The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 Part 17

"My LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,--

"It is with the deepest concern that, upon your again a.s.sembling, I have to call your attention to the dearth of provisions which prevails in Ireland, and in parts of Scotland.

"In Ireland, especially, the loss of the usual food of the people has been the cause of severe sufferings, of disease, and of greatly increased mortality among the poorer cla.s.ses. Outrages have become more frequent, chiefly directed against property, and the transit of provisions has been rendered unsafe in some parts of the country.

"With a view to mitigate these evils, very large numbers of men have been employed, and have received wages, in pursuance of an Act pa.s.sed in the last session of Parliament. Some deviations from that Act, which have been authorized by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in order to promote more useful employment, will, I trust, receive your sanction.

Means have been taken to lessen the pressure of want, in districts which are most remote from the ordinary sources of supply. Outrages have been repressed, as far as it was possible, by the military and police.

"It is satisfactory to me to observe, that in many of the most distressed districts, the patience and resignation of the people have been most exemplary.

"The deficiency of the harvest in France and Germany, and other parts of Europe, has added to the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of provisions.

"It will be your duty to consider, what further measures are required to alleviate the existing distress. I recommend to you to take into your serious consideration, whether, by increasing, for a limited period, the facilities for importing from foreign countries, and by the admission of sugar more freely into breweries and distilleries, the supply of food may be beneficially augmented.

"I have also to direct your earnest attention to the permanent consideration of Ireland. You will perceive, by the absence of political excitement, an opportunity for taking a dispa.s.sionate survey of the social evils which afflict that part of the United Kingdom. Various measures will be laid before you, which, if adopted by Parliament, may tend to raise the great ma.s.s of the people in comfort, to promote agriculture, and to lessen the pressure of that compet.i.tion for the occupation of land, which has been the fruitful source of crime and misery."

In the House of Lords, the debate on the address in reply to the Queen's speech was not very remarkable. All the speakers admitted that which it was impossible to deny, the terrible reality of the famine, unequalled, as Lord Hatherton said he believed it to be, in past history, and certainly not to be paralleled in the history of modern times. Lord Brougham made a joke and raised a laugh at the expense of the Irish landlords. He inclined, he said, to the opinion that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner, but it was objected that such a course would have the effect of bringing the Irish proprietors to England at a time when their presence at home was much needed. "G.o.d forbid,"

exclaimed his lordship, "that I should be instrumental in bringing the Irish proprietors over to this country."[192] He further said, in one of those involved sentences of his, "that he held it to be impossible that, when the cry of hunger prevailed over the land--when there was a melancholy substance as well as the cry--when the country was distracted from day to day by accounts of the most heartrending spectacles he had ever seen, heard, or read of--that at a time when there was deep misery and distress prevailing, and proved in Ireland--rendered only the more heartrending, because the more touching, by the patience--the admirable and almost inimitable patience--with which it seemed to be borne--that at a time when that great calamity existed--when there were scenes enacted all over those districts, which they could find nothing existing in the page of disease and death and pestilence, ever following in the train of famine--to which nothing existing was to be found in the page of Josephus, or on the canvas of Poussin, or in the dismal chant of Dante ... that they should be in circ.u.mstances like these, and yet be able calmly and temperately to take up questions of permanent policy, he held to be absolutely and necessarily impossible."

More to the point were some of the remarks made by Lord Stanley, then in opposition. With regard to the awful visitation which afflicted the sister island from one end to the other, he said he believed that no exaggeration could, in many instances, exceed the dreadful reality. He was quite content, that for the prevention and palliation of the evil, _for the purpose of rescuing the country from the guilt of permitting a large portion of its people knowingly to_ STARVE, there is no sacrifice, no efforts which her Majesty's Government can call upon the people of this country to make, which will not be cheerfully responded to by the members of your Lordships' house, and by the representatives of the people, who will, in this case, represent the deliberate and cordial sense of the whole country. The Labour-rate Act he p.r.o.nounced "a great blunder." With regard to the non-establishment of food depots, he said that if he could accuse the Government of an error on that head, they were led into it by too rigid an adherence to the principles of political economy--to the _abstract_ principles of political economy, that were meant for the permanent improvement of the people; but the question might arise as to the propriety of acting against such principles, in order to meet an extraordinary emergency.

In the House of Commons, one of the earliest speakers on the address was Smith O'Brien. He said, he thought he would be wanting in his duty to his country if he did not, on that occasion, make an appeal to the House on behalf of those whose sufferings could not be exaggerated--could not be described. He was asked, by a.s.senting to the address, if he was prepared to say that the Government had been altogether guiltless of having produced that frightful state of things; and if he were called upon to affirm, that everything had been done by the Government, which might have been done by them, he would answer, that _he believed it was in their power, to prevent one single individual from dying of starvation in Ireland_. He did not impute to them the wilful intention of bringing about a state of things so disastrous, but it was his opinion, and the opinion of others in Ireland, that they had not introduced those measures which were suitable to the condition in which Ireland was placed, and had thus brought about the state of things which was now witnessed. "To the declaration of the Prime Minister, last session, that there was to be no legislative interference with the price of food, he believed they owed many of the disasters which had taken place in Ireland." This sentiment was received with cheers. Mr. O'Brien then made a point in favour of the Irish landlords. Was this, he asked, to be considered as a local calamity, or was it to be considered as a national calamity? If the Irish members were legislating in an Irish parliament, it would be considered by them as a national calamity, and all cla.s.ses--the fund holder, the office holder, the mortgagee, the annuitant, would be called on to contribute to the general exertion to alleviate distress. He wished to learn whether the House considered this as an Imperial calamity or not; and whilst he, for his own part, refrained from any supplication to the Imperial treasury, he could a.s.sure the House, that there were millions in Ireland, who did not consider the Union a union in which all the advantages ought to be on the part of England. England had the advantage of the Irish absentee rents, and the advantage of applying all the resources of Ireland; and the Irish people did not consider that it ought to be looked upon as a union for the advantage of England alone, and no union when it was for the interests of Ireland. Nothing, he thought, could be more outrageous than that one cla.s.s, who suffered most from the disasters which had taken place--namely, the landlords of Ireland--should be called upon to bear the whole burthen of this calamity.

