The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 Part 2

[10] Short View of the State of Ireland. Haliday Pamphlets, Vol. 74.

[11] An answer to a paper called "A Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland." _Same Vol._

[12] "Answer to Memorial," signed A.B., March 25, 1728.

[13] "Letter to the Duke of Newcastle."

[14] Vol. I., p. 166.

[15] "The famine of 1741 was not regarded with any active interest in England or in any foreign country, and the subject is scarcely alluded to in the literature of the day. No measures were adopted, either by the Executive or the Legislature, for the purpose of relieving the distress caused by this famine."--_Irish Crisis_, by Sir C.E. Trevelyan, Bart., p. 13.

[16] Probably the origin of the potato pit, as we now have it, in Ireland was the following advice given in _Pue's Occurrences_ of Nov.

29th, 1740:--

"Method of securing potatoes from the severest frost.

"Dig up your potatoes in the beginning of December, or sooner, and, in proportion to your quant.i.ty of potatoes, dig a large hole about ten foot deep in such place as your garden or near your house where the ground is sandy or dry, and not subject to water; then put your potatoes into the hole, with all their dirt about them, to within three feet of the surface of the ground. If you have sand near you, throw some of it among the potatoes and on top of them. When you have thus lodged your potatoes, then fill up the rest of the hole with the earth first thrown out, and, with some stuff, raise upon the hole a large heap of earth in the form of a large hayc.o.c.k, which you may cover with some litter or heath. By the covering of earth of five or six feet deep, your potatoes will be secured against the severest frosts, which are not known to enter over two feet into the ground. The same pit will serve you year after year, and when the frosts are over you may take out your potatoes."

[17] "O'Halloran on the Air."

[18] _Exshaw's Magazine_.

[19] _Pue's Occurrences_, March 11, 1740.

[20] Sir John Rogerson's Quay, of course.

[21] _Pue's Occurrences_, Jan 1, 1740.

[22] This storm visited other parts of the coast. The news from Dundalk under the same date is, that the _Jane_ and _Andrew_ of Nantz was wrecked there, "the weather continuing very stormy, with a very great frost." Accounts from Nenagh under date of Jan. 5th say:--"The Shannon is frozen over, and a hurling match has taken place upon it; and Mr.

Parker had a sheep roast whole on the ice, with which he regaled the company who had a.s.sembled to witness the hurling match." Under January 29th we have a ludicrous accident recorded, namely, "that the Drogheda postboy's horse fell at Santry, near Dublin, and broke his neck. One of the postboy's legs being caught under the horse _got so frozen that he could not pull it out!_" At length some gentlemen who were pa.s.sing released him.--_Ibid._

[23] I find by the newspapers of the time that Primate Boulter acted with much generosity, especially in the second year of the famine, feeding many thousands at the workhouse at his own expense. He also appealed to his friends to subscribe for the same purpose. The Right Honourable William Conolly, then living at Leixlip Castle, distributed 20 worth of meal in Leixlip, and ordered his steward to attend to the wants of the people there during the frost. Lords Mountjoy and Tullamore, Sir Thomas Prendergast, and other influential persons commenced a general collection in Dublin, but it was only for the starving artizans of Dublin. The co-heirs of Lord Ranelagh ordered 110 to be distributed in Roscommon; Lady Betty Brownlow, then abroad, sent home 440 for her tenants in the North; Chief Justice Singleton gave twenty tons of meal to be sold in Drogheda at one shilling and a penny a stone; the Rt. Hon. Wm. Graham did the same--it was then selling from one shilling and sixpence to one shilling and eightpence a stone; Lord Blundell gave 50 to his tenants; Dean Swift gave 10 to the weavers of the Liberty.

An obelisk 140 feet in height, supported upon open arches, and surrounded by a grove of full-grown trees, stands on a hill near Maynooth, and can be seen to advantage both from the Midland and the Great Southern Railway. It is usually known as "Lady Conolly's Monument." From its being built without any apparent utility, illnatured people sometimes call it "Lady Conolly's Folly." It is said to have been designed by Castelli (Anglicised "Castells"), the architect of Carton, Castletown House, and Leinster House, Kildare Street, now the Royal Dublin Society House. It bears on the keystones of its three princ.i.p.al arches the suggestive date, "1740." It was erected to give employment to the starving people in that year, not by Lady Louisa Conolly, as is generally supposed, but by a Mrs. Conolly, as the following information, kindly supplied by the Marquis of Kildare, will show:--

"I find in my notes," says the Marquis, "that the obelisk was built by Mrs. Conolly, widow of the Rt. Hon. Wm. Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. She had Castletown for her life, and died in 1752, in her ninetieth year. Mrs. Delany, in her Autobiography, vol. iii, p. 158, mentions that her table was open to her friends of all ranks, and her purse to the poor.... She dined at three o'clock, and generally had two tables of eight or ten people each.... She was clever at business.... A plain and vulgar woman in her manners, but had very valuable qualities.

1740 was a year of great scarcity, and farmers were ploughing their wheat in May to sow summer barley. In March Mrs. Conolly's sister, Mrs.

Jones, wrote to another sister, Mrs. Bound, that Mrs. Conolly was building an obelisk opposite a vista at the back of Castletown House, and that it would cost 300 or 400 at least, and she wondered how she could afford it. The nephew of the Speaker, also the Rt. Hon. Wm.

Conolly, lived at Leixlip Castle till he succeeded to Castletown in 1752. He married Lady Anne Wentworth, daughter of an Earl of Strafford.

His son was the Right Hon. Thos. Conolly, who married Lady Louisa Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond. From her Castletown pa.s.sed to the father of the present Mr. Conolly, after the death of Lady Louisa."

