Part 9
The Irish have been disabused of one of the strangest delusions which ever paralysed the energies of a naturally intelligent and energetic people. Those who knew the country best, were aware of the habitual dependence of the upper classes upon the Government; and it was a common saying of former days, that an Irish gentleman could not even marry his daughter without going to the Castle for assistance. The vulgar idea was, that when difficulties occurred, every personal obligation was discharged by “bringing the matter under the consideration of the Government;” and if, in addition to this, “a handsome support” was promised, it seldom meant more than helping to spend any public money that might be forthcoming. But it was reserved for that potent solvent, the Famine, to discover to the full extent, this element of the national character. To pass with safety through this great crisis, required that every man, from the highest nobleman to the meanest peasant, should exert himself to the utmost of his means and ability; instead of which, the entire unassisted burden of employing all the unemployed labourers of Ireland, of improving all the unimproved land of Ireland, and feeding all the destitute persons in Ireland, was heaped upon a Board consisting of five gentlemen, sitting in an office in Dublin. The example of the gentry was followed with customary exaggeration by the lower orders, and throughout extensive districts, the cultivation of the land was suspended in the spring of 1847 until it should be seen what “encouragement” the Government would give, or, as it was sometimes ingenuously expressed, “We expect the Government will till the ground.” It is also a fact that the people in some parts of the West of Ireland neglected to a great extent to lay in their usual winter stock of turf in 1847, owing to the prevalence of a popular impression that the Queen would supply them with coals. Ireland has awakened from this dream by the occurrence of the most frightful calamities, and it has at last begun to be understood that the proper business of a Government, is to enable private individuals of every rank and profession in life, to carry on their several occupations with freedom and safety, and not itself to undertake the business of the landowner, merchant, money-lender, or any other function of social life. Reason is now able to make herself heard, and there has not been wanting many a warning and encouraging voice from Ireland herself, declaring--“The prosperity of Ireland is only to be attained by your own strong arms. We are able to help ourselves. We will no longer be dependent on the precarious assistance received from other lands. We will never rest until every sod in Ireland brings forth abundantly--till every inch of ground is in its highest and fullest state of bearing. In a short time we shall have among us more industry and exertion, less politics and more ploughing, less argument and more action, less debating and more doing[67].”
The uniting power of a common misfortune has also been felt throughout the British Empire. Those who had never before exchanged words or looks of kindness, met to co-operate in this great work of charity, and good men recognised each other’s merits under the distinctions by which they had been previously separated. The Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy vied with each other in their exertions for the famishing and fever-stricken people, and in numerous instances their lives became a sacrifice to the discharge of their exhausting, harassing and dangerous duties. To the priests all were indebted for the readiness with which they made their influence over their flocks subservient to the cause of order; and the minister of religion was frequently summoned to the aid of the public officer when all other means of restraining the excited multitude had failed[68]. The political dissensions which had distracted Ireland for centuries became suddenly allayed. The famine was too strong even for the mighty demagogue, that great mixed character to whom Ireland owes so much good and so much evil. People of every shade of political opinion acted together, not always in an enlightened manner, but always cordially and earnestly, in making the social maladies of Ireland, and the means of healing them, the paramount object. In the hour of her utmost need, Ireland became sensible of an union of feeling and interest with the rest of the empire, which would have moved hearts less susceptible of every generous and grateful emotion than those of her sons and daughters[69]. Although the public efforts in her behalf were without parallel in ancient and modern history, and the private subscriptions were the largest ever raised for a charitable object, they were less remarkable than the absorbing interest with which her misfortunes were regarded for months together both in Parliament and in society, to the exclusion of almost every other topic. It will also never be forgotten that these efforts and these sacrifices were made at a time when England was herself suffering under a severe scarcity of food, aggravated by the failure of the cotton crop, and by the pecuniary exhaustion consequent upon the vast expenditure for the construction of railways. Even in such a state of things, though serious injury was done to all her interests by the Irish Loan, and though the pressure upon the labouring classes was greatly increased by the wholesale purchase of their food, that it might be given without cost to the starving Irish, yet every sacrifice was submitted to without a murmur by the great body of the people.