Smith O'Brien was quite right in saying it was most unreasonable that the Irish landlords should be called upon to bear the whole expense of the Famine, but it is equally true, that, as a body, they made no effort worth the name to stay or mitigate the Famine, until it had knocked at their own hall doors in the shape of rates, present and prospective, that threatened them with the confiscation of their properties.

Mr. Labouchere, the Irish Chief Secretary, as was to be expected, was put up to defend the Government, and to foreshadow the future measures of relief. His line of defence was a strange one for an English minister to adopt. It was, that the agricultural population of Ireland, vast in its numbers, were always on the brink of starvation; so that when the potato blight swept the country from sea to sea, it was impossible for the Government to meet the disaster fully. An English journal of high repute,[193] whose words have been already quoted in these pages, truly said, that for five hundred years Ireland had been completely in the hands of England, to mould and fashion her as she pleased; and now at the end of those five centuries, a British statesman does not blush to urge, as an argument in favour of the Government of which he is a member, that the normal state of Ireland was--to be on the brink of starvation. This defence, weak and inconclusive from every point of view, served his colleagues and himself, of course, but little, while it was calculated to cover his nation with shame and confusion. He goes on to prove the fact, alas! too easily proved; he goes to Lord Devon's Commission, and tells us from it, that it is no exaggeration to say, that the people of Ireland are the worst housed, the worst clothed, and the worst fed of any people in Europe. It is a country, proceeds the Secretary, of which I find an account given from a most unexceptionable source, the Commission of Poor Law Enquiry in 1835. From this Report it appeared, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers, whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two shillings and six pence a week; and that of these one-half were dest.i.tute during thirty weeks of every year. "This," said he, "is the ordinary condition of Ireland, and it is upon such a country as this that the calamity has fallen--a calamity which I believe to be without a parallel in modern times."

Such was the defence of the Irish Chief Secretary. And here it is worth while remarking, that in the earlier stages of the Famine it was the practice of the government organs to throw doubt on the extent of its ravages which were published, and the Government, apparently acting on these views, most culpably delayed the measures by which the visitation could be successfully combated. _Now_, their part was to admit to the fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for their want of energy and success in overcoming it. On the same principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith, goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight. The money value of the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at 11,250,000: the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be 4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes 15,916,000.

Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered the money value of the crop which had failed, or the stock of human food which had been supplied.

The chronic poverty and misery of Ireland, as set forth in the Report which the Poor Law Commissioners published in 1835, seems to have been the favourite armoury whence Mr. Labouchere loved to draw his logical weapons, for the defence of the Government on this occasion. In that Report he finds it stated that "Mayo alone would furnish beggars to all England."[194] Be it remembered, that the Poor Law Commissioners had published their Report eleven years before Mr. Labouchere made this speech, but he does not inform us what measures the British Government had in the meantime adopted, or if they had adopted any, to raise the people out of such a state of misery and degradation; but he clearly thinks he has brought forward a clever argument in his own and his colleagues' defence, when he states that one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, had such abundant and redundant pauperism. Yet this was in the "sister country"--the sister of that great and wealthy and enlightened England of which, no doubt, the Irish Secretary felt proud to be a native.

After offering some defence for the free-trade policy of his chief, and having indicated the measures the Government had prepared for Ireland, he resumed his seat, and was followed by Lord George Bentinck.

Lord George had, within a short time, attained to great importance in the House of Commons. After the protectionist party was deserted ("betrayed" was their own word), by Sir Robert Peel, that large-hearted and high-minded n.o.bleman was installed in his place, as their leader. On the present occasion, without being severe or unkind towards the Government, he pointed out their shortcomings and mistakes with regard to the Irish crisis. Speaking for himself and the party with whom he acted, he said: "We shall be prepared to give our calmest and best attention to any measures her Majesty's ministers may be prepared to bring forward as remedies for that dest.i.tution which unhappily exists.

But, sir, at the same time, we must be expected to deal frankly with the conduct of ministers, and whilst we are not disposed to say that ministers acted wrongly in declining to call Parliament together, not disposed to censure them for having overridden the law, and suspended the duties of the legislature itself, we are disposed to say, that the measures to which they have had recourse are not those to which we can altogether agree. It is impossible to view the operation of their poor-employment Act, and say that it has answered any good purpose." He held strongly the opinion, that the Government should have supplied food to the people, at least in remote districts, where it could not be otherwise procured. On this point he thus expressed his sentiments: "With respect to the supply of food to the people he, for one, cannot agree altogether in those principles of political economy which had been advanced by the Right Hon. gentleman, the Irish Secretary. This political economy of non-interference with the import and retail trade may be good in ordinary times, but in times such as the present, when a calamity unexampled in the history of the world has suddenly fallen upon Ireland--when there are no merchants or retailers in the whole of the West--when a country of which the population has been accustomed to live upon potatoes of their own growth, produced within a few yards of their own doors, is suddenly deprived of this, the only food of the people, it was not reasonable to suppose that, suddenly merchants and retailers would spring up to supply the extraordinary demands of the people for food. Therefore, I should say that this was a time when her Majesty's Ministers should have broken through these, the severe rules of political economy, and should, themselves, have found the means of providing the people of Ireland with food. The Right Hon. gentleman has said, that ministers have done wisely in adhering to this decision, but I think differently from them. When, every day, we hear of persons being starved to death, and when the Right Hon. gentleman himself admits that in many parts of the country the population has been decimated, I cannot say, that I think ministers have done all they might have done to avert the fatal consequences of this famine."[195] Lord George then read a letter from the Rev. Mr. Townsend, of Skibbereen, in which it was stated that in one month from the 1st of December to the 1st of January, there were one hundred and forty deaths in the workhouse of that town; the people having entered the workhouse, as they said, "that they might be able to die decently under a roof and be sure of a coffin." The Rev. Mr.

