The pestilence, which all the precautions practicable on land could not overcome, broke out, as was to be expected, with increased virulence on board the emigrant ships. A new law was passed at Boston in Massachusetts, empowering the local authorities to demand a bond of 1000 dollars from the masters of emigrant ships for each passenger apparently indigent, that he should not become chargeable to the State or to the city for ten years, the effect of which was to divert the stream of emigration to a greater extent than usual to Canada and New Brunswick. The deaths on the voyage to Canada increased from 5 in every 1000 persons embarked, to about 60, or to twelve times their previous rate; and so many more arrived sick, that the proportion of deaths in quarantine to the numbers embarked, increased from 1⅓ to about 40 in the 1000, besides still larger numbers who died at Quebec, Montreal, and elsewhere in the interior55.A Medical Board was appointed; large supplies of provisions were dispatched to the quarantine station; tents sufficient for the reception of 10,000 persons were issued from the Ordnance stores, and the labours of the Commissariat in this waragainst famine and pestilence, were carried on at the same time on both sides of the Atlantic; but the utmost exertions and the most liberal expenditure could not prevent a fearful amount of suffering amongst the emigrants, and a painful spread of disease to the resident population.
We are well aware that among men of talents and of benevolent dispositions, there is a wide difference on the important question of emigration; and in what follows on this subject, we wish to be understood, not as committing ourselves to particular opinions, but merely as making a statement, in pursuance of the historical character of this review, of what we believe to have been the views which guided the resolutions of the Government.
There is no subject of which a merely one-sided view is more commonly taken than that of Emigration. The evils arising from the crowded state of the population, and the facility with which large numbers of persons may be transferred to other countries, are naturally uppermost in the minds of landlords and rate-payers; but Her Majesty’s Government, to which the well-being of the British population in everyquarter of the globe is confided, must have an equal regard to the interests of the emigrant and of the colonial community of which he may become a member. It is a great mistake to suppose that even Canada and the United States have an unlimited capacity of absorbing a new population. The labour market in the settled districts is always so nearly full, that a small addition to the persons in search of employment makes a sensible difference; while the clearing of new land requires the possession of resources56, and a power of sustained exertion not ordinarily belonging to the newly-arrived Irish emigrant. In this, as well as in the other operations by which society is formed or sustained, there is a natural process which cannot with impunity be departed from. A movement is continually going on towards the backwoods on the part of the young and enterprising portion of the settled population, and of such of the former emigrants as have acquiredmeans and experience; and the room thus made is occupied by persons recently arrived from Europe, who have only their labour to depend upon. The conquest of the wilderness requires more than the ordinary share of energy and perseverance, and every attempt that has yet been made to turn Paupers into Backwoodsmen by administrative measures, has ended in signal failure. As long as they were rationed, they held together in a feeble, helpless state; and when the issue of rations ceased, they generally returned to the settled parts of the country. Our recent experience of the effects of a similar state of dependence in Ireland, offers no encouragement to renew the experiment in a distant country, where the difficulties are so much greater, and a disastrous result would be so much less capable of being retrieved.
It must also be observed, that from an early period of the present distress, two modes of meeting the calamity presented themselves, which have since acquired greater distinctness in people’s minds, and have been acted upon in a more and more systematic manner. The first of these was to stimulate the industry of the people, to augment theproductive powers of the soil, and to promote the establishment of new industrial occupations, so as to cause the land once more to support its population, and to substitute a higher standard of subsistence, and a higher tone of popular character, for those which prevailed before. This plan aimed at accomplishing the object without the pain or risk of wholesale expatriation; and the result proposed by it was to increase the strength and prosperity of the country and the happiness of the people, by enabling the present population to maintain itself comfortably at home by the exercise of its industry. The Government adopted this plan from the first, and has since promoted its success by every means in its power. The other plan was to relieve the mother-country by transferring large masses of people to the Colonies; and great efforts were made to obtain the command of public funds to assist in paying the expense of this emigration.
