Part 585

In 1843, Mr. Sharman Crawford "succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the 'occupation of land in Ireland.' This Commission, known from its chairman, Lord Devon, as the Devon Commission, marks a great epoch in the Irish land question. The Commissioners, in their Report, brought out strongly the facts that great misery existed in Ireland, and that the cause of the misery was the system of land tenure. The following extract from the Report indicates the general nature of its conclusions: 'A reference to the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. Our personal experience and observations during our enquiry have afforded us a melancholy confirmation of these statements, and we cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain.' And the remedy for the evil is to be found, continues the Report, in 'an increased and improved cultivation of the soil,' to be gained by securing for the tenant' fair remuneration for the outlay of his capital and labour.' No sooner was this Report issued than great numbers of petitions were presented to the House of Lords, and supported by Lord Devon, praying for legislative reform of the land evils; and in June, 1845, a bill was introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Stanley, on behalf of the government of Sir Robert Peel, for 'the purpose of providing compensation to tenants in Ireland, in certain cases, on being dispossessed of their holdings, for such improvements as they may have made during their tenancy.' By the selfish opposition of the Irish landlords this bill was thrown out. Two days after its rejection in the House of Lords Mr. Sharman Crawford brought into the House of Commons a Tenant Right Bill, and met with as little success. In 1846 a government bill was introduced, bearing a strong resemblance to that of Lord Stanley; but the ministry was overthrown, and the bill was dropped. A Liberal ministry under Lord John Russell came into power in July, 1846, and Irish hopes again began to rise. In 1847 the indefatigable Mr. Crawford brought in a bill, whose purpose was to extend the Ulster custom to the whole of Ireland; it was thrown out. A well-meant but in the end unsuccessful attempt to relieve the burdens of embarrassed landlords without redressing the grievances of rack-rented tenants, was made in 1848 by the measure well known as the Encumbered Estates Act. This Act had for its object to restore capital to the land; but with capital it brought in a class of proprietors who lacked the virtues as well as the vices of their predecessors, and were even more oppressive to the tenantry."

_E. Thursfield, England and Ireland, chapter 10._

ALSO IN: _H. L. Jephson, Notes on Irish Questions, chapter 15._

_D. B. King, The Irish Question, chapter 9._

IRELAND: A. D. 1844. The Maynooth Grant.