Although the process by which long-established habits are changed, and society is reconstructed on a new basis, must necessarily be slow, there are not wanting signs that we are advancing by sure steps towards the desired end. The cultivation of corn has to a great extent been substituted for that of the potato; the people have become accustomed to a better description of food than the potato[70]; conacre, and the excessive competition for land, have ceased to exist; the small holdings, which have become deserted, owing to death, or emigration, or the mere inability of the holders to obtain a subsistence from them in the absence of the potato, have, to a considerable extent, been consolidated with the adjoining farms; and the middlemen, whose occupation depends upon the existence of a numerous small tenantry, have begun to disappear. The large quantity of land left uncultivated in some of the western districts is a painful but decisive proof of the extent to which this change is taking place. The class of offences connected with the holding of land, which was the most difficult to deal with, because agrarian crimes were supported by the sympathy and approbation of the body of the people, and were generally the result of secret illegal associations, fell off in a remarkable degree[71]; and although offences against other kinds of property increased, owing to the general distress, the usual difficulty was not experienced in obtaining convictions. The much-desired change in the ownership of land appears also to have commenced; and when great estates are brought to the hammer now, instead of being sold, as formerly, _en masse_, they are broken up into lots[72], which opens the door to a middle class, more likely to become resident and improving proprietors than their predecessors, and better able to maintain the stability of property and of our political institutions, because they are themselves sprung from the people. The most wholesome symptom of all, however, is that a general impression prevails, that the plan of depending on external assistance has been tried to the utmost and has failed; that people have grown worse under it instead of better; and that the experiment ought now to be made of what independent exertion will do. This feeling has been much strengthened by the necessity which has been imposed upon the upper classes through the Poor Law, of caring for the condition of the people; and the attention of the country gentlemen has in many districts been seriously directed to the means of supporting them in a manner which will be alike beneficial to the employer and the employed.
The poet Spenser commences his view of the state of Ireland by these discouraging observations: “Marry, so there have been divers good plots devised, and wise counsels cast already about reformation of that realm, but they say it is the fatal destiny of that land, that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good, will prosper or take good effect; which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that he reserveth her in this inquiet state still for some secret scourge, which shall by her come into England, it is hard to be known, but yet much to be feared.” Our humble but sincere conviction is, that the appointed time of Ireland’s regeneration is at last come. For several centuries we were in a state of open warfare with the native Irish, who were treated as foreign enemies, and were not admitted to the privileges and civilising influences of English law, even when they most desired it. To this succeeded a long period of mixed religious and civil persecution[73], when the Irish were treated as the professors of a hostile faith, and had inflicted on them irritating and degrading penalties, of which exclusion from Parliament and from civil and military office was one of the least; the general characteristics of this epoch of Irish management being that the Protestant minority were governed by corruption, and the Roman Catholic majority by intimidation. During all this time England reaped as she sowed: and as she kept the people in a chronic state of exasperation against herself, none of her “good plots and wise counsels” for their benefit succeeded; for there was no want of good intention, and the fault was principally in the mistaken opinions of the age, which led to persecution in other countries besides Ireland. Now, thank God, we are in a different position; and although many waves of disturbance must pass over us before that troubled sea can entirely subside, and time must be allowed for morbid habits to give place to a more healthy action, England and Ireland are, with one great exception, subject to equal laws; and, so far as the maladies of Ireland are traceable to political causes, nearly every practicable remedy has been applied. The deep and inveterate root of social evil remained, and this has been laid bare by a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence, as if this part of the case were beyond the unassisted power of man. Innumerable had been the specifics which the wit of man had devised; but even the idea of the sharp but effectual, remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected had never occurred to any one. God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered, may rightly perform its part, and that we may not relax our efforts until Ireland fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain, which will be the true consummation of their union.
FOOTNOTES
[1] We have endeavoured to gather up all the threads of this strange tissue, so that every circumstance of importance connected with the measures of relief may be placed on record; but our narrative does not, except in a few instances, extend beyond September 1847, and the progress of events after that date will form the subject of a separate article.
[2] The author of this paper was the late Mr. Joseph Sabine, the Secretary to the Horticultural Society.
[3] Sir John Burgoyne’s letter to the “Times,” dated th October, 1847.