The main pointy therefore, is, that by taking an active part in assisting emigration, the Government would throw their weight into the scale with the last of these two plans. They would assist it by their means;and, what is of far more consequence, they would countenance it by their authority: and in the same degree, they would discourage and relax the efforts of those who are exerting themselves to carry out the opposite plan. In order to appreciate the full ultimate effect of such an interposition, it must be remembered that the solution of the great difficulty by means of emigration carried out on the scale and in the manner proposed, offers to the promoters of it the attraction of accomplishing their object by a cheap and summary process; while the other remedy, of enabling the population to live comfortably at home, can be arrived at only by an expensive, laborious, and protracted course of exertion: and it therefore behoves the Government, which holds the balance between contending parties, to take care to which side it lends its influence on a social question of this description.
Those who have purchased or inherited estates in which a redundant population has been permitted or encouraged to grow up, may with propriety assist some of their people to emigrate, provided they take care to prevent their being left destitute on their arrival in their new country. The expense of assistingemigration under such circumstances properly falls on the proprietor. A surplus population, whether it be owing to the fault or to the misfortune of the proprietor or his predecessors, must, like barrenness, or the absence of improvements, be regarded as one of the disadvantages contingent on the possession of the estate; and he who enjoys the profits and advantages of the estate, must also submit to the less desirable conditions connected with it. So long as emigration is conducted only at the expense of the proprietor, it is not likely to be carried to an injurious or dangerous extent, and it will press so heavily on his resources, as to leave the motives to exertion of a different kind unimpaired. Emigration is open to objection only when the natural checks and correctives have been neutralized by the interposition of the Government, or other public bodies. It then becomes the interest and policy of the landed proprietor to make no exertion to maintain his people at home, to produce a general impression that no such exertion could be successfully made, and to increase by every possible means the pressure upon those parties who, having the command of public funds, are expected to givetheir assistance; and the responsibility of the consequences, whatever they may be, becomes transferred from the individual proprietors, to the Government or public body which countenances and promotes their proceedings.
Three things had become apparent before the close of the year 1846: the first was, that if these gigantic efforts were much longer continued, they must exhaust and disorganize society throughout the United Kingdom, and reduce all classes of people in Ireland to a state of helpless dependence; the second was, that provision ought to be made for the relief of extreme destitution in some less objectionable mode than that which had been adopted, for want of a better, under the pressure of an alarming emergency; and the third was, that great efforts and great sacrifices were required to provide another and a better subsistence for the large population which had hitherto depended upon the potato. Upon these principles the plan of the Government for the season of 1847–8, and for all after time, was based.
Much the larger portion of the machinery of a good Poor Law had been set up in Ireland by the Irish Poor Relief Act (1 & 2Vic. c. 56), which was passed in the year 1838. The island had been divided into unions, which were generally so arranged as to secure easy communication with the central station; and these had been subdivided into electoral districts, each of which appointed its own guardian, and was chargeable only with its own poor, like our parishes. A commodious workhouse had also been built in each union by advances from the Exchequer57, and rates had been established for its support. No relief could, however, be given outside the workhouses, and when these buildings once became filled with widows and children, aged and sick, and others who might with equal safety and more humanity have been supported at their own homes, they ceased to be either a medium of relief or a test of destitution to the other destitute poor of the union. To remedy this and other defects of the existing system, three Acts of Parliament were passed in the Session of 184758, the principal provisions of which were as follows: Destitutepersons who are either permanently or temporarily disabled from labour, and destitute widows having two or more legitimate children dependent upon them, may be relieved either in or out of the workhouse, at the discretion of the guardians. If, owing to want of room, or to the prevalence of fever or any infectious disorder, adequate relief cannot be afforded in a workhouse to persons not belonging to either of the above-mentioned classes, the Poor Law Commissioners may authorize the guardians to give them outdoor relief in food only; the Commissioners’ order for which purpose can only be made for a period of two months, but, if necessary, it can be renewed from time to time. Relieving officers and medical officers for affording medical relief out of the workhouse are to be appointed; and in cases of sudden and urgent necessity, the relievingofficers are to give “immediate and temporary relief in food, lodging, medicine, or medical attendance,” until the next meeting of the guardians. After the 1st November, 1847, no person is to be relieved either in or out of a workhouse, who is in the occupation of more than a quarter of an acre of land. No person is to be deemed to have been resident in an electoral division so as to make it chargeable with the expense of relieving him, who shall not during the three years before his application for relief have occupied some tenement within it, or have usually slept within it for thirty calendar months. All magistrates residing in the union are to beex-officioguardians, provided their number does not exceed that of elected guardians. Greater facilities are given for dissolving Boards of Guardians, in case they do not duly and effectually discharge their duty according to the intention of the several Acts in force. Public beggars and persons going from one district to another for the purpose of obtaining relief are rendered liable to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour; and an independent Poor Law establishment is constituted for Ireland, consisting of three Commissioners (two of whomare to be the Secretary and Under-Secretary for Ireland for the time being), an Assistant Commissioner and Secretary, and as many Inspectors as may be required.
