The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 Part 7

"JOHN CHAYTOR,

"1st April, 1846."

The same correspondent, in a letter from Templemore, informs his readers that a certain n.o.ble proprietor was just after paying a visit to his estate in that locality, and he had no sooner taken his departure, than notices were served on his tenantry to pay the November rent. The tenants asked time, saying they had only a few black potatoes left. The bailiff's reply was characteristic, and no doubt truthful:--"What the d---- do we care about you or your black potatoes?--it was not _us_ that made them black--you will get two days to pay the rent, and if you don't you know the consequence."[97]

When the relief depots, the local committees, and the public works got into gear, much was done during the summer months to alleviate the terrible distress; but as soon as the Government advances and subscriptions to the committees began to be exhausted, the cry for food was again heard from many parts of the country.[98]

At this time there were one hundred and twenty-three workhouses open, and great as the people's aversion was to them the inmates went on steadily increasing. In the month of December, 1845, the total number in those workhouses was 41,118; in March, 1846, 50,717; and on the 13th of June, the highest point attained during the year was arrived at, there being, on that day, 51,302 persons receiving in-door relief. On the 29th of August, owing, of course, to the harvest having come in, the number had fallen to 43,655. In ordinary years, when there was neither blight, nor fear of blight, it was deemed good husbandry to procure foreign seed potatoes, and if this could not be done, farmers at least tried to procure "strange" seed, grown at a distance from their own farms. A larger and in every way a better crop was the usual result of this practice. After the potato blight of 1845, the procuring of sound, and if possible of foreign seed, for planting in Ireland was of the utmost importance, and indeed Sir Robert Peel had included, in his new tariff, the admission of foreign potatoes free, in the hope of securing good seed for the planting of 1846; but as the Corn and Customs' Bill did not become law until the end of June, this provision could be of no avail for that year.

The Peel Government was defeated on the Irish Coercion Act on the 25th of June, and the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel announced their resignation on the 29th in the Upper and Lower Houses respectively. The Duke contented himself with the simple announcement; but Sir Robert made a speech, reviewing and defending his conduct whilst minister. Of Ireland he said little, except that he had the full intention of serving her in every way, by dealing with the land and other questions, telling us patronizingly, that she was ent.i.tled to a "complete equality of munic.i.p.al and political rights." But this was only the old stereotyped liberality of a beaten minister--beaten on an Irish Coercion Act--speaking by antic.i.p.ation from the Opposition benches, and endeavouring to plant thorns in the path of his successful rival. The sentiment, such as it was, was received with much cheers, and _some murmurs_. Strange enough the _murmurs_ are not to be found in Hansard, although reported in the newspapers of the day.

The Liberal party being for a long time the free trade party, and Sir Robert Peel and his friends being only neophytes, he knew, even though they did carry free trade, that they could not claim the merit of doing so, only having taken it up, when it had attained such a position before the country as to make it all but irresistible. Neither did he wish the incoming Russell-Whig party to get credit for it; he therefore turned aside, in a rather unusual manner, and gave the merit of it to Mr.

Cobden. "I said before, and I said truly," Sir Robert begins his eulogy on that distinguished man, "that in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them. I must say with reference to honorable gentlemen opposite, as I say with reference to ourselves, that neither of us is the party which is justly ent.i.tled to the credit of them. There has been a combination of parties generally opposed to each other, and that combination and the influence of Government, have led to their success. But the name which ought to be a.s.sociated with the success of those measures is not the name of the n.o.ble lord, the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it mine. The name which ought to be, and will be a.s.sociated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired, because it was unaffected and unadorned: it is the name of Richard Cobden." Sir Robert's peroration to this speech was an elaborate one, and consisted in praises of himself. Here are his closing words: "I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who from less honorable motives clamours for protection, because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be, that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will, in the abodes of those whose lot is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice."[99]