[4] The following description of the state of agriculture in West Clare, previously to the failure in the potato crop in 1845, is taken from a narrative by Captain Mann of the Royal Navy, who had for some time previously been stationed in that district, in charge of the Coast Guard, and when the distress commenced, he took an active and very useful part in assisting in the measures of relief: “Agriculture at that period was in a very neglected state; wheat, barley, and oats, with potatoes as the food of the poor, being the produce. Of the first very little was produced, and that not good in quality; barley, a larger proportion and good; oats, much greater, but inferior for milling purposes. Various reasons were given for this inferiority in produce, the quality of the land and deteriorated seed being the cause generally assigned; but I would say that the population being content with, and relying on, the produce of the potato as food--which had with very few exceptions hitherto proved abundant--there was a general neglect and want of any attempt at improvement. Green crops were all but unknown, except here and there a little turnip or mangel wurzel in the garden or field of the better class,--the former scarcely to be purchased. Even the potatoes were tilled in the easiest way, (in beds called ‘lazy beds’), not in drills, so that the hoe might in a very short time clear the weeds and lighten the soil.”
[5] We are indebted for these particulars to Mr. Mc Cullagh, who has lately collected the contemporary accounts of this famine. It appears that the farmers at this period did not dig their potatoes until about Christmas, and that few stored them at all for use.
[6] An interesting account by Mr. Bertolacci, of the manner in which this fund and that collected in 1831 were distributed, will be found in the “Morning Chronicle” of the 25th November, 1847.
[7] For the details of these operations see the following Parliamentary papers:--
“Copies of the Reports of Messrs. Griffith, Nimmo, and Killaly, the civil engineers employed during the late scarcity, in superintending the Public Works in Ireland; 16 April, 1823 (249).”
“Report from the Select Committee on the employment of the poor in Ireland; 16 July, 1823 (561).”
It is a remarkable testimony to the improvement effected by such works in the social habits of the people, that the district between the Shannon and the Blackwater, which was opened in four directions by the roads executed by Mr. Griffith, although formerly the seat of the Desmond Rebellion, and subsequently, in the year 1821, the asylum for Whiteboys and the focus of the Whiteboy warfare, during which time four regiments were required to repress outrage, became perfectly tranquil, and continued so up to the commencement of the late calamity.
[8] The following remarkable passage is extracted from the Report of the Dublin Mansion House Committee, dated the 22nd October, 1831:--
“But while the Mansion House Committee thus congratulate themselves and the subscribers upon the success of their efforts to avert famine and disease for a season from so considerable a portion of the island, they owe it also to themselves and the subscribers to avow their honest conviction that similar calls will be periodically made on public benevolence, unless a total change be effected in the condition of the Irish peasant. What means should be adopted to remedy these evils it is not the province of this Committee to suggest; but they deem it their duty to call the attention of the subscribers particularly to this state of things, in the hope of some remedy being discovered and applied before public benevolence is quite exhausted by repeated drains on its sympathy.”
On the 21st May, 1838, the Duke of Wellington made the following observations in the debate on the introduction of the Irish Poor Law:--“There never was a country in which poverty existed to so great a degree as it exists in Ireland. I held a high situation in that country thirty years ago, and I must say, that, from that time to this, there has scarcely elapsed a single year, in which the Government has not at certain periods of it entertained the most serious apprehension of actual famine. I am firmly convinced that from the year 1806, down to the present time, a year has not passed in which the Government have not been called on to give assistance to relieve the poverty and distress which prevailed in Ireland.”
[9] The particulars of what took place on this occasion will be found in a letter from the Poor Law Commissioners to Sir J. Graham, dated the 9th June, 1842, and in a statement dated 18th August, 1842, prepared under the directions of the Irish Government, showing “the sums issued for the relief of distress in Ireland from the 17th June to the 17th August, 1842,” &c.
[10] This Return is for sums “advanced on loan since the Union,” but in some cases the advances have not been repaid, and in others large grants were made in addition to loans.
[11] “Observations upon certain evils arising out of the present state of the Laws of Real Property in Ireland, and Suggestions for remedying the same.”--Dublin: Alex. Thom, 1847. The author of this pamphlet is Mr. Booth, who has for many years past held the responsible office of Clerk of the Survey in Ireland, under the Master-General and Board of Ordnance. It will be seen by a perusal of the pamphlet, that this able and deserving officer has fully availed himself of the opportunities which his situation afforded, for making himself acquainted with the social state of Ireland; and that he has successfully applied to the consideration of the subject, that practical ability from which the public service has derived so much benefit.