The principle of a comprehensive Poor Law and of the abolition of mendicancy, having thus been established, the efforts of the Government were earnestly directed to the removal of the difficulties likely to impede its satisfactory working. The repayment of the first instalment due on account of the advances for the Relief Works of the winter and spring of 1846–7 (9 & 10 Vic. c. 107), was postponed until after the Spring Assizes of 1848, and it was announced that no demand would be made until after the 1st January, 1848, for the repayment of the advances under the temporary Relief Act, when the rates levied previously to that date for the current expenses of the permanent Poor Law equalled or exceeded 3s.in the pound, and that even when rates had been struck for the purpose of repaying the advances, they might, if necessary, be applied to defraying those current expenses. By these arrangements the demands for repayment between the Summer Assizes of 1847 and the Spring Assizes of 1848 werelimited to the second instalment for the Relief Works and repairs of Grand Jury Roads of 1846 (9 Vic. c. 1 and 2), amounting only to 27,000ℓ.for the whole of Ireland; and after providing for this and for the expense of the gaols and other ordinary local demands, all the rates levied from the produce of the abundant harvest of 1847 became applicable to the relief of the people under the Poor Law, then for the first time coming into full operation. The Guardians were at the same time earnestly recommended by the Poor Law Commissioners to strike rates sufficient to meet the exigencies of the coming winter, and to be strict in the levy of them. They were advised to guard against the necessity of giving out-door relief to the able-bodied, by providing for disabled persons, widows, school-children, and fever patients out of the workhouse; and five Boards of Guardians which had obstinately persisted in not doing their duty, were dissolved, and paid Guardians were appointed in their place. Ireland had now had a year and a half’s experience of the administration of relief on a great scale and in different ways, and the objects to be aimed at and the abuses to be avoided had become generallyknown. “The very evil itself,” the Relief Commissioners observe in their Sixth Monthly Report, “has been attended with a salutary reaction, and the whole country seems, by this experience, to have been made sensible that it is only by the most rigid and thoroughly controlled principles of affording relief by any public arrangement, that society can be protected from a state of almost universal pauperisation, and that the charge of a more benevolent alleviation of distress than what is absolutely necessary for the bare support of the thoroughly destitute, must and ought to be left to the exertions and voluntary distribution of the charitable and humane, which it is hoped will always be largely afforded.” During the week ended Saturday the 14th August, 1847, there were above 20,000 persons on the relief lists of the electoral division which comprises the northern half of the city of Dublin; and as the operations under the Temporary Relief Act terminated in that union on the 15th, the guardians, on the 16th, had to deal with the apparent necessity of having to provide relief for above 20,000 persons. On the morning of that day, however, owing to previous arrangements, theyhad room in the workhouse of their union for 400 individuals; and by offering workhouse relief to applicants, aided by some assistance from the Mendicity Institution, the guardians were enabled in the course of six days to reduce the number on the relief lists to about 3000 persons. This is only one instance among many that might be adduced, of the practical value of the experience that has been acquired in Ireland of the true principles of Poor Law management.
