary
to consider, and which arise out of the lamentable condition in which
Ireland is placed.
When we reflect for a moment upon the destitution which millions of our
countrymen suffer in that unfortunate island, the conclusion is
inevitable that either the Government or the people of Ireland are in
fault. I think both are in fault. I think the Government has been
negligent of Ireland. I do not mean the present Government in
particular; for they are fully as anxious for the welfare of Ireland as
any former Administration has been--but I think the Government generally
has been negligent of Ireland. It is a common thing to hear it said, and
especially by Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury bench, that the remedy
for Irish evils is difficult, and that the difficulty seems
insurmountable; but the House may rest assured that no difficulty can be
so great as that which must be met if no remedy is applied. To do
anything that can be effectual, must be infinitely less dangerous than
to do nothing.
Now I believe the real difficulties which beset this question do not
arise from anything in Ireland, so much as from the constitution of the
Government. This House, and the other House of Parliament, are almost
exclusively aristocratic in their character. The Administration is
therefore necessarily the same, and on the Treasury benches aristocracy
reigns supreme. No fewer than seven Members of the Cabinet are Members
of the House of Lords; and every other Member of it is either a Lord by
title, or on the very threshold of the peerage by birth or marriage. I
am not blaming them for this; it may even be that from neither House of
Parliament can fourteen better men be chosen to fill their places. But I
maintain that in the present position of Ireland, and looking at human
nature as it is, it is not possible that fourteen Gentlemen,
circumstanced as they are, can meet round the Council table, and with
unbiassed minds fairly discuss the question of Ireland, as it now
presents itself to this House, to the country, and to the world.
The condition of Ireland requires two kinds of remedies--one political,
the other social; and it is hard to tell where the one ends and the
other begins. I will speak first of the political remedies. At present,
there prevails throughout three-fourths of the Irish people a total
unbelief in the honesty and integrity of the Government of this country.
There may or may not be good grounds for all this ill feeling; but that
it exists, no man acquainted with Ireland will deny. The first step to
be taken is to remove this feeling; and, to do this, some great measure
or measures should be offered to the people of Ireland, which will act
as a complete demonstration to them that bygones are to be bygones, with
regard to the administration of Irish affairs, and that henceforth new,
generous, and equal principles of government are to be adopted.
I have on a former occasion stated my opinions on one or two subjects,
and I will venture again briefly to explain them to the House. Ireland
has long been a country of jars and turmoil, and its jars have arisen
chiefly from religious dissensions. In respect of matters of religion
she has been governed in a manner totally unknown in England and
Scotland. If Ireland has been rightly governed--if it has been wise and
just to maintain the Protestant Church established there, you ought, in
order to carry out your system, to establish Prelacy in Scotland, and
Catholicism in England; though, if you were to attempt to do either the
one or the other, it would not be a sham but a real insurrection that
you would provoke. There must be equality between the great religious
sects in Ireland--between Catholic and Protestant. It is impossible that
this equality can be much longer denied.
It is suspected that it is the intention of the Government to bring
forward at no distant day, if they can catch the people of England
napping, a proposition for paying the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland.
On more than one ground I should object to any such scheme. In the first
place, I believe the Government cannot, from any funds they possess, or
from any they can obtain, place the Catholic priests on an equality with
the ministers of the Protestant Church; and if they cannot do that in
every respect, the thing is not worth attempting. They will, I think,
find it infinitely more easy, and it will certainly be much more in
accordance with political justice, and with the true interests of
religion, to withdraw from Ireland the Church Establishment which now
exists there, and to bring about the perfect equality which may be
secured by taking away so much of the funds as are proved to be totally
unnecessary for the wants of the population. I do not mean that you
should withdraw from the Protestant Church every sixpence now in its
possession; what I mean is, that you should separate it from the State,
and appropriate all the funds of which it might justly be deprived to
some grand national object, such as the support and extension of the
system of education now established in Ireland; an appropriation of
money which would, I am sure, produce in the minds of the people of
Ireland an entire change of feeling with regard to the legislation of
Parliament in relation to their country.