Towards the close of the session of Parliament in 1844, Sir Robert Peel undertook a measure "dealing with higher education in Ireland. Means were to be found, in some way, for the education of the upper classes of the Irish, and for the more efficient education of candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Some provision already existed for the education of the Irish people. Trinity College, with its considerable endowments, afforded opportunities to wealthy Irish. The National Board, which Stanley had instituted, had under its control 3,153 schools, and 395,000 scholars. But Trinity College retained most of its advantages for the benefit of its Protestant students, and the 395,000 scholars, whom the National Board was educating, did not, after all, include one person in every twenty alive in Ireland. The Roman Catholic, since 1793, had been allowed to graduate at Trinity; but he could hold neither scholarship nor professorship. … Some steps had, indeed, been taken for the education of the Roman Catholic priesthood. In 1795, Fitzwilliam had proposed, and his successor, Camden, had approved, the appropriation of an annual sum of money to a college formed at Maynooth for the education of Roman Catholic priests. The Irish parliament had readily sanctioned the scheme; the payment of the grant had been continued, after the Union, by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and, though the sums voted had been reduced to £9,000 a year in 1808, this amount had been thenceforward regularly allotted to Maynooth. In some respects the grant was actually disadvantageous to the college; it was too small to maintain the institution; it was large enough to discourage voluntary contributions. The surroundings of the college were squalid; its professors were wretchedly paid; it was even impossible to assign to each of the 440 students a separate room; it was dubbed by Macaulay, in a memorable speech, a 'miserable Dotheboys' Hall,' and it was Peel's deliberate opinion that the absolute withdrawal of the grant would be better than the continuance of the niggardly allowance." The Government "asked Parliament to vote a sum of £30,000 to improve the buildings at Maynooth; it proposed that the Board of Works should in future be responsible for keeping them in repair; it suggested that the salaries of professors should be more than doubled; that the position of the students should be improved; that the annual grant should be raised from about £9,000 to about £26,000, and that this sum, instead of being subject to the approval of the legislature once a year, should be placed on the Consolidated Fund. Then arose a series of debates which have no parallel in the history of the British Parliament. … 'The Orangeman raises his howl,' said Macaulay, 'and Exeter Hall sets up its bray, and Mr. MacNeile is horrified to think that a still larger grant is intended for the priests of Baal at the table of Jezebel, and the Protestant operatives of Dublin call for the impeachment of Ministers in exceedingly bad English.' {1790} A few years later a man, who was both a Christian and a gentleman, declared the Irish famine to be a dispensation of Providence in return for the Maynooth grant. … Night after night it rained petitions; 298 petitions against the bill were presented on the 3rd of April, when Peel explained his scheme; 148 on the 8th; 254 on the 9th; 552 on the 10th; 2,262 on the 11th, when the bill was put down for a second reading; 662 on the 14th; 581 on the 15th; 420 on the 16th; 335 on the 17th; 371 on the 18th. The petitions hardly allowed a doubt to remain as to the opinion of the country. Peel, indeed, was again exposed to the full force of the strongest power which any British Minister can encounter. The Mussulman, driven to his last defence, raises the standard of the Prophet, and proclaims a holy war. But the Englishman, if Protestantism be in danger, shouts, 'No Popery!' and creates equal enthusiasm. … Yet, vast as was the storm which the Minister had provoked, the issues which he had directly raised were of the smallest proportions. Hardly anyone ventured to propose that the original vote to Maynooth should be withdrawn. A grant, indeed, which had been sanctioned by George III., which had been fixed by Perceval, which had been voted in an unreformed Parliament, almost without debate, and which had been continued for fifty years, could not be withdrawn. Peel's opponents, therefore, were compelled to argue that there was no harm in sacrificing £9,000 a year to Baal, but that a sacrifice of £26,000 was full of harm. … They debated the second reading of the bill for six nights, the third reading for three nights, and they seized other opportunities for protracting the discussion. Even the Lords forgot their customary habits and sat up till a late hour on three successive evenings to discuss an amendment for inquiring into the class of books used at Maynooth. But this unusual display of zeal proved useless. A majority in both Houses steadily supported the Minister, and zealous Protestants and old-fashioned Tories were unable to defeat a scheme which was proposed by Peel and supported by Russell."

_S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 19 (volume 4)._

ALSO IN; _H. Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace, book 6, chapter 8._

IRELAND: A. D. 1845-1847. The Famine.