A principle of great power has thus been introduced into the social system of Ireland, which must be productive of many important consequences, besides those which directly flow from it. Mr. Drummond’s apophthegm, that “property has its duties as well as its rights,” having now received the sanction of law, it can never hereafter be a matter of indifference to a landed proprietor, what the condition of the people on his estate is. The day has gone by for letting things take their course, and landlords and farmers have the plain alternative placed before them of supporting the people in idleness or in profitable labour. Hitherto the duties of Irish landlords had been, asjurists would say, of imperfect obligation. In other words, their performance depended upon conscience, benevolence, and a more enlightened and far-seeing view of personal interest than belongs to the generality of men; the consequence of which has been a remarkable difference in the conduct of Irish landlords: and while some have made all the sacrifices and exertions which their position required, others have been guilty of that entire abandonment of duty which has brought reproach upon their order. For the future this cannot be. The necessity of self-preservation, and the knowledge that rents can be saved from the encroachments of poor-rates, only in proportion as the poor are cared for and profitably employed, will secure a fair average good conduct on the part of landed proprietors, as in England, and more favourable circumstances will induce improved habits. The poor-rate is an absentee tax of the best description; because, besides bringing non-resident proprietors under contribution, it gives them powerful motives either to reside on their estates or to take care that they are managed, in their absence, with a proper regard to thewelfare of the poor59. Lastly, the performance of duty supposes the enjoyment of equivalent rights. When rich and poor areat one again, the repudiating farmer will find the position of his landlord too strong to allow of his taking his present license, andit will then be fearlessly asserted that the converse of Mr. Drummond’s maxim is also true, and that “Property has its rights as well as its duties.” For the first time in the history of Ireland, the poor man has become sensibly alive to the idea that the law is his friend, and the exhortation of the parish priest of Dingle to his flock in September 1847, indicates an epoch in the progress of society in Ireland:—“Heretofore landlords have had agents who collected their rents, and they supported them. The grand jury had agents to collect the county-cess, andthey supported them. Now, for the first time, the poor man has an agent to collecthisrent. That agent is the poor-rate collector, and he should be supported by the poor.” Time must, however, be allowed for the gradual working of this feeling, before its full effects can be seen.
Those who object to the existing Poor Law are bound to point out a more certain and less objectionable mode of relieving the destitute and securing the regular employment of the poor. The principle of the Poor Law is, that rate after rate should be leviedfor the preservation of life, until the landowners and farmers either enable the people to support themselves by honest industry, or dispose of their property to those who can and will perform this indispensable duty.
The fearful problem to be solved in Ireland, stated in its simplest form, is this. A large population subsisting on potatoes which they raised for themselves, has been deprived of that resource, and how are they now to be supported? The obvious answer is, by growing something else. But that cannot be, because the small patches of land which maintained a family when laid down to potatoes,are insufficient for the purpose when laid down to corn or any other kind of produce; and corn cultivation requires capital and skill, and combined labour, which the cotter and conacre tenants do not possess. The position occupied by these classes is no longer tenable, and it is necessary for them either to become substantial farmers, or to live by the wages of their labour. They must still depend for their subsistence upon agriculture, but upon agriculture conducted according to new and very improved conditions. Both the kind of food and the means of procuring it have changed. The people will henceforth principally live upon grain, either imported from abroad or grown in the country, which they will purchase out of their wages; and corn and cattle will be exported, as the piece-goods of Manchester are, to provide the fund out of which the community will be maintained under the several heads of wages, profits, and rents. It is in vain that the granary of the merchant and the homestead of the farmer are filled to overflowing, if the mass of the people have not the means of purchasing, and it has therefore become of the highest consequence that the resources which aremost available for the payment of wages should be cultivated to the utmost. The Poor Law cannot alone bear the whole weight of the existing pauperism of Ireland; and its unproductive expenditure, however indispensable, must be supported by adequate industrial efforts, in order to prevent all classes of society from being involved in one common ruin. Before this crisis occurred, Sir Robert Kane had proved in theory, and many good farmers in practice, that a much larger produce might be raised, and a much larger population might be supported from the soil of Ireland than heretofore; and this view has since been confirmed by numerous surveys conducted under the superintendence of the Board of Works, which have disclosed an extensive and varied field for the investment of capital, upon which the whole unemployed population of Ireland might be employed with much advantage to all parties concerned. The great resource of Ireland consists in the cultivation of her soil, the improvement of her cattle, the extension of her fisheries; and while there are large tracts of flooded land to be reclaimed, and still larger tracts of half-cultivated land to be brought to a higher state of productiveness,it would be a misdirection of capital to employ it in the less profitable manufactures of cotton and wool. Ireland is benefited to a greater extent than many parts of Scotland and England are, by the markets and the means of employment which Manchester and Glasgow afford; but her own staple manufacture is corn.