With regard to the Parliamentary representation of Ireland, having
recently spent seventy-three days in an examination of the subject,
whilst serving as a Member of the Dublin Election Committee, I assert
most distinctly that the representation which exists at this moment is a
fraud; and I believe it would be far better if there were no
representation at all, because the people would not then be deluded by
the idea that they had a representative Government to protect their
interests. The number of taxes which the people have to pay, in order to
secure either the municipal or Parliamentary franchise, is so great that
it is utterly impossible for the constituencies to be maintained, and
for public opinion--the honest, real opinion of intelligent classes in
Ireland--to obtain any common or decent degree of representation in the
Imperial Legislature. I feel quite confident that in the next Session of
Parliament, the questions of religious equality in Ireland and of Irish
representation must receive a much more serious attention than they have
obtained in any past Session.
I come now to those social questions which must also receive the
attention of Parliament; for if they do not, the political remedies
will, after all, be of very little permanent use. I advocate these
political changes on the ground, not that they will feed the hungry or
employ the idle, but that they will be as oil thrown upon the waters,
and will induce the people no longer to feel themselves treated as a
conquered race. It is agreed on all sides that the social remedies which
are immediately possible to us, are those having reference to the mode
in which the land of Ireland is owned, or held and cultivated--perhaps
'not cultivated' would be a more correct expression. The noble Lord at
the head of the Government has alluded to parts of Ireland in which it
is impossible that the land as at present held, or the rates which can
be collected, can find relief or sustentation for the people. It is a
notorious fact, that there are vast tracts of land in Ireland, which, if
left in the hands of nominal and bankrupt owners, will never to the end
of time support the population which ought to live upon them. And it is
on this ground that I must question the policy of measures for expending
public money with a view to the cultivation and reclamation of these
lands.
The true solution of this matter is to get the lands out of the hands of
men who are the nominal, and not the real, possessors. But Parliament
maintains laws which act most injuriously in this particular. The law
and practice of entails tends to keep the soil in large properties, and
in the hands of those who cannot perform their duty to it. It will be
said that entails exist in Scotland and in England. Yes; but this
Session a law has passed, or is passing, to modify the system as it has
heretofore existed in Scotland; and in England many of its evils have
been partially overcome by the extraordinary, and, to some degree, the
accidental extension of manufacturing industry among the people. In
Ireland there are no such mitigations; a code of laws exists, under
which it is impossible for the land and the people to be brought, as it
were, together, and for industry to live in independence and comfort,
instead of crawling to this House, as it does almost annually, to ask
alms of the hardworking people of England.
The law and practice of primogeniture is another evil of the same
character. It is a law unnatural and unjust at all times; but in the
present condition of Ireland it cannot much longer be endured. Were I
called upon--and it is a bold figure of speech to mention such a thing--
but were I called upon to treat this Irish question, I would establish,
for a limited period at least, a special court in Ireland to adjudicate
on all questions connected with the titles and transfers of landed
property. This court should finally decide questions of title; it should
prepare and enforce a simple and short form of conveyance, as short
almost as that by which railway stock is transferred; and, without
regard to the public revenue, I would abolish every farthing of expense
which is now incurred in the duties on stamps, for the purpose of
facilitating the distribution of land in Ireland, and of allowing the
capital and industry of the people to work out its salvation. All this
is possible; and, more than this, it is all necessary. Well, now, what
is the real obstacle in our path? You have toiled at this Irish
difficulty Session after Session, and some of you have grown almost from
boyhood to grey-headed old men since it first met you in your
legislative career, and yet there is not in ancient or modern history a
picture so humiliating as that which Ireland presents to the world at
this moment; and there is not an English gentleman who, if he crossed
the Channel in the present autumn, and travelled in any foreign country,
would not wish to escape from any conversation among foreigners in which
the question of the condition of Ireland was mooted for a single moment.