Although Sir Robert Peel lived four years after this defeat, he never returned to the treasury benches. In opposition, however, he was almost as powerful as when minister; giving to Lord John Russell's Government an independent and most valuable support, without which it could not have continued to exist. On the 28th of June, 1850, he spoke in the House on the celebrated Don Pacifico's claims against the Greek Government, and refused his support to Mr. Roebuck's motion approving of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy. He rode out next day--SS. Peter and Paul's day--his horse shied and became restive, whilst he was saluting a lady on Const.i.tution Hill; he was thrown heavily; on being taken up, partly insensible, he was conveyed to his house, where, having suffered much pain, he died three days afterwards.

Sir Robert Peel's father, a very wealthy cotton spinner, and also a Member of Parliament, had early made up his mind that his son should become a public man. As soon as he was of age he was returned by the borough of Cashel to the House of Commons, where he soon began to display those qualities for which his family was distinguished--prudence, industry, discreet reserve, with a remarkable ability for utilizing the brains of others. His father, who was made a baronet by Mr. Perceval, became a millionaire by cotton spinning, yet in a generation remarkable for invention, neither he nor one belonging to him originated any of the improvements for preparing or spinning cotton; when one was made, however, its utility soon became apparent to the practical good sense of the Peels; they secured it, and thus founded a house and built up a princely fortune to sustain it; while, too often, the man whose original genius discovered the improvement, lived and died in comparative poverty.[100] Sir Robert Peel carried this second-rate, but most valuable quality, into statesmanship. He was not the originator of any great political amelioration; he was invariably found, at first, in opposition to every measure of the kind; but he did not refuse to examine it; on the contrary, he studied it carefully, weighed the reasons put forward in support of it, watched with nervous anxiety the tide of public opinion, and when that could no longer be resisted with safety, he took the question up and sustained it by the arguments he had been combating before--remodelled, to be sure, occasionally, but still the same; threw the weight of his high character into the scale, and thus not only contributed to its success, but secured it. Such is the history of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Hence a bitter political adversary of his, who has drawn his public character with much candour and ability, and not in an ungenerous spirit either, says of him, that "his life was one of perpetual education." Elsewhere he puts pretty much the same idea in a severer and more sarcastic form, when he a.s.serts that Sir Robert Peel's mind "was one vast appropriating clause."[101]

Some of his eulogists a.s.sert that he had made up his mind on the great measures he carried through Parliament long before he had given them his support, but that he was awaiting a favourable opportunity to declare his views, whilst he was in the meantime educating his party. If this be intended as a compliment, as it seems to be, it is a very doubtful one.

a.s.suming it to be true, he must for many years of his life have been a mere hypocrite. The opinion that he himself was gradually educated into these views would seem to be the truer as it is also the kinder one; besides his own declarations coincide with it. There was what is called a Bullion Committee in 1811, and another in 1819, Sir Robert (then Mr.) Peel being chairman of the latter. The former was called Mr. Hooner's Committee. In 1819, speaking of the inconvertible paper money, he recanted his views of 1811, as his opinions with regard to the question had undergone "a material change." "He had," he said, "voted against Mr.

Hooner's resolutions in 1811, he would now vote for them if they were brought forward." In his Memoirs, speaking of the Corn Laws, "he had,"

he says, "adopted at an early period of his public life, without, he fears, much serious reflection, the opinions generally prevalent of the justice and necessity of protection to domestic agriculture, but _the progress of discussion_ had made a material change in the opinions of many persons" [himself of course amongst the number] "with regard to the policy of protection to domestic agriculture." It is true, then, that this eminent statesman was at school all his life, a diligent student, willing and anxious to learn, but always conducting his studies from a Conservative standpoint. It is no discredit to him--far from it. And although the tide of progress carried him to the extent of breaking up his own party, in doing so he was acting, he considered, for the interests of England. Nothing can be more absurd and wicked in a statesman than to allow himself to be impounded within the narrow iron-bound circle of party, and to persevere in sustaining the views and principles of that party against justice, conscience and fact.