The Treasury was authorized by the 1 & 2 Wm. IV, c. 33, passed in 1831, to lend money to private individuals for the improvement of their estates, provided the value of the estate was increased 10 per cent. and repayment was made in three years; and by the first Act of the Session of 1846 the period of repayment was extended to twenty years. This power was however very sparingly acted on. Grave objections existed to the State becoming a general creditor throughout the country, and the operations of private capitalists were likely to be deranged and suspended by the interference of such a competitor. A rate of interest (5 per cent.) higher than the market rate for money lent on mortgage, was therefore charged, and the result was, that only three persons took out loans under this arrangement, one of whom was the late Lord Bessborough.At the close of the Session of 1846, the Act 9 & 10 Vic. c. 101, was passed, by which 1,000,000ℓ.was authorized to be lent for drainage in Ireland, and repayment was to be made in equal half-yearly instalments, spread over twenty-two years, including interest at 3½ per cent.; but this Act could not be worked, so far as Ireland was concerned, partly owing to a legal opinion that tenants for life were not eligible for loans under it, and partly because the works must be executed to a certain extent before the money could be advanced. Upon this the Treasury issued a Minute dated the 1st, and a letter dated the 15th December, 184660, offering to lend money for the general improvement of estates, including drainage, on a footing which combined the advantages of the previous Acts with the indulgent mode of repayment introduced by the last; and in the following session the Act 10 & 11 Vic. c. 32 was passed, by which all the existing legislation on the subject was consolidated, and loans61were authorized to bemade in Ireland to the extent of 1,500,000ℓ., on the principle that the improvements on each estate are to be executed by the proprietor, and that the interference of the officers of the Government is to be confined to ascertaining, in the first instance, that the proposed improvements are likely to be of such a permanent and productive character as would justify the cost of them being made a charge upon the estate, with priority over other incumbrances, and, afterwards, to inspecting the works from time to time, so as to secure the proper application of the sums advanced to the purposes for which they were intended. No advance can be made under this Act unless the increased annual value to be given to the land by the proposed improvement shall equal theamount to be charged on it; and a difficulty having arisen from the circumstance that the full benefit to be derived from draining is attained in different soils at different periods after the completion of the drains, it was declared by a Treasury Minute dated the 15th June, 1847, that it is not necessary that each portion of land improved should yield, in the first and in every subsequent year, an additional rent equal to 6½ per cent. per annum on the outlay beyond the present rent; but that the general result of the improvement of the lands on which the rent-charge is to be secured, will, one year with another, from the period when the full benefit of the improvement may be supposed to have accrued, be such as to produce an increased annual value to the above extent; taking care, of course, that the rent-charge is fixed upon lands amply sufficient to secure the repayment to the Government of the sums so charged. These directions had particular reference to the circumstances of the poverty-stricken districts in the West of Ireland, where it is peculiarly desirable to increase the food grown on the spot, and to provide the means of employment for the people in the productiveavocations of agriculture; and every practicable facility and preference is therefore given to the landed proprietors in those districts, which is not inconsistent with justice to other parties. It was determined by the same Minute, in pursuance of the course taken by Parliament with respect to the loans for drainage in England and Scotland, that the loans to be made to any one landed proprietor should not, under ordinary circumstances, exceed, in the aggregate, the sum of 12,000ℓ.; but if, in any particular case, owing to the extent of the property to be improved, or other causes, it should be advisable to enlarge this limit, the Lords of the Treasury will be prepared to authorize such additional sum as may appear to be proper, not exceeding, however, an aggregate amount to the same proprietor, of 20,000ℓ.