Let the House, if it can, regard Ireland as an English country. Let us
think of the eight millions of people, and of the millions of them
doomed to this intolerable suffering. Let us think of the half-million
who, within two years past, have perished miserably in the workhouses,
and on the highways, and in their hovels--more, far more than ever fell
by the sword in any war this country ever waged; let us think of the
crop of nameless horrors which is even now growing up in Ireland, and
whose disastrous fruit may be gathered in years and generations to come.
Let us examine what are the laws and the principles under which alone
God and nature have permitted that nations should become industrious and
provident.
I hope the House will pardon me if I have said a word that can offend
any one. But I feel conscious of a personal humiliation when I consider
the state of Ireland. I do not wish to puff nostrums of my own, though
it may be thought I am opposed to much that exists in the present order
of things; but whether it tended to advance democracy, or to uphold
aristocracy, or any other system, I would wish to fling to the winds any
prejudice I have entertained, and any principle that may be questioned,
if I can thereby do one single thing to hasten by a single day the time
when Ireland shall be equal to England in that comfort and that
independence which an industrious people may enjoy, if the Government
under which they live is equal and just.
* * * * *
IRELAND.
IV.
RATE IN AID.
HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL 2, 1849.
[On February 7, 1849, a proposal was made by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer that a sum of 50,000_l_. should be granted to certain
Irish Unions, in which distress was more than usually prevalent. The
resolution was passed on March 3. On March 27 the second reading of the
Bill founded on this resolution was moved, and the debate continued till
April 3, when the second reading was affirmed by 193 votes to 138. The
third reading was carried by 129 to 55, on April 30. The Bill passed the
House of Lords on May 18.]
I ventured to move the adjournment of the debate on Friday night,
because I was anxious to have the opportunity of expressing the opinions
which I entertain on this most important subject. I am one of the
Committee appointed by this House to inquire into the working of the
Irish poor-law, and on that Committee I was one of the majority--the
large majority--by which the resolution for a rate in aid was affirmed.
In the division which took place on the same proposition in the House, I
also voted in the majority. But I am not by any means disposed to say
that there are no reasons against the course which I take, or against
the proposition which has been submitted to the House by the Government.
On the whole, however, I am prepared to-night to justify that
proposition, and the vote which I have given for it.
As to the project of raising money for the purpose of these distressed
Unions, I think there can be no doubt in the mind of any Member of the
House, that money must come from some quarter. It appears to be a
question of life or money. All the witnesses who were examined before
the Committee; the concurrent testimony of all parties in Ireland, of
all the public papers, of all the speeches which have been delivered in
the course of this debate, go to prove, that unless additional funds be
provided, tens of thousands of our unfortunate fellow-countrymen in
Ireland must perish of famine in the course of the present year. If this
be true, it is evident that a great necessity is upon us; a grave
emergency, which we must meet. I am not prepared to justify the
proposition of a rate in aid merely on the ground of this necessity,
because it will be said, and justly, that the same amount of funds might
be raised by some other mode; but I am prepared to justify the
proposition which restricts this rate in aid to Ireland, on the ground
that the rest of the United Kingdom has, during the past three years,
paid its own rate in aid for Ireland; and this to a far larger amount
than any call which the Government now proposes to make on the rateable
property in Ireland.