"In 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,175,124 souls. By 1845 it had probably reached to nearly nine millions. … To anyone looking beneath the surface the condition of the country was painfully precarious. Nine millions of a population living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful hand-to-mouth contentment, totally dependent on the hazards of one crop, destitute of manufacturing industries, and utterly without reserve or resource to fall back upon in time of reverse; what did all this mean but a state of things critical and alarming in the extreme? Yet no one seemed conscious of danger. The potato crop had been abundant for four or five years, and respite from dearth and distress was comparative happiness and prosperity. Moreover, the temperance movement [of Father Mathew] had come to make the 'good times' still better. Everything looked bright. No one concerned himself to discover how slender and treacherous was the foundation for this general hopefulness and confidence. Yet signs of the coming storm had been given. Partial famine caused by failing harvests had indeed been intermittent in Ireland, and, quite recently, warnings that ought not to have been mistaken or neglected had given notice that the esculent which formed the sole dependence of the peasant millions was subject to some mysterious blight. In 1844 it was stricken in America, but in Ireland the yield was healthy and plentiful as ever. The harvest of 1845 promised to be the richest gathered for many years. Suddenly, in one short month, in one week it might be said, the withering breath of a simoom seemed to sweep the land, blasting all in its path. I myself saw whole tracts of potato growth changed in one night from smiling luxuriance to a shrivelled and blackened waste. A shout of alarm arose. But the buoyant nature of the Celtic peasant did not yet give way. The crop was so profuse that it was expected the healthy portion would reach an average result. Winter revealed the alarming fact that the tubers had rotted in pit and store-house. Nevertheless the farmers, like hapless men who double their stakes to recover losses, made only the more strenuous exertions to till a larger breadth in 1846. Although already feeling the pinch of sore distress, if not actual famine, they worked as if for dear life; they begged and borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once more. The pawn-offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone at the village dance or the christening feast; the banks and local money-lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted, backs were bared. Anything, anything to tide over the interval to the harvest of 'Forty-six.' O God, it is a dreadful thought that all this effort was but more surely leading them to ruin! It was this harvest of Forty-six that sealed their doom. Not partially but completely, utterly, hopelessly, it perished. As in the previous year, all promised brightly up to the close of July. Then, suddenly, in a night, whole areas were blighted; and this time, alas! no portion of the crop escaped. A cry of agony and despair went up all over the land. The last desperate stake for life had been played, and all was lost. The doomed people realised but too well what was before them. Last year's premonitory sufferings had exhausted them, and now?—they must die! My native district figures largely in the gloomy record of that dreadful time. I saw the horrible phantasmagoria—would God it were but that!—pass before my eyes. Blank stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people, contrasting remarkably with the fierce energy put forth a year before. It was no uncommon sight to see the cottier and his little family seated on the garden fence gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could arouse them. You spoke; they answered not. You tried to cheer them; they shook their heads. I never saw so sudden and so terrible a transformation. When first in the autumn of 1845 the partial blight appeared, wise voices were raised in warning to the Government that a frightful catastrophe was at hand; yet even then began that fatal circumlocution and inaptness which it maddens one to think of. It would be utter injustice to deny that the Government made exertions which judged by ordinary emergencies would be prompt and considerable. {1791} But judged by the awful magnitude of the evil then at hand or actually befallen, they were fatally tardy and inadequate. When at length the executive did hurry, the blunders of precipitancy outdid the disasters of excessive deliberation. … In October 1845 the Irish Mansion House Relief Committee implored the Government to call Parliament together and throw open the ports. The Government refused. Again and again the terrible urgency of the case, the magnitude of the disaster at hand, was pressed on the executive. It was the obstinate refusal of Lord John Russell to listen to these remonstrances and entreaties, and the sad verification subsequently of these apprehensions, that implanted in the Irish mind the bitter memories which still occasionally find vent in passionate accusation of 'England.' Not but the Government had many and weighty arguments in behalf of the course they took. … The situation bristled with difficulties. … At first the establishment of public soup-kitchens under local relief committees, subsidised by Government, was relied upon to arrest the famine. I doubt if the world ever saw so huge a demoralisation, so great a degradation, visited upon a once high-spirited and sensitive people. All over the country large iron boilers were set up, in which what was called 'soup' was concocted; later on Indian-meal stirabout was boiled. Around these boilers on the roadside there daily moaned and shrieked and fought and scuffled crowds of gaunt, cadaverous creatures that once had been men and women made in the image of God. The feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent and orderly. … I frequently stood and watched the scene till tears blinded me and I almost choked with grief and passion. … The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has been, I believe, generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. … On many of them no blame too heavy could possibly fall. A large number were permanent absentees; their ranks were swelled by several who early fled the post of duty at home—cowardly and selfish deserters of a brave and faithful people. Of those who remained, some may have grown callous; it is impossible to contest authentic instances of brutal heartlessness here and there. But … the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. … In the autumn of 1846 relief works were set on foot, the Government having received parliamentary authority to grant baronial loans for such undertakings. There might have been found many ways of applying these funds in reproductive employment, but the modes decided on were draining and road-making. … The result was in every sense deplorable failure. The wretched people were by this time too wasted and emaciated to work. The endeavour to do so under an inclement winter sky only hastened death. They tottered at day-break to the roll-call; vainly tried to wheel the barrow or ply the pick, but fainted away on the 'cutting,' or lay down on the wayside to rise no more. As for the roads on which so much money was wasted, and on which so many lives were sacrificed, hardly any of them were finished. Miles of grass-grown earth works throughout the country now mark their course and commemorate for posterity one of the gigantic blunders of the famine time. The first remarkable sign of the havoc which death was making was the decline, and disappearance of funerals. … Soon, alas! neither coffin nor shroud could be supplied. Daily in the street and on the footway some poor creature lay down as if to sleep, and presently was stiff and stark. In our district it was a common occurrence to find, on opening the front door in early morning, leaning against it, the corpse of some victim who in the night-time had 'rested' in its shelter. We raised a public subscription, and employed two men with horse and cart to go around each day and gather up the dead. One by one they were taken to a great pit at Ardnabrahair Abbey and dropped through the hinged bottom of a 'trap-coffin' into a common grave below. In the remoter rural districts even this rude sepulture was impossible. In the field and by the ditchside the victims lay as they fell, till some charitable hand was found to cover them with the adjacent soil. It was the fever which supervened on the famine that wrought the greatest slaughter and spread the greatest terror. … To come within the reach of this contagion was certain death. Whole families perished unvisited and unassisted. By levelling above their corpses the sheeling in which they died, the neighbours gave them a grave."