In taking its line on this subject, the Government had to choose between employing the agency of the landed proprietors and that of public officers; and after much consideration and some experience, the final decision was in favour of the former alternative, as above described.
By following this course, all the existing relations of society were preserved andstrengthened; the landed proprietors were held to their responsibility for the well-being of the people residing on their estates, and they were assisted to the extent of the loan fund placed by Parliament at the disposal of the Government. The proprietor or his agent has the strongest interest in seeing that the work is well done, and can exercise the most effectual superintendence over it; and as the people are invited to exert themselves under the eye of their natural employers, the healthy relation of master and labourer becomes established throughout the country. It has not, as yet, been usual in Ireland, for the landlord to undertake to make the more expensive and permanent improvements, as is the case in England, but it may be hoped that an impulse will be given to this wholesome practice by the loans to proprietors under the Land Improvement Act. The landlord will be encouraged to proceed in a course of improvement which he finds by experience to be profitable to him; he will be likely to make further investments on land which has been reclaimed or improved by him, and he will be especially careful toprevent it from being subdivided into small holdings62.
The other plan of reclaiming waste lands by the direct agency of the Government, did not survive the objections made to it on the score of its interference with the rights of private property. The land must be obtained before it could be improved, and was it to be left to the discretion of Commissioners to take any bog-land they pleased at a valuation; to single out, for instance, atract of unreclaimed land in the centre of an estate? Some firm land also must be annexed to each allotment for the erection of the farm buildings, and to obtain soil for the improvement of the bog, and this would have given a still wider and more arbitrary discretion to the Commissioners. The compulsory powers had therefore to be given up; and without them the plan could not be worked.
But there are other objections to this plan which have a much deeper root. The first result of the Government undertaking to reclaim the waste lands of Ireland would be that the mass of the people would throw themselves on these works, as they did upon the roads, taking it for granted that the means of payment were inexhaustible, and that less labour would be exacted than in employment offered with a view to private profit. The landlords and farmers would consider that, as the Government had undertaken to employ the people and improve the soil, they were themselves absolved from responsibility, and they would refer all the persons who applied to them for employment, to the Government works,as has been so often done on former occasions. The single agency of the Government would be substituted for the exertions of the whole body of the landowners acting in concert with their tenants and dependants; and instead of landed proprietors and farmers laying out their own money for their own benefit, with all the care and economy which this supposes, we should have hundreds of public officers, of various grades and characters, expending public money, for the supposed benefit of the public, in a business totally foreign to the proper functions of Government, and without a possibility of effectual superintendence; the inevitable consequence of which would be, bad work, idle habits, and profuse and wasteful expenditure. Lastly, when the land had been reclaimed, whatever care might be taken to dispose of it in farms of reasonable size, however durable might be the interest granted, or whatever legal restrictions might be attempted to be imposed, the old process of the subdivision of the land, and the multiplication of the persons subsisting upon it, would run its course. Nothing can supply the place ofthe watchful supervision exercised by a proprietor, for the protection of his own interests, in such a case.