We have taken from the general taxation of this country, in the last two
or three years, for the purposes of Ireland, several millions, I may say
not fewer than from eight to ten millions sterling. We have paid also
very large subscriptions from private resources, to the same purpose;
the sums expended by the British Association were not less, in the
aggregate, than 600,000_l_., in addition to other large amounts
contributed. The Irish, certainly, gave something to these funds; but by
far the larger amount was paid by the tax-paying classes of Great
Britain. In addition to this special outlay for this purpose, very heavy
local taxation has been incurred by several of the great communities of
this island, for the purpose of supporting the pauperism which has
escaped from Ireland to Great Britain. In this metropolis, in Glasgow,
in Liverpool, and in the great manufacturing town which I have the
honour to represent, the overflow of Irish pauperism has, within the
last two or three years more especially, occasioned a vast additional
burden of taxation. I believe the hon. Member for South Lancashire made
some statement in this House on a former occasion with respect to the
burden which was inflicted upon Liverpool by the Irish paupers, who
constantly flow into that town. As to Glasgow, the poor-rate levied last
year in the city parish alone, amounted to 70,000_l_.; and this
year, owing to the visitation of cholera and the poverty thereby
engendered, there will be an additional assessment of 20,000_l_.
The city parish contains only about 120,000 or 130,000 of the 280,000
residents in the mass of buildings known by the general name of Glasgow.
Of the sum levied as poor-rate in the city parish, it is estimated that,
on an average, two-thirds are spent upon Irish paupers. The ranks of
these Irish paupers are recruited to a comparatively small extent from
the Irish workmen, who have been, with their families, attracted by, and
who have found employment in, the numerous manufactories of Glasgow. The
Irish paupers, upon whom two-thirds of the Glasgow poor-rates are spent,
are principally squalid and destitute creatures who are brought over as
deck passengers, clustering like bees to the bulwarks and rigging, by
almost every steamer that sails from a northern Irish port. With respect
to the town of Manchester, I am able to give some more definite
particulars as to the burthen imposed upon the inhabitants for the
support of the Irish casual poor. In the year 1848, the sum expended in
the relief of the settled poor, which term includes the resident Irish
who are not distinguished by name from the English, amounted to
37,847_l_. The sum expended for the relief of the non-settled
English paupers in the town of Manchester, in the year 1848, was
18,699_l_. The amount expended for the relief of casual Irish poor
alone was 28,007_l_. The total assessment of Manchester is
647,568_l_., which, if divided by the amount required to relieve
the casual Irish poor, would amount to a rate of 10 1/2 _d_. in the
pound upon every pound of rateable property in the town of Manchester;
but if estimated according to the property really rated (as there are
great numbers of persons who, from poverty, do not pay the poor-rates on
the property they occupy), the amount of assessment for the relief of
the casual Irish poor alone will be from 15_d_. to 18_d_. in
the pound, and the charge upon the ratepayers of Manchester for the
relief of the Irish casual poor during the last year is not less than
2_s_. 1_d_. per head upon the whole population of that town.
Now, during the last year, Manchester had to struggle with very severe
difficulties, and the manufacturers there suffered most acutely from
various causes. The failure of the cotton crop of 1846, the panic in the
financial and commercial world in 1847, the convulsions in the European
States in 1848--all these contributed to bring upon Manchester enormous
evil; and in addition to this we had to bear an additional burden of
28,000_l_. for the maintenance of the casual Irish poor. I have
here an analysis of the poor-rates collected in Manchester during the
last four years, and I will briefly state the results to the House. In
the year 1845 the amount of rates collected expressly for the relief of
the casual Irish poor was 3,500_l_. In 1846 the cost of the casual
Irish poor imposed a burden upon Manchester of 3,300_l_.; in 1847
of 6,558_l_.; and in 1848 this item of expenditure reached the
extraordinary sum of 28,007_l_. The people of Manchester have
uttered no loud or clamorous complaints respecting the excessive burden
borne by them for the support of the Irish. They have sent no urgent
deputations to the Government on the subject of this heavy expense. But,
seeing that they have paid this money for the relief of Irish paupers,
and seeing also that the smaller manufacturing and other towns in
England have also paid no small sums for Irish paupers, they do think,
and I here express my conviction, that it will be seen and admitted that
we have paid our rate in aid for the relief of Ireland, and that it does
become the landowners and persons of property in that country to make an
effort during a temporary period to supply that small sum which is by
this Bill demanded of them.