Townsend also mentioned that in the churchyard of his parish there were, at one time, fourteen funerals waiting, whilst the burial of a fifteenth corpse was being completed. In the next parish to his, there were nine funerals at once in the churchyard, and in two other adjoining ones, there were six together in each. To prove his a.s.sertion that the Government should have done more in supplying food to the people, his lordship said: "At this moment, we know that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 quarters of corn in stock on hand in the different ports of London, Liverpool and Glasgow. I want to know, then, what was to have prevented ministers from sending any part, or all of this food to the West of Ireland, to feed the starving people there?... It would have kept the retailers and forestallers in order, and prevented them from availing themselves of the Famine to obtain undue prices. What do we see with regard to Indian meal? Why Indian corn is, at this moment, selling in New York at three shillings, and at Liverpool and in Ireland at nine shillings per bushel."[196]

The Prime Minister spoke towards the close of the debate, and, with the apparent intention of answering a question put by Smith O'Brien, said he was quite willing to consider what had occurred in Ireland as "a national calamity," and that the national resources were fitly employed in endeavouring to meet it. The reason he gave for not having summoned Parliament in the Autumn, as O'Connell and many others had suggested, or rather demanded, was a striking proof of the evils of absenteeism. "We had to consider," he said, "that if we did meet Parliament, we should be acting against the opinion of the Irish Government, and against the opinion of almost every one I saw who was connected with Ireland, who thought that to take away at that time--at the commencement of the severe pressure--every person connected by property with Ireland, would inflict a very great injury upon that country, and that, consequently, Parliament should not be called together at that time."[197] If it could be looked upon as a great injury to Ireland to have the comparatively few proprietors who are resident there absent for even one short month, doing important business for Ireland, how terrible the evil must be of having the owners of 4,000,000 of her rental continually absent, and to have her representatives in both Houses of Parliament absent, not merely for a month, but for about seven months out of every twelve!

Sir Robert Peel supported the Premier's view, and in a sentence remarkable for the same sort of logic, said--"He believed nothing effectual ever would or ever could be done in Ireland, without the active, earnest, and unremitting cooperation of the landlords of that country." No doubt, it is the very truth; but how can landlords co-operate for the good of Ireland unless they reside in it, and try to understand something about it? Let them, therefore, reside, or reimburse the country for the evil and loss of their non-residence.

The address was, of course, voted without a division.

The First Minister made no unnecessary delay in bringing the state of Ireland formally before Parliament. On the 25th of January, six days after the opening of the session, he rose in a full house; expressed his sense of the great responsibility under which he laboured, and claimed its indulgence whilst he endeavoured to explain what had been already done to counteract the disastrous results of the potato blight in Ireland; to call their attention to those measures which the Government considered necessary to meet the existing emergency, and finally to submit to its consideration other measures, which, in the opinion of her Majesty's advisers, were calculated to improve the general condition of that country, and lay the foundation of its permanent improvement.

He proceeded to develope this somewhat pretentious programme.

Like other members of the Government, he commenced by quoting the reports of Poor Law Commissioners, to prove that even in what were regarded in Ireland as prosperous times, that country was on the verge of starvation. A pretty confession for an English Prime Minister, to be sure; yet such was his argument and his excuse. It may be imagined, he said, how those who, in the most prosperous years, were scarcely able to maintain themselves, and may be said to have been on the brink of famine, were utterly unable to resist the flood of calamity which poured in upon them with a crop so lamentably deficient; a calamity almost without a parallel, because acting upon a very large population, a population of eight millions of people,--in fact he should say it was like a famine of the 13th century acting upon a population of the 19th century. He then went into some figures to show how vast the operations of the Board of Works were. At present, he said, they had 11,587 officials, and half a million of people at work, at a weekly cost of between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds. He took up the objections against the Labour-rate Act, and the reproductive works authorized by the "Labouchere Letter." Very soon after the Labour-rate Act had come into operation there came, he said, on the part of the proprietors and country gentlemen of Ireland, a complaint that the works were useless, that they were not wanted, and that they were not reproductive. The First Minister, strange to say, did not attach any great value to these objections. "I think," he said, "the object being relief, and to combine relief with a certain amount of work, to show that habits of industry have not been entirely abandoned, that the productive nature of the work was a question of secondary importance. We spend in Ireland upwards of 1,000,000 a-year in poor-rates, and I do not believe that if enquiry were made it would be found that any productive works were the result." So much the worse; and it was one of the great objections to the Irish Poor-law system, that under it no provision was made for the profitable employment of able-bodied paupers.