Mrs. Jones must have made a very erroneous guess at the expense of building the obelisk, even at that time; now, instead of three or four hundred pounds, double as many thousands would scarcely build it.

Although erected by Mrs. Conolly, it stands on the Duke of Leinster's property. The site is the finest in the neighbourhood, and she obtained it from the Earl of Kildare, by giving him a portion of the Castletown estate instead. Lately those two pieces of ground have been re-exchanged, and when they came to be measured, they were found to be of exactly the same extent.

[24] The coming of the thaw was indicated by some accidents on the ice.

Under date 10th Feb. it was reported from Derry that the ice gave way there, and several persons were drowned. In Dublin, at the same date, a man was also drowned who attempted to cross the river on the ice near the Old Bridge. But a boy was more fortunate. He, too, was on the ice on the Liffey, and the part on which he stood becoming detached was driven by the current through Ormond and Ess.e.x Bridges; he kept his position, however, on the floating ice till he was taken off in a boat.

[25] The following story is told in _Pue's Occurrences_, in May, 1740:--A broguemaker had been committed to Dungannon jail for some offence, but managed to make his escape. He was pursued and searched for in vain. The jailer gave him up as lost when, one day, after being at large during five weeks, he presented himself at the jail to the astonishment of the jailer, who questioned him as to the cause of his return. He replied, that he had travelled to Dublin, and had gone through a great part of Munster, but finding nowhere such good quarters as he had in Dungannon jail, he came back.

[26] On the pa.s.sing of this bill Sir Charles E. Trevelyan remarks with quiet severity:--"There is no mention of grants or loans; but an Act was pa.s.sed by the Irish Parliament, 1741 (15 George II, cap. 8), for the more effectual securing the payment of rents and preventing frauds by tenants."--_Irish Crisis_, p. 13.

[27] Matthew O'Connor's _History of the Irish Catholics_, p. 222.

[28] The Judges held the a.s.sizes in Tuam instead of Galway this year, on account of the fever in the latter place.--_Dutton's Galway_.

[29] _The Groans of Ireland, in a letter to an M.P._, 1741. The estimated population in 1731 was 2,010,221. Rutty says it was computed, perhaps, with some exaggeration, that one-fifth of the people died of famine and pestilence. This agrees with the higher estimate above.

[30] _Philo-Ierne_, London, May 20, 1755. Reprinted in Cork with the author's name, Richard Bocklesly, Esq., M.D. It is hardly necessary to say that the "people" referred to in the above extract mean merely the English colony in Ireland.

[31] _Ibid._, pp. 5 & 6--He seems to use the word "dairy" here in a sense somewhat different from its present application.

[32] The Bristol barrel contained 22 stones--one stone more than the Irish barrel.

[33] A disease called the _Curl_ appeared in the potato in Lancashire in 1764. It was in that Shire the potato was first planted in England; and we are told the Curl appeared in those districts of it in which it was first planted. The nature of the disease is indicated by its name. The stalk became discoloured and stunted almost from the beginning of its growth; it changed its natural healthy green for a sickly greenish brown, the leaves literally curling like those of that species of ornamental holly known as the "screw-leaved." The plant continued to grow, and even to produce tubers, but they never attained any considerable size, and from their inferior quality could not be used for food. The Curl appeared in Ireland about the year 1770, where it caused much loss, as we find a large quant.i.ty of grain was imported for food about that period. Isolated cases of the Curl were not unfrequent in this country long after it ceased to cause alarm to the farmer. I have seen many such cases, especially where potatoes were planted on lea. On examining the _set_ beneath a plant affected with Curl, I invariably found it had not rotted away as was usual with those sets that produced healthy plants. There were as many remedies propounded for the Curl as for the blight of 1846-7 with a like result--none of them were of any use.

[34] Report of the Committee for the "Relief of the Distressed Districts in Ireland," appointed at a general meeting, held at the City of London Tavern, on the 7th May, 1822.

[35] _Impartial Review_. Miliken, Dublin, 1822.

[36] Report of Parliamentary Committee.

[37] Amongst the means resorted to at this time to raise funds for the starving Irish was a ball at the Opera House in London, at which the King was present, and which realized the large sum of 6,000. This piece of information the Irish Census Commissioners for 1851, curiously enough, insert in that column of their Report set apart for "_Contemporaneous Epidemics_."

[38] The chief part of this 60,000 is still under the management of the "Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor of Ireland."

[39] The following extract from a letter of Mr. Secretary Legge, dated London, May 4, 1740, and addressed to Dublin Castle, expresses very _naively_ an English official's feelings about the terrible frost and famine of that year:--"I hope the weather, which seems mending at last, will be of service to Ireland, _and comfort our Treasury, which, I am afraid, has been greatly chilled with the long frost and embargo."--Records, Birmingham Tower, Chief Sec.'s Department, Box 10._

[40] Speech, p. 26; quoted by Plowden, vol. i., p. 253. Note.

[41] Answer to Address of Commons, 2nd July, 1698.

[42] _Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland_, App., p. 149.

[43] _Groans of Ireland_, p. 20.

[44] Mr. Prior's Pamphlet was dedicated to the Viceroy, Lord Carteret, and both Houses of Parliament, which proves how certain he was of his facts and statements.

[45] See Note A in Appendix, for a fuller discussion of the question of Absenteeism.

[46] "The present miserable state of Ireland." How like the Ireland of the other day!

[47] _Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland_, App., p. 40.

[48] _Impartial Review_, p. 3.

[49] _History of the Penal Laws_.

[50] 13 & 14 Geo. II, cap. 35.