Great and varied as were the powers of Sir Robert Peel as a public speaker, he was not an orator in the strictest and highest sense of that word. True oratory is the offspring of genius, and he, gifted though he was, had not the sacred fire of genius in his soul. In the style which he adopted, and which was probably the best suited to his natural powers, he was all but perfect: lucid, argumentation, frank, at least in seeming, bland, persuasive; always singularly respectful not only to the House, but to the humblest member of it; his speeches partook more of the lecture and less of oratorical display than those of most other public men with anything like his reputation; but they were admirably suited to an educated and deliberative a.s.sembly like the House of Commons--and hence he influenced--almost ruled it, as no other man did before or since. Knowing this, he never felt so happy or so much at home as in that scene of his labours and his triumphs. His gesture was inferior: he used it but seldom, and when he did it added neither to the grace nor effectiveness of his delivery. He sometimes appeared to be at a loss to know what to do with his arms: at one time he would thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest; at another he would let his arms fall into a sort of swinging motion at his sides, where he allowed, rather than used them, to toss back his coatskirts in a confused, undignified manner.

He never spoke on important questions without careful preparation, as was always evident from the facts and arguments of which his speeches chiefly consisted, as well as from their careful arrangement. His voice was fine, and he had the skill, rare enough in public speakers, of modulating it with excellent effect.

The happiest portions of his speeches were those in which he endeavoured, by artful appeals to the good sense and patriotism of his hearers, to win them over to his views; and the frequent success that attended such efforts is their highest praise. He seldom attempted an ambitious flight, and when he did his best friends felt it was not his true line. He dealt but little in figurative language, except when argument failed him; still he has left some specimens of much beauty in this style. In his great speech introducing Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation in 1829, he told Parliament it had but two courses to follow--to advance or to recede; to advance by conceding the Catholic claims, or to recede by reimposing those portions of the penal laws already repealed. Dwelling on the impossibility and insanity of the latter course, he said: "We cannot replace the Roman Catholics in the position in which we found them, when the system of relaxation and indulgence began. We have given them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed; but it will not, like the genius in the fable, return within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to enable us to cast it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it."

Here is another specimen from his speech on the Reform Bill of 1832. He opposed that Bill with all his energy, as is well known. Lord Durham, a very advanced reformer for his time, and son-in-law to Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, was known to have influenced that n.o.bleman in retaining the most liberal clauses of the bill. For his years he was a very juvenile looking man, which gave point to Sir Robert Peel's words when he said so happily: "It would appear as if the reins of the State had been confided to some youthful and inexperienced hands; and who, left without any guiding principle, or any controlling sense of duty, were rushing on with headlong violence which wiser men could neither moderate nor restrain.... They should have said to any one of these persons, whose ambition made him press for an employment so fraught with danger to himself and injury to others,

' ---- non est tua tuta voluntas.

Magna petis, Phaeton, et quae nec viribus istis Munera conveniant, nec tam puerilibus annis!'

They should have given him the salutary caution that the fiery steeds which he aspired to guide required the hand of restraint and not the voice of incitement--

'Sponte sua properant; labor est inhibere voluntas; Parce, puer, stimulis, ac fortius uteri loris.'

If the caution had not been given, or if it had been disregarded, let them hope, at least, that the example of their suffering might be a warning to others, and that another lesson to the folly and rashness of mankind might be read by the light of their conflagration."