To call the productiveness or non-productiveness of the labour of half a million of men a matter of secondary importance was, certainly, most cool a.s.surance on the part of a professed political economist, who must hold as a central dogma of that science that labour is the princ.i.p.al producer of capital. Everybody admitted that the crying want of Ireland was the want of capital; yet here is a Minister, holding in his hands her destinies during a life-and-death struggle for existence, and an ardent disciple of Adam Smith besides, expressing his belief that to expend in useless and even pernicious works the labour of half a million of men was a matter of secondary importance; and because it was, he did not attach any great weight to the objection! It was not, therefore, he said, such an objection that caused the Government to sanction a modification of the law as was announced in the letter of the Irish Chief Secretary, but because it was desirable to obtain the co-operation of the landed gentry of Ireland, and, if possible, to have the labour made reproductive, that the plan of reproductive works was sanctioned.

But this plan did not win the Irish landowners, and they began a new agitation for townland divisions. On this point he quoted the following pa.s.sage from a letter of Smith O'Brien, in which the Prime Minister said he fully concurred: "This plan had the merit of being intelligible, simple, and effective. It is undoubtedly better that the population should be so employed than in destroying good land, by making new lines of road which are wholly unnecessary, or in otherwise doing absolute mischief. It will, however, have the effect of still further pauperizing the labour of the country. To elucidate this result in the simplest manner, let us suppose that there are one hundred labourers in a district which belongs to two landlords, whose incomes are equal, and one of whom now employs fifty independent workmen, whilst the other does not employ a single labourer. It is at present necessary to provide for the maintenance of fifty unemployed labourers. These are now set to work upon the roads, and the expense of their maintenance falls upon the two proprietors in equal proportions. If the proposed plan be adopted, the improving landholder will naturally desire to exempt himself from taxation, without employing more hands than he at present requires. This he could do by dismissing all his present workmen. There would then be one hundred surplus labourers in the district. As these must be maintained at the expense of the two properties, each proprietor would eventually be compelled, in self-defence, to employ fifty. The landholder who originally employed this number will thus escape taxation, without engaging more labourers than he requires; but his labourers will cease to be independent workmen, chosen and paid by himself, and subject to his own control. They will be sent to him by the Relief Committee of the district; they will be placed under the superintendence of an expensive staff of stipendiaries appointed by the Board of Works, and will be paid out of the funds raised for the relief of the poor. A system not very dissimilar to this was acted upon in several parts of England, previous to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and was found to produce effects most demoralizing to the labouring population--paralyzing all the energies of independent labour and of individual enterprise, and in many respects operating most unjustly upon particular cla.s.ses of property."[198] Referring to the value of independent labour, the Premier said: "I admit the evils of the present system, but I think that still greater danger would have ensued if we had done that which I conceive to be one of the most pernicious acts which a Government can do, the depriving labourers of their independence, and thus permanently injuring the great and important cla.s.s to which those labourers belonged."

Through all the Famine time, there is nothing more remarkable than the manner in which the expounders of the views of Government, as well as many others, managed, when it suited them, to confound two things which should have been kept most jealously distinct,--(1.) What was best for the Famine crisis itself; (2.) What was best for the permanent improvement of the country. The confounding of these two questions led to conclusions of the most unwarrantable and deceptive kind. In the present instance, the Prime Minister himself seems to fall into the same mistake; or he goes into it with his eyes open, that he may be able to draw conclusions to suit his purpose. The proposition laid down by him is by no means unreasonable in itself; in fact it may be accepted as true: the fallacy is, that he keeps out of sight the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the case, and puts his proposition stripped of those circ.u.mstances, which should greatly modify it, when applied to Ireland, as she then was. Here is the Premier's argument: Smith O'Brien, in the extract quoted, said it was found to be a great evil in England, before the Poor-laws were revised, that employers, instead of choosing their own workmen, had them sent to them by the parish authorities. This produced two bad results: (1.) The men did not give a good day's work, and so the employer was injured; (2.) In practice it was found most demoralizing to the labourers themselves, destroying their independence, and paralyzing individual enterprise. Lord John a.s.sents most approvingly to all this, and then applying it to the existing state of Ireland, says, that by such a system still greater dangers would have ensued, and that one of the most pernicious acts which a Government could do would be to adopt it, for it would deprive labourers of their independence, and thus permanently injure the great and important cla.s.s to which they belonged. The fault in this reasoning is plain enough. If the system recommended for ensuring reproductive employment were to be a permanent arrangement, the evils which resulted from it in England would, in all likelihood, result from it here--for the time being; but the demoralization of labour would not, in the case, be greater than that already in existence on the Public Works, from which there was no reproduction; nor could it be near so great as what he was about to propose that the people should be fed without any labour, or labour test whatever. But nothing done to counteract the Famine should be regarded as a permanent arrangement, suitable to the ordinary wants of the country; on the contrary, the extraordinary means adopted to meet an extraordinary crisis should, from the nature of things, pa.s.s away with the crisis. The Famine once over in Ireland, labour would soon return to its ordinary channels. The simple question: "Was it better to employ the labour of the country on productive rather than on non-productive works during the Famine?" became involved and obscured by the enunciation of principles which applied only to an ordinary state of society. It is an amusing commentary on the line of argument adopted above by the First Minister, that he concludes this very speech with two distinct sets of measures for Ireland, one temporary, to meet the Famine, and another permanent.

The first great means he proposed for arresting the progress of the Famine was to establish soup-kitchens, and to give the people food without any labour test whatever. Was the townsland boundary system, which he had just condemned, half so demoralizing to the labourer as this? Certainly not; but this had the excuse, that there was now no time for anything but the immediate supply of food: exactly so; but when there was time, it was wasted in needless delay, and misused in barren discussions about questions of political economy, and the probable extent of the Famine, when its real extent was already well known.

