Part 12

It is a familiar fact that the population of 1845 and 1847 was excessive. Whether the present population may not be defective in regard of productive power is a question not without importance, but not immediately relevant. What we are now dealing with is the material welfare of the existing population; and it is clear that five millions can live where eight cannot. But are the five millions better off in some proportion to the price the country has paid for the decrease in population? And is there a real advance in the condition of the people, not a mere rise out of beggary and starvation?

In attempting an answer to a question of this nature, one looks naturally to the rate of wages first. But this test is an imperfect one: partly because local variations are still considerable; partly because money payments in many places and among large classes are more or less supplemented by subsistence drawn directly from the land. Besides, a mere increase in money wages may mean little or nothing, unless the increased wages possess increased purchasing power, and there be at the same time an upward tendency in the standard of living. Putting aside the wages question accordingly (to be discussed hereafter), let us try to find other indications of the extent and nature of the changes in the people's condition since the famine. A test of some value, though not absolutely conclusive by itself, will be afforded by changes in the area of farms. It is notorious that one of the causes which most contributed to bring about the famine and its miseries was the small size of holdings. Now the census returns show that from 1851, very shortly after the famine, there has been a steady decrease in the number of farms under fifteen acres, and a steady increase in the number of farms between fifteen and thirty acres, as well as in farms exceeding thirty acres in area. Up to 1861 the number of holdings not exceeding fifteen acres had declined fifty-five per cent., while those above fifteen acres had increased 133 per cent. The number of farms between fifteen and thirty acres was in 1861 double what it had been in 1841, and the farms above thirty acres amounted in 1861 to 157,833, against 48,625, which had been their number twenty years before. Between 1861 and 1871 farms under fifteen acres decreased by 12,548, and farms above thirty acres increased by 1470. According to the latest returns (1875) the farms not exceeding one acre in area were 51,459; those of one to five acres were 69,098; those of five to fifteen acres, 166,959; fifteen to thirty acres, 137,669; the total above thirty acres being 160,298 holdings.

This distribution of the land seems to indicate a considerable improvement compared with the state of things prevailing before the famine. Unfortunately the increase in the size of holdings has not been attended by a corresponding decrease in the number held on an insecure tenure. Tenancy at will continues to be the rule, and permanency the exception, in our land tenure. I have made an attempt to estimate roughly the classes of landholders. The "Domesday" list of proprietors of land gives the number of owners of one acre and under ten as 6892, holding 28,968 acres, or an average of a little over four acres each: between ten acres and fifty there are 7746 owners, holding 195,525 acres, or an average a little over twenty-six acres: between fifty acres and a hundred there are 3479 owners, holding 250,147 acres, or an average of just under seventy-two acres. These make up a body of small proprietors, owning from one to a hundred acres, numbering 18,117. _Eason's Almanac_ for 1879, which has been published while I write, estimates the number of "proprietors in fee" of agricultural holdings at 20,217. The same authority gives the number of leaseholders in perpetuity as 10,298; for terms of years exceeding thirty-one as 13,712; for thirty-one years and under, 47,623 (many of which may be short leases); and of leases for lives, or lives and years alternative, as 63,759. The number of tenancies at will is 526,628, or 77.2 per cent, of the whole number of holdings. These statistics were collected in 1870, and they have doubtless been in some degree modified by the working of the Church Act and the Land Act. I have omitted from my extracts from the Domesday list the proprietors of under one acre. These are given in _Thom's Directory_ as 36,144, holding 9065 acres; but their holdings do not affect the present question, as they are mostly non-agricultural. The estimate in _Eason's Almanac_ purports to relate wholly to agricultural holdings. Domesday includes all classes.

Another index of the condition of a people may be found in the way they are housed. Mean and comfortless dwellings imply not only a low standard of comfort, but often a low morality. Let us see how this matter has stood in Ireland. The Census Commissioners of 1841 divided the dwellings of the people into four classes. The fourth, or lowest, comprised all mud cabins having only one room. Of this class there were in all Ireland, according to the 1841 census, 491,278. In the last census, 1871, the number had fallen to 155,675. The third-class dwellings were also built of mud, but contained three or four rooms, with windows; the latter convenience being by no means universally present in the one-roomed cabin of the fourth class. Of the third class the census of 1841 enumerated 533,297; by 1871 this number had fallen to 357,126. The second class are described as good farmhouses, and in towns, houses having from five to nine rooms. Of this class in 1841 there were 264,184; and in 1871 the number had increased to 387,660. The first class of houses increased during the same period from 40,080 to 60,919. Let us see now in what way the population has been distributed in the different classes of houses. In 1841 the number of families occupying first-class houses was 31,333. In 1871 the number had risen to 49,693. During the same period the number of families in second-class houses rose from 241,664 to 357,752. On the other hand, the families in third-class houses decreased from 574,386 to 432,774; and those in the fourth-class, or one-roomed cabins, from 625,356 to 227,379. By a curious coincidence, the _proportion_ of families to houses was the same in 1841 and in 1871--one hundred and eleven families to one hundred houses. In this way the very great shifting in the _classes_ is all the more clearly proved to indicate a real rise in the condition of the people.

In connection with this part of my subject, I may now proceed to discuss the wages question and the condition of the labouring population. Of the actual number of this class I can find no accurate return. But we have already seen that the number of families inhabiting the lowest class of houses (and these may be assumed all to belong to the lowest class of labourers) was about 227,400. As the census of 1871 gave the average number of a family as 5.07, or 507 persons to 100 families, we may estimate the number of this class at 2274 multiplied by 507, or 1,152,918. Those who inhabit a better class of house may be safely assumed on the whole to be better off in other respects. Now the money wages of the ordinary agricultural labourer are 1_s._ 6_d._ a day in the most remote and backward places. This is the minimum, and in harvest time the labourers earn 2_s._ 6_d._ a day. A great many labourers have small holdings; but as these are not rent-free they do not count directly as an element in wages. The way in which they do count is that the people are not so overworked but that the labourer and his family can attend to the holding, grow their own potatoes, feed the pig, &c.--thereby eking out the actual money payment.