[12] “Observations on the evils resulting to Ireland from the insecurity of Title and the existing Laws of Real Property, with some Suggestions towards a remedy.”--Dublin: Hodges and Smith. London: Ridgway; 1847. The author of this pamphlet is Mr. Jonathan Pim, who, in the capacity of joint secretary, with Mr. Joseph Bewley, of the Dublin Friends’ Relief Committee, took the lead in the admirably benevolent and practical measures adopted by that excellent society for the relief of the distress, and the re-establishment of the industry of Ireland on a more secure and satisfactory footing than before. Mr. Pim is also the author of a more extended work, entitled “The Condition and Prospects of Ireland,” which has just been published, and which, if we mistake not, will prove one of the most useful publications which have yet appeared on this deeply interesting subject.
[13] It is perfectly true that the unembarrassed holder of an entailed estate is often not sufficiently owner of it to be able to do justice to it. He cannot sell a portion to improve the remainder, however much both the part sold and the part retained would be benefited by it. He can burden the estate to provide for younger children’s portions, but not to carry on improvements which would increase its annual produce. Improvements are generally made out of capital, and not out of income. Owners of entailed estates, for the most part, live up to their means; and when they do not, their savings are seldom sufficient to carry on works of any importance. Over the capital sum representing the aggregate value of the estate, they have no command, except for purposes which make them poorer, and consequently still less able to execute any useful design. At the present crisis of our national affairs, it behoves us to consider what course will be the best both for the landowners and for the community at large. There is a fearful surplus population in Ireland and the north-western part of Scotland which must be provided for; while in England itself thousands of railway labourers and Irish paupers roam unemployed about the country; and the question is, whether, by removing the obstacles which at present oppose the profitable employment of the enormous capital invested in land, we might not obtain new resources which would enrich the owners of land, diffuse comfort and enjoyment in each locality, and help to provide for the unemployed population which is sitting like an incubus upon all the three kingdoms.
[14] The following Table gives the leading particulars relating to the estates under the management of the Courts in Ireland during the years 1841-2 and 3:
_Court of Chancery._
+-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ | | | | Arrears of Rent. | | |No. Of| Rental of +-----------------+----------------+ | |Causes| Estates. | When Receiver | When Receiver | | | | | was appointed. | last accounted.| +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ | | | £ s. d.| £ s. d. | £ s. d. | | 1841. | 698 |598,635 13 10¾| 39,358 16 4½ |347,226 14 10 | +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ | 1842. | 595 |548,783 12 9 | 3,105 0 10 |299,554 10 8 | +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ | 1843. | 764 |563,022 2 4 | 39,265 13 1 |290,292 4 10 | +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ |Average of | 686 |570,147 2 11¾| 27,243 3 5 |312,357 16 10 | |three years| | | | | +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+ | | | _Court of Exchequer._ | | |From 1836 | | | | | |to 1843 | 316 |132,675 2 3 | 56,163 6 6 | 87,849 0 11¼ | |inclusive. | | | | | +-----------+------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+
The arrears of rent have since greatly increased, although the object of the Courts is confined to getting in the Rents, improvements being seldom attempted. The condition of the people on these neglected, and with reference to their present state of cultivation, over-populated estates, is melancholy in the extreme.
[15] “Observations upon certain evils,” &c.
[16] “Observations upon certain evils,” &c.
[17] “Observations upon certain evils,” &c.
[18] “Observations on the evils resulting to Ireland,” &c.
[19] Treasury Minute, October 15, 1847.
[20] These useful reforms were suggested by Mr. Pierce Mahony, who is entitled to the gratitude of the public, for the perseverance and ability with which he has, for many years past, with little encouragement either from the public or from those who have administered the Government of the country, advocated these and other measures directed to the extremely important object of simplifying, facilitating, and rendering more secure the transfer and tenure of land.
[21] The year 1845 was the second and worst in America; and in 1846, although it still extensively prevailed, the disease was of a milder type and only partially affected the crop.