The question of task work has been dealt with already. It was insisted on at a time when a very large number of the working poor were so exhausted with starvation that their physical capacity for work of any kind was almost completely gone. This fact is more than sufficiently proved by the evidence given at various coroners' inquests; still the Government persevered in insisting upon it, and Colonel Jones was amongst the most determined in doing so. In addressing the House on the present occasion, Lord John Russell said it was reported to the Government that the people on the Public Works were seen loitering about the roads; that the Government then introduced task work; that it met great opposition, but that the Lord Lieutenant remained firm, and had it carried out; an announcement which was received with "loud cheers." And no one would be inclined to find fault with task work, if the people had strength enough left to earn fair wages at it, but they had not--a fact which was, long before, evident to everybody but the Government; but even they saw it, or at least were compelled to acknowledge it at last, and then the Prime Minister is furnished with a convenient letter from the same Colonel Jones, so late, he tells the House, as the 19th of January, in which that gentleman informs the Premier that it would be better to give the people food for nothing than to give them any more money; and as for task work, the Colonel says of them, that "their strength was gone, and they had not power to exert themselves." This looks wonderfully like a letter written to order. The people, for many months, had been quite unequal to task work, but the Colonel could never see it until the line of policy resolved upon by his chief required him to clear his vision. "Sir," continued Lord John, "the opinion of the Government previously to the receipt of this letter was, that the system had become so vast in itself, while at the same time dest.i.tution and want of food had so greatly increased, that it was desirable, if possible, to attempt some temporary scheme by which, if possible, some of the evils which now met us might be mitigated, and with so vast an expenditure of money, some more effectual relief might be afforded." He then laid his new scheme before the House. 1. His first proposal was to form the country into districts, with a relief committee in each, empowered to receive subscriptions, levy rates, and receive donations from the Government. By these means the committees were to purchase food, and establish soup-kitchens in the different districts, where food was to be distributed without any labour test; the labourer, however, was to be allowed to work on his own plot of ground, for the next harvest. The Lord Lieutenant, he said, and the Board of Works were consulted about this, and approved of it. The system was to be carried out in the first instance by a preparatory measure, and then by a Bill to be proposed to Parliament. 2. As soon as circ.u.mstances would permit, by an easy transition, and without disturbing existing arrangements, no further presentments would be made, and no new public works undertaken.

The Lord Lieutenant was of opinion that if the roads which had been already begun should be left in an unfinished state, much evil would result, and he therefore suggested that those roads should be completed.

With respect to the money which had been already expended, and was being expended, on public works in Ireland, a claim had been made that it should not wholly be a burthen upon that country. Sir, said the Premier, pa.s.sing by the remote causes of these evils, and looking at the present resources of Ireland, I think it would not be right that the whole burthen should remain on Irish property. We shall, therefore, propose, on a future day, that an arrangement shall be made by Parliament, by which, in each succeeding year, when an instalment becomes due, the payment of one-half of that instalment shall suffice, and that the other half shall be remitted. We purpose, however, that the whole debt shall be kept up until the half of it be paid; thus providing that one-half of the whole charge shall fall upon the public. "I should state," he continued, "that with regard to the financial part of the question, the sums paid have been issued out of the Consolidated Fund, and that there is not contemplated any new issue of Exchequer bills. At the same time it must be considered, when I make this proposition to Parliament, that it is placing a very considerable burthen on the finances of the country; and that by placing that burthen upon its finances, I do feel myself disabled from making some proposition, which otherwise I should be called on to make, and which would involve further advances, but which I think it is now hardly fair to the people of this country to propose. When it is said--'Let the burthen be borne by the Consolidated Fund, or by the Imperial Treasury, and the Imperial Exchequer,' I must always recollect that these sums are not granted by Government or by Parliament without the most serious consideration, and that they are sums derived from the people of this country, by their payment of the taxes upon soap, sugar, tea, and coffee; from the surplus of which we are enabled to come to the a.s.sistance of Ireland. And, sir, while I feel that there is a disposition in this country to do everything that is liberal towards Ireland, in this respect, we must also consider the difficulties and privations to which the people of England will be subjected." These words of the First Minister were evidently spoken in a spirit of kindness and compa.s.sion; still it is hard for an Irishman to avoid feeling that they are degrading and offensive. Ireland is not regarded as part and parcel of the United Kingdom in any part of the quotation. He speaks of placing a serious burthen on the finances "of this country," meaning England only. Again: the sums advanced are, he feels, derived from the people "of this country," by their payment of taxes on the necessaries of life, from the surplus of which "we are"

enabled to come to the a.s.sistance of Ireland--of Ireland as an alien--a beggar,--who clings to us and looks to us in her misery, but who has no claim upon us, except her starvation and our great bounty;--to all which an advanced Irish nationalist might well reply--"Why not cut her adrift then, and let her shift for herself, as she has so often craved and demanded?" It would seem to be a.s.sumed by the Prime Minister, that Ireland never paid any taxes, never helped to fight any battles for England, never manned any ships, never did anything to ent.i.tle her people to be kept from dying of starvation, when the Famine-plague fell upon her. Lord John Russell keenly felt the placing of a considerable burthen upon the finances of England--"this country" was his word. All the unjust, and unnecessary, and extravagant wars ever waged by England, were burthens upon the finances of the country, just as much as the grants to relieve the Irish famine; and it is a question if a Minister ever felt it necessary to make so many apologies in asking the sinews of war from Parliament, as Lord John did, when asking the means of saving millions of the Queen's subjects from death by a famine, for the existence of which they could in nowise be held responsible.

Lord John next proposed a loan of 50,000 for one year, to enable landed proprietors to furnish seed for land. He had, he said, some misgivings about proposing this loan to Parliament, but still the Government thought it right to do so. The loan was not to be made to the small tenants themselves, which he considered would be disadvantageous, but to the proprietors, which course, he thought would be safe and beneficial.