The manner in which he dealt with the potato blight, and consequent Irish Famine, is indefensible. His policy from first to last was a policy of delay--delay in a case in which delay was ruin. He went on by slow and almost imperceptible degrees preparing his colleagues for his altered views on the Corn duties; talking and writing all the time pathetically, about the deep apprehensions he entertained of an impending famine in Ireland, while his whole heart was set on quite another object. To aid this masked policy of his, there was Commission after Commission--the Scientific Commission, the Castle Commission, the Police inquiry; and these went on a.n.a.lyzing, printing, and distributing hundreds weight of query sheets, and making reports, long after it was proved, beyond all doubt, that half the food of the Irish people had been irretrievably lost, the money value of which was estimated at from eight to ten millions of pounds sterling. So early as the end of October, 1845, Dr. Playfair, his own scientific investigator, expressed to him his opinion that fully one half of the potatoes in Ireland were perfectly unfit for human food; he said he had made a careful tour of the potato shops of Dublin, and had found that those potatoes picked as sound had nineteen bad for fourteen good! Sir Robert Peel knew this in October, 1845; admitted its truth more than once during the session of Parliament that followed, and yet the bill which he persisted in regarding as the only panacea for such a national calamity, did not become law until the 25th of June, 1846, eight months afterwards; but of course four millions of foodless Irish must battle with starvation until the Premier had matured and carried his measure for securing cheap bread for the artizans of England; and further, those same famishing millions had, day after day, to submit to be insulted by his false and hollow a.s.sertion, that all this was done for them. Nor can it be urged in his favour, that the delay in repealing the Corn Laws was the fault of his opponents, not his own; for no one knew better than he, a shrewd experienced party leader, that every available weapon of Parliamentary warfare would be used, as they were used, against his bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws, in order to strike it down by sheer defeat if possible, but if not, at least to maim and lop it of its best provisions.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Mr. Culhoun.

[89] During the debate in the House of Lords on the Address, in January, 1846, Lord Brougham stated his views about the repeal of the Corn Laws; the reasons why they should be repealed, and the effects of that repeal.

These views must have seemed to many at the time strange enough, if not eccentric, but they have turned out to be singularly correct. He said:--"It was my opinion that an alteration in the commercial policy of this country with respect to corn, as well as to other commodities, was highly expedient; I will not say solely, but princ.i.p.ally, and beyond all comparison most chiefly wanted, not for the purpose of lowering the price of corn and food (which I never expected it could do, which I urged it could not do, which I endeavoured to show it had no tendency to do, any more than the Corn Laws had a tendency to keep up the prices of food); but because I thought it would tend to remodel the whole of our commercial system, and cause it to a.s.sume such a shape and position with respect to Foreign Powers, as to prevent them from excluding our manufactures, by opening our ports to their corn, and such as would give us a reasonable prospect that their restrictions would be removed, and our manufactures allowed to penetrate into these foreign markets." And further on in the same speech, "I shortly restate," he said, "the ground on which I rested for the repeal or the modification of the Corn Law system. I did not, because I could not, hold to the people of this country--I could not honestly hold out to them, that it would make bread cheap.... I did not argue that the Corn Law was the cause of famine, that it was the cause of disease, that it was the cause of crime, that it was the cause of mortality, in this country."--_(Hansard)_.

[90] Smith O'Brien occupied far more of the time and attention of the House of Commons, during the Session, by his refusal to serve on a railway Committee than by his speeches. This refusal gave rise to some delicate questions of const.i.tutional law, and consigned the hon.

gentleman to prison for twenty-five days. _See note_ B, APPENDIX.

[91] Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, 5th edition, revised, p. 158.

[92] Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli.

[93] Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs, part 3, page 310. Any one can see how little poor famine-stricken Ireland was before Sir Robert's mind, when he penned the above lines.

[94] The Irish Crisis, by Sir Charles E. Trevelyan.

[95] This observation was, in all probability, levelled at the _Dublin Evening Mail_; a newspaper which Sir Lucius would be sure to read, being one of the organs of his party, and which had, sometime before, with a heartless attempt at humour, called the blight "the potato mirage."

[96] The _Freeman's Journal_.