The diet of these labourers (I am still referring to the most backward and remote parts of Ireland) is tea and bread for breakfast, potatoes and a little bacon for dinner, and oatmeal porridge for supper. The people have quite risen out of the "potatoes and point" stage of feeding. Of course, on Fridays and other fast-days, Roman Catholics abstain from flesh meat; but there are few places so remote from the sea that fresh herrings are not to be had, and at any rate salt ones are always available. On the other hand, on Sundays and holidays many of the labouring families contrive to have butcher's meat; and I am told that in certain districts there is one day in the year when every family among the peasantry makes an invariable rule to eat a dinner of fresh meat, some animal (often a fowl) being killed on purpose to furnish this meal. This is probably some relic of a sacrificial observance.

The condition of the people being such as I have described, one would naturally expect not to find pauperism very prevalent. As a matter of fact it is not. The average daily number of paupers in the workhouses throughout 1876 was 43,235, and of recipients of out-door relief 31,600: bringing up the total to 74,835. The average of persons in receipt of relief was 140.6 in 10,000 of population. This daily average represents the current subsisting mass of pauperism, and is in a considerable measure made up of the old, infirm, and sick. Of able-bodied paupers, the males were only 1697 in the daily average of workhouse inmates, and the females were 4130. There were 10,134 healthy children under fifteen in the workhouses, and the other inmates were either sick in hospital or permanently unable to work. These figures seem to be the very reverse of alarming. Permanent pauperism is not a very virulent social disorder when only two able-bodied persons to every five hundred of the population are in receipt of in-door relief, and when the whole permanent pauper population barely exceeds fourteen in a thousand. But though permanent pauperism may be well in hand, casual pauperism may be at a high pitch. Let us see how this matter has stood. I shall first take the statistics of 1876, and then try to modify my conclusions by such later figures as may be available. In 1876 the population of England and Wales stood at 24,244,000, and the total of paupers in receipt of relief, in-door and out-door, on the 1st of January of that year, was 752,887; Scotland, with a population of 3,527,000, had a total pauper population on the 1st of January, 1876, of 66,733. In Ireland, on the same date, the total population being 5,321,600, the paupers amounted to 77,913. In other words, at a rough estimate, on the 1st of January, 1876, about one person in every thirty-three in England and Wales was in receipt of relief as a pauper; in Scotland, about one in every fifty-three; while in Ireland the proportion was only one in sixty-eight. A similar proportion appears in the incidence of the poor-rate. In 1876 England and Wales paid at the rate of 6_s._ 0-3/4_d._ per head of population; Scotland 5_s_. 0-1/2_d._; Ireland only 3_s._ 4_d._

Of course these figures must undergo modification in view of the altered circumstances of the present time. The statistics of 1876 are not an accurate guide to the facts of 1879. During the last three years there has been considerable depression of trade; and it may very well be that the returns of this year will indicate an ebb in the tide of prosperity. But, unless I am very much mistaken, after making all allowances, it will probably be found that Ireland is the part of the United Kingdom least affected by the present prolonged commercial crisis.[22]

The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the considerable class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but perhaps not less intelligent class--that of English travellers in Ireland--will promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are cooked; they will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been beset with beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from pauperism? Surely the true state of the case is that the people keep out of the workhouses merely in order to live on public charity in another form?" It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national scandal. There is, however, something to be said in mitigation of judgment, though perhaps not in defence. It is a matter in which figures are of little use; for no one could, by any possibility, estimate how many persons live wholly by begging. That there are in every community some persons who do may be taken as certain. That their number is larger in proportion to the bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in a Protestant community, is antecedently probable. The theory of the Roman Catholic religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to be no sin to live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms. _Never turn away thy face from any poor man_, is a text acted on by devout Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not difficult to foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the Irish Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of indiscriminate almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small degree by the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful efforts in the direction of the organization of charity. Another influence, which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy that scandalizes the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The habits of centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than twenty years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the Irish poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of Catholic chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the roads leading to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often beset by little knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these are no more professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself with pheasant shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of excitement with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner or more vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.

Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the revenues of the Irish mendicant!

An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland, the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209, or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England, still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same, this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox, argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament, and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man, when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home. That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces, it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.

The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an indirect fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things which he may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of poverty, and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring then to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876 only four persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number sentenced in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy; for the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of only about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in England were eight times as numerous as in Ireland.[25] But this is not all. Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these drink is only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly every murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the thirty-two persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come to sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of returns of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it is not easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the statistics of conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the person are much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland than in England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel anywhere in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the other hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth), we have 1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties inflicted in Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.

Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence, we find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against none in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against 26 in Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against only 69 in Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect drink to be a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there is no assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by violence, except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for crime. Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for minor offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against 10,674 in England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for terms of years, against 1063 in England.

All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes, especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that, though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have time for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something to do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but this is certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges of Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white gloves instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may be, I merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the most part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken animals after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception to the rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on the Irish character--agrarian outrage--is not to be accounted for by drink. The true explanation is familiar to all who really know the country. The Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his support, and believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself to have a moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a belief which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be stated with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his hostility to the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment, looks on himself as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a wronged man (which he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged have always been raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply a brigand in a frieze coat.