His lordship then read an extract from an address signed by the Marquis of Sligo and Mr. George H. Moore, in which the people were earnestly entreated to pet.i.tion Parliament to take such steps as might ensure an immediate and sufficient supply of food. "I own, sir," he continued, "that I am astonished at this--I am astonished that, at a time like this, men of education--men who seek to relieve their countrymen from the difficulties which encompa.s.s them, should tell them to demand from Parliament, such steps as may be necessary for an immediate, a constant and a cheap supply of food. Why, sir, that is a task which it is impossible for us to accomplish--that is a task which they should tell their countrymen, that it is impossible for us to perform--that the visitation under which they are suffering has made it impossible for man; that is a task which is beyond all human power; all that we can possibly do being, in some mode, to alleviate the existing distress--to lighten somewhat the dreadful calamity which has befallen them. They should not imagine that it is in our power to turn scarcity, and even famine into plenty. But, sir, what surprises me all the more in reference to this announcement, is, that it so happens that at Castlebar, where the people of the surrounding country are requested to meet, there is a Union workhouse, which Union workhouse should contain 600 inmates, but which, at present, contains not more than 130--the doors being closed against other persons seeking, and in need of admittance, and the guardians saying, that it is impossible for them to levy the rates, in order to enable other persons in want of food to come to that workhouse for relief. Amongst those who have not paid the rates, who have not furnished the money by which famine might have been, to a certain degree, averted, are some who, we cannot but suppose, are fully able to pay what is due from them; and I cannot but see in this proposal a most unhappy tendency--an unhappy tendency, which I have more than once remarked--to recommend to others to do some vague and impossible thing--to call upon Government, or Parliament to do something, the practicability of which is not considered; to confer some benefit that may be visionary or impossible, whilst the plain practical duty of paying the rates, for the sustenance of starving men, women and children in the neighbourhood, is left neglected and unperformed" (hear, hear, from all sides).

The Premier next proceeded to lay before the House other measures which the Government considered would be of permanent as well as immediate benefit to Ireland.

These measures were three in number: 1. An improved drainage act; 2. An Act for the reclamation of waste lands, and, 3. A system of out-door relief, at the discretion of the guardians of the poor. Of the Drainage Act, which he was about to propose, he said, it would be founded on various previous Drainage Acts, but more especially upon the Act of the previous session, and the Treasury Minute of the 1st of December.

According to those Acts and that Minute, he proposed that, "When the improvement of an estate, by draining and other operations, by reclamation of waste lands--when a certain improvement in the value of the lands reclaimed will be produced, so that the legal heirs will not be prejudiced, can be made, a certain advance shall be made from the public funds." The usual rate of interest for such advances from the Treasury used to be five per cent.; by the act of 1846 the rate payable on such advances was reduced to three and a half per cent., with repayment in twenty-two years; making six and a half per cent, in each year, until the expiration of twenty-two years, when the advance, princ.i.p.al and interest, would be repaid. The Government now proposed to take the terms of the Drainage Act, and to extend them to various improvements, not confining the operation of the measure to drainage alone; and to do away with those technical difficulties which arose under the former Act, and which rendered it difficult for tenants for life to borrow money. This Act only applied to private estates, but the Government now intended to consolidate former Drainage Acts of a more general nature, so that the drainage of districts could be carried out by the majority of the proprietors of any district agreeing upon the drainage of such district, the minority being bound by their acts. 2. A further announcement, and a very striking one, was made by the Premier; namely, that the Government intended to propose that the State should undertake the reclamation of a portion of the waste lands in Ireland; he alluded to various reports of Commissions upon the reclamation of waste lands, and to the works of eminent writers, who were of opinion that, in many cases, the reclamation of such waste lands would provide profitable employment for large ma.s.ses of the people; and would render land, now valueless, of great value, as it would be made capable of cultivation.

He quoted Sir Robert Kane (then Dr. Kane), who said, "in his most interesting work on the Industrial Resources of Ireland," that the estimate, that 4,600,000 acres of waste land might be reclaimed, and be reduced to the condition of cultivated land, was by no means an exaggerated estimate. "We propose, then, sir," continued Lord John, "to devote a million to this purpose, and that the land reclaimed should, if the proprietor is willing to part with it, be purchased from him, but that if he does not improve it in the method just before stated, by loan, or by his own resources, and _if he refuses to sell it, there should be a compulsory power in the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to take and improve all such waste lands, so situated, as are below a certain annual value, namely two and sixpence per acre_." This announcement was received by the House with an approving "hear, hear."

He went on to say, that lands of this nature were only to be improved and reclaimed so far as general operations were concerned, such as the making of roads through them, general drainage, and necessary buildings; that the lands so reclaimed should be divided into lots, which should not be below nor above a certain amount. Without binding himself to any precise amount, he would say, by way of ill.u.s.tration, not less than twenty-five, and not more than fifty acres; that when so reclaimed and subdivided, the lands might be either sold or let to poor tenants for a certain number of years, with the determination, that the portion thus let should likewise be sold at the end of the term. "I own, sir," said his lordship, "that I expect a very great advantage gradually to arise from the adoption of this plan. I expect that great numbers of persons, who have hitherto been driven to despair, and many of them to crime, by the great demand for land in Ireland, will earn a competent livelihood from the produce of these lands. I think, likewise, with regard to those who will purchase the lands, so reclaimed and improved, _that there will arise a cla.s.s of small proprietors, who will form a very valuable cla.s.s in the social fabric of Ireland_." He further expressed his opinion, that he did not think that small holdings were the great evil of Ireland, he rather thought that the particular way in which land was held has often been the source of insecurity and want of cultivation.