[97] _Ibid._ This correspondent tells an anecdote of a peasant whose heroic generosity contrasts strongly with the conduct of the above n.o.ble proprietors. He (the correspondent) stood by a pit of potatoes whilst the owner, a small farmer, was turning them for the purpose of picking out and rejecting the bad ones. The man informed him it was the _fourth picking_ within a fortnight. At the first picking, he said the pit contained about sixty barrels, but they were now reduced to about _ten_.

Whilst this conversation was going on, a beggar came up and asked an alms for G.o.d's sake. The farmer told his wife to give the poor woman some of the potatoes, adding--"Mary, give her no bad ones, G.o.d is good, and I may get work to support us."

"I am warranted in saying," he concludes, "that by the 10th of May there will not be a single potato for twenty miles around Clonmel."

[98] There were twenty princ.i.p.al Government Food Depots established in various parts of Ireland in 1846, at which the following quant.i.ties were issued:--

Tons. cwts. qrs. lbs.

Indian Corn 30 00 00 00 Indian Corn Meal 11,593 11 00 19 Oat Meal 528 00 3 24 Biscuit 6 3 00 7 ------ -- -- -- Total 12,157 15 0 22

R.J. ROUTH, Commissary General.

--_Famine Reports. Commissariat Series. Vol. 1, p. 2._

The number of Relief Committees in this, the first year of famine, was 600. In 1847, they numbered nearly 2,000.

[99] "On Monday at five o'clock, the public notification of the resignation of the Ministry was made by Sir Robert Peel to a crowded house, and in a remarkable speech.... It included an unparliamentary eulogium on Mr. Cobden, whom it mentioned, to the surprise of the House, by name, and it terminated with a panegyric of himself, elaborate, but rather clumsily expressed."--_Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli._

"On the conclusion of this speech cheers burst forth on all sides ...

The House adjourned to the 3rd of July. Sir Robert Peel went out resting on the arm of his friend, Sir George Clerk, the member for Stamford. A great crowd thronged the approaches, on seeing him all took off their hats, opened their ranks to let him pa.s.s, and accompanied him in silence to the door of his house."--_Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, by M. Guizot_

[100] See Baines' History of the Cotton Manufacture.

[101] Benjamin D'Israeli.

CHAPTER V.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL Prime Minister--He confers important offices on some Irish Catholics--His address to the electors of London--Its vagueness--Addresses of some of the other new Ministers--The Irish difficulty greater than ever--Young and Old Ireland--The _Times_ on O'Connell and English rule in Ireland--Overtures of the Whig Government--O'Connell listens to them--The eleven measures--Views of the advanced Repealers--Lord Miltown's letter to O'Connell--Dissensions in the Repeal a.s.sociation--The "Peace Resolutions"--O'Connell's letters--He censures the _Nation_ newspaper--Debate in the Repeal a.s.sociation--Thomas Francis Meagher's "Sword Speech"--The Young Ireland party leave Conciliation Hall in a body--Description of the scene (_note_)--Reflections--Sir Robert Peel's Speech after his resignation--Lord John Russell's speech at Glasgow--His speech on the Irish Coercion Bill--His speech after becoming Prime Minister--The Potato Blight re-appears--Accounts from the Provinces--Father Mathew's letter--Value of the Potato Crop of 1846--Various remedies, theories and speculations--State of the weather--Mr. Cooper's observations at Markree Castle--Lord Monteagle's motion in the House of Lords for employing of the people--Profitable employment the right thing--The Marquis of Lansdowne replies--It is hard to relieve a poor country like Ireland--Lord Devon's opinion--The Premier's statement about relief--The wonderful cargo of Indian meal--Sir R. Peel's fallacies--Bill for Baronial Sessions--Cessation of Government Works--The Mallow Relief Committee--Beds of stone! high rents on the poor--The Social Condition of the Hottentot as compared with that of Mick Sullivan--Mr. Gibson's views--Mr. Tuke's account of Erris (_note_)--Close of the Session of Parliament.