_A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, chapter 6._

"In July 1847 as many as three millions of persons were actually receiving separate rations. A loan of £8,000,000 was contracted by the Government, expressly to supply such wants, and every step was taken by two successive administrations, Sir Robert Peel's and Lord John Russell's, to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Nor was private benevolence lacking. The Society of Friends, always ready in acts of charity and love, was foremost in the good work. A British Association was formed for the relief of Ireland, including Jones Lloyd (Lord Overstone), Thomas Baring, and Baron Rothschild. A Queen's letter was issued. … Subscriptions were received from almost every quarter of the world. The Queen's letter alone produced £171,533. The British Association collected £263,000; the Society of Friends £43,000; and £168,000 more were entrusted to the Dublin Society of Friends. The Sultan of Turkey sent £1,000. The Queen gave £2,000, and £500 more to the British Ladies' Clothing Fund. Prince Albert gave £500. The National Club collected £17,930. America sent two ships of war, the 'Jamestown' and the 'Macedonian,' full of provisions; and the Irish residents in the United States sent upwards of £200,000 to their relatives, to allow them to emigrate."

_L. Levi, History of British Commerce, part 4, chapter 4._

"By the end of 1847 cheap supplies of food began to be brought into the country by the ordinary operation of the laws of supply and demand, at far cheaper rates, owing to an abundant harvest abroad, than if the Government had tried to constitute itself the sole distributor. The potato harvest of 1847, if not bountiful, was at least comparatively good. … By March, 1848, the third and last period of the famine may be said to have terminated. But, though the direct period of distress was over, the economic problems which remained for solution were of overwhelming magnitude. … A million and a half of the people had disappeared. The land was devastated with fever and the diseases which dog the steps of famine. … The waters of the great deep were indeed going down, but the land was seen to be without form and void."

_Lord E. Fitzmaurice and J. R. Thursfield, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 4, chapter 4._

{1792}

"The famine and plague of 1846-47 was accompanied, and succeeded, by a wholesale clearance of congested districts and by cruel evictions. The new landlords [who had acquired property under the Encumbered Estates Act], bent on consolidating their property, turned out their tenants by regiments, and in the autumn of 1847 enormous numbers were deported. It is absolutely necessary to bear this strictly in mind, if we would judge of the intense hatred which prevails amongst the Irish in America to Great Britain. The children of many of those who were exiled then have raised themselves to positions of affluence and prosperity in the United States. But they have often heard from their fathers, and some of them may perhaps recall, the circumstances under which they were driven from their old homes in Ireland. … But there is a further and awful memory connected with that time. The people who had been suffering from fever carried the plague with them on board, and the vessels sometimes became floating charnel-houses. During the year 1847, out of 106,000 emigrants who crossed the Atlantic for Canada and New Brunswick, 6,100 perished on the ocean, 4,100 immediately on landing, 5,200 subsequently in the hospitals, and 1,900 in the towns to which they repaired. … Undoubtedly, historical circumstances have … had much to do with the political hatred to Great Britain; but its newly acquired intensity is owing to the still fresh remembrances of what took place after the famine, and to the fact that the wholesale clearances of Irish estates were, to say the least, not discouraged in the writings and speeches of English lawgivers, economists and statesmen."

_Sir R. Blennerhassett, Ireland ("Reign of Queen Victoria," edited by T. H. Ward, volume 1, pages 563-565)._

"The deaths from fever in the year 1846 were 17,145, in the following year 57,000, to which 27,000 by dysentery must be added."

_J. F. Bright, History of England, period 4, page 164._

"Between the years 1847 and 1851 (both inclusive) the almost incredible number of over one million Irish—men, women, and children—were conveyed in emigrant ships to America—a whole population. In 1847, 215,444 emigrated; in 1849, 218,842, and in 1851, 249,721."

_H. L. Jephson, Notes on Irish Questions, page 298._

"The population of Ireland by March 30, 1851, at the same ratio of increase as held in England and Wales, would have been 9,018,799—it was 6,552,385. It was the calculation of the Census Commissioners that the deficit, independently of the emigration, represented by the mortality in the five famine years, was 985,366."

_T. P. O'Connor, The Parnell Movement, page 125._

IRELAND: A. D. 1846. Defeat of Peel's Coercion Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1846.