From the state of the County Armagh he came to the conclusion, he said, that small holdings were not the great evil of Ireland. In that county the greatest subdivisions had taken place, and yet it was one of the most flourishing, and best cultivated counties in Ireland. Compare it, or in fact compare the whole province of Ulster with the province of Munster, and many more small holdings will be found in the former than in the latter.

The whole of the Premier's plan for the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland, was received with marked approbation by the House.[199]

Having at some length explained the principle on which out-door relief was to be given, he adverted to the subject of emigration, about which, he said, the most extravagant expectations had been excited and entertained in Ireland, but which never could be realized. Emigration did not, he said, consist in landing a certain number of people on the sh.o.r.es of America; they should be looked to when they would arrive there; and his opinion was, that the best mode of promoting emigration was by affording aid on the arrival of the emigrants at the place of their destination. This had been extensively done, the previous year, at Montreal, and he should be sorry to give any other stimulus to emigration. He then went on to prove that Ireland was not overpeopled; and as it was not, emigration, in his opinion, had not become a necessity for that country. He again quoted Sir Robert Kane, who had stated that there were resources in Ireland, which, if properly developed, would enable that country to maintain seventeen millions of inhabitants. He, Lord John, did not go so far as that, but he did not think the population of the country was excessive, and there was nothing in the country to prevent the highest improvement. Other countries, he said, had been quite as badly off as Ireland was now a.s.serted to be, which were, at present, in the highest state of prosperity.

To ill.u.s.trate this he would read a description of a country, in which the following evils were said to exist. The writer, an old English author, says:--"The husbandman be thrust out of their own, or else either by covin or fraud, or violent oppression, they be put beside it; or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all. By one means, therefore, or by the other, either by hook or by crook, they must needs depart away, poor wretched souls--men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers with their young babes, and the whole household, small in substance, and much in number, as husbandry requires many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale--yet, being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of nought; and, when they have wandered about till that be spent, what can they then do but steal, and then justly pardy be hanged, or else go about a-begging? Sir," said the Prime Minister, "is this vivid description unlike the story of an ejectment in Ireland?--of an ejectment, where the wretched families turned out are obliged to sell their little all, and forced in a few days either to steal or go about begging? And yet the description which I have read is a description of England, by Sir Thomas More--a description of the England of his day.[200] And lest it should be considered highly coloured or fanciful, let it be recollected that there are accounts written by magistrates, in which it is stated that in every county there were 200 or 300 persons who lived by thieving--who went about, say the contemporary chroniclers, by sixty at a time--who carried away sheep and cattle, so that no husbandman was secure, and against whom no defence was sufficient: that in one reign alone no less than 70,000 of these marauders were hanged. Sir, this is an account of what England once was--the England in which we now see so much security. And in the absence of the outrages described as formerly existing, I think we have a proof that their existence was owing to the state of society at the time, and not the nature of the country. I will now read you a description of another country, at a different period, at the end of the seventeenth century:--"There are at this day (besides a great number of families very meanly provided for by the Church boxes, with others, who, with living upon bad food, fall into various diseases) 200,000 people begging from door to door. These are not only no ways advantageous, but a very grievous burthen to so poor a country; and though the number of them be, perhaps, double what was formerly, by reason of the very great distress, yet in all times there have been about 100,000 of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or submission, either to the laws of the land, or even those of G.o.d and nature--fathers incestuously accompanying their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the brother with the sister. No magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way any of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some sort of provision, to, perhaps, forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people, who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together." Such, sir, is a description of industrious, sober, civilized, religious Scotland. Such is a description of what that country was at the end of the seventeenth century. Dare we, sir, say that the particular laws--that the particular state of a country--has no influence; that a country which has been in a perfectly disordered condition--where robberies have been frequent--where industry has been interrupted--may not yet become orderly, civilized, and industrious? We should be unworthy of being members of this British Parliament were we to give way to despair." To prove that the miseries of Ireland could be neither attributed to the soil or the people, the Premier said, at the close of his singularly able and lucid speech: "There is no doubt of the fertility of the land; that fertility has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers of all nations. There is no doubt either, I must say, of the strength and industry of its inhabitants. The man who is loitering idly by the mountain-side, in Tipperary or in Derry, whose potato plot has furnished him merely with occupation for a few days in the year, whose wages and whose pig have enabled him to pay his rent, and eke out afterwards a miserable subsistence--that man, I say, may have a brother in Liverpool, or Glasgow, or London, who, by the sweat of his brow, from morning to night, is competing with the strongest and steadiest labourer of England and Scotland, and is earning wages equal to any of them. I do not, sir, therefore, think that either the fertility of the soil of Ireland, or the strength and industry of its inhabitants, is at fault."[201]

During the delivery of the speech here summarized, Lord John Russell was frequently interrupted with an amount of applause very unusual in the House of Commons, and at its close he is reported to have sat down amidst vociferous and continued cheering.

And no wonder, for never did an English Minister touch the grievances of Ireland with a bolder or truer hand than he did on this occasion; but amongst his proposals, that which was of the greatest value, the reclamation of the waste lands, was abandoned,--in fact, was never brought forward. May we not well ask, Why were not the permanent measures, now proposed, thought of long before, and pa.s.sed into laws?

Statesmen appear to have understood them well enough: why then did it require a famine to have them brought officially before Parliament?

Because it seemed to be the rule with successive Governments to do nothing for Ireland until they were forced to it by agitation, rebellion, famine, or some abnormal state of things, which could not be pa.s.sed over or resisted. Here we have a plan sketched for the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland, which, if in operation for twenty years before, would have gone far to make the famine transient and partial, instead of general and overwhelming, as it was. Still the plan was very welcome when it came, as it offered the prospect of great future prosperity for this country; everybody felt this, and hence it was hailed with the most unusual marks of approbation by the House of Commons. But, the turning point of the famine crisis over, one of the most valuable measures ever proposed for the benefit of Ireland was shamefully abandoned. One is inclined to suspect that the Government never really intended to carry the measure,--it was too good--too much to the advantage of the people--too great a boon to this country. Mr.

Labouchere, as Irish Secretary, had charge of it; he never seemed in any hurry to bring it forward, and after a notice or two, followed by postponements, it ceased to be heard of. Some excuse for the Government may, perhaps, be found in the fact that the Tories would, in all probability, have opposed it, and Lord John was only Minister on sufferance; he could be displaced at any moment Sir Robert Peel pleased, who expressed himself against the reclamation scheme in his speech during the debate on the Premier's "group of measures" for Ireland, but with this exception, Sir Robert gave his full support to those proposals. He said it was better for Ireland to have self-reliance than be looking to Dublin Castle; and he advised Irish proprietors to act independently of the Castle. "With respect to the proposition for the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland," said Sir Robert, "I shall only so far allude to that proposition as to express a hope that the n.o.ble lord will pause before he expends so much of the public money on those lands." The n.o.ble lord did pause, and every Minister since his time has continued to pause; so that the four and a-half millions of waste acres are still unreclaimed, and the public money which, as was proved, might be profitably expended on them, has been saved for other purposes, such as foreign wars, which, since the Irish Famine, have cost as much as would reclaim them twenty times over, although no one, I should think, would call those wars "reproductive employment;"--nay, the money spent on the Crimean war alone, undertaken to keep the Grand Turk on his throne, would reclaim them twenty times over.

The Government having evidently abandoned their promise of bringing forward a measure for the reclamation of Irish waste lands, Mr. Poulett Scrope, (an English member!) on the 22nd of June, moved the following resolution in the House of Commons: "That the waste lands of Ireland offer an available resource for the immediate employment and future maintenance of a part of her population, now apparently redundant; and that it is expedient to apply them to this great national object, making equitable compensation to their present proprietors." The hon. member proceeded to speak in support of his resolution, but, says _Hansard_, he had not proceeded far when the House was counted out. (!) With respect to this "count out," the following appeared in the pages of a Dublin morning journal, from its London correspondent: "In my private note of last night I enclosed you a copy of a resolution, which Mr. Poulett Scrope had given notice of his intention to move, with respect to the waste lands of Ireland. When I closed my letter, the hon. gentleman's motion stood next on the paper to that which the Commons were engaged in discussing, but although the House was tolerably full, about a hundred members being present, I expressed my conviction that a 'count out'

would abruptly terminate that which ought to be a debate of the greatest possible consequence, The despatch which conveyed my antic.i.p.ations of another deliberate insult being offered to the Irish nation, was not forwarded from the House of Commons more than an hour before the 'count'

took place. There can be little doubt that the Government were privy to this disreputable manoeuvre, as a debate upon the subject of reclaiming Irish waste lands, particularly after their broken promises, would, just at the present moment, and on the eve of a general election, be exceedingly inconvenient and distasteful.... When the 'count out' took place, there were only thirty members present, including _thirteen_ Irish members! Where were the virtuous and conscientious men in whom the const.i.tuencies of Ireland had reposed confidence? Why did they not attend in numbers sufficient to prevent Mr. Poulett Scrope's laudable effort on behalf of Ireland from being burked?"[202]

During the debate which followed Lord John Russell's speech on the state of Ireland, Mr. Bernal Osborne accused Parliament of shutting its eyes, for a series of years, to the fact that there were two millions and a-half of dest.i.tute poor in Ireland, until honorable members had been suddenly awakened to the circ.u.mstance by the potato famine. They were now endeavouring, by convulsive efforts of legislation, to correct evils which had been in a great measure incurred through the neglect and carelessness of that House. "Hear, hear," responded the neglectful and careless House. He thought the Minister would have exercised a much wiser discretion if, in addition to the soup-shops, he had turned his serious attention to the tilling of the land for the next harvest. He combated Lord John Russell's argument drawn from the prosperity of the small farmers of Armagh, inasmuch as that county had manufactures as well as agriculture, and expressed his opinion that small farms were at the root of the evils of Ireland.[203]

Mr. Smith O'Brien (then enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion that the loss in potatoes, considering the value of offal for pigs and the rise in prices, was from twenty to thirty millions of money. He believed the Government could have made such exertion as would have prevented the death of ONE INDIVIDUAL in Ireland from starvation. He thought the legitimate course was to have called Parliament together at the earliest possible moment, (cheers,) and nothing surprised him more than the statement of the Chief Secretary, that the Irish people had not a general desire for Parliament to meet in November.

Sir Robert Inglis, referring to the a.s.sertion that absentees did not discharge the duties of proprietors, said he found it stated in a speech of the late Bishop Jebb, in 1822, when there was a similar calamity, that a large subscription was raised in a western county by the resident proprietors, but the absentees, who received out of it a rental of 83,000 a-year, only subscribed 83.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Right Hon. Charles Wood), defended the absentees, but was severe upon local proprietors. He held that the occupiers of land, and not the absentee landlords, were mainly chargeable with the neglect of their duties to the people in this trying crisis. Many of the absentees, he said, were most exemplary in their conduct in alleviating the present distress, amongst whom he named Colonel Wyndham, who was furnishing daily rations to ten thousand people.

I wonder how many more such absentees could the Chancellor of the Exchequer name.