A peasant proprietary may succeed to a certain extent63, where there is a foundation of steadiness of character, and a habit of prudence, and a spring of pride, and a value for independence and comfort; but we fear that all these words merely show the vain nature of schemes of peasant proprietorship for Ireland. The small holders of Belgium64, with all their industry and frugality,have, during this calamitous period, been the most distressed population in Europe next to Ireland. Their own resources were too small to carry them through a season of dearth, and they had no employers to assist them. In India, society is based on a system of small holdings, and there is no country in which destructive famines have been so common. In Ireland itself, the greatest over-population, and consequently the greatest distress, prevailed in those districts in which, owing to the existence of long leases, the landlords had no power to prevent the subdivision of the land. Mere security of tenure is of no avail, without thecapital, and skill, and habits of life, and, above all, the wholesome moral qualities required to turn this advantage to good account. During the late season of dearth, food was dearer in the long peninsula which stretches to the south-west of England, than it was in Ireland, and the poor had no resource analogous to the farming stock of the Irish small holder; but the Devonshire and Somersetshire labourer lives by wages paid by persons richer than himself; and though severely pinched, he had enough for daily bread, with some assistance from charitable aid, which was generally afforded throughout the west of England, during the late season of distress, either by parochial subscriptions or by allowances from the unions. The south-west of England is the least favourable specimen which Great Britain affords of the system of society based upon wages, because the flourishing manufactures which formerly existed in that quarter have disappeared before the superior natural advantages of the North, and wages are consequently very low65. In every otherpart of this island the contrast is more decidedly to the disadvantage of the small holdings; and in Northumberland, which is a county of large farms, there may be said to be no poor. Whether the good order, the physical well-being, or the moral and intellectual progress of rural society, be considered, the best model is that in which the educated and enlightened proprietor, the substantial farmer, and the industrious labourer on regular wages, each performs his appropriate part.
The works required for deepening and straightening the course of many of the rivers are of peculiar importance to Ireland; because until the outfalls have been cleared, the landowners cannot enter upon the detailed or thorough drainage of their respective estates. In such cases the necessity of working upon the lands of different proprietors calls for the active interposition of the Board of Works, who make the preliminarysurvey, execute the work, and afterwards apportion the charge, according to the benefit derived by each person interested. The funds for carrying on these improvements had been chiefly obtained by the issue of debentures under the authority of the Acts of Parliament relating to the subject; but, under existing circumstances, loans were not to be expected from private individuals at a moderate rate of interest; and the ordinary loan fund of the Board of Works amounting to 60,000ℓ.a-year, was therefore reinforced with 120,000ℓ., transferred to it from the London Loan Commissioners, and 250,000ℓ.issued from the Consolidated Fund; making altogether a sum of 430,000ℓ.placed at the disposal of the Board of Works, between the 1st April, 1847, and the 1st April, 1848, to be advanced by them for works of utility in Ireland, but principally for drainage of the above-mentioned description.
Next to agricultural improvements, well-selected public works perhaps offer the greatest resource in the present unhappy circumstances of Ireland. It is a mistake to suppose that opening a good road may not be the most reproductive work in many districts; and the construction of railroadson the great lines of communication, does for the whole country what new roads do for particular districts, facilitating and stimulating every description of production, and agriculture more than all, binding society together by a closer intercourse and interchange of good offices, and rapidly diffusing through the remote provinces the advantages enjoyed by the more favoured parts of the country.
The objection to Lord George Bentinck’s plan for assisting Irish railways was, that while it was inadequate as a measure of relief, it was too large and indiscriminate when viewed as a measure for the promotion of public works. Private enterprise would have been overlaid; the bad lines would have been benefited at the expense of the good; the public credit would have been lowered; the available stock of national capital would have suffered an additional drain which it could ill afford; and after all, the object of relieving the existing distress would not have been attained. The famine was then at its height, and it could not be stayed by any measure short of distributing food to the multitude. After allowing for the largest number of persons whocould be employed on railways, millions must still have starved, if other more effectual steps had not been taken; and the sums advanced to the Railway Companies, large as they would have been, would not have perceptibly diminished the expense of feeding a whole nation66. When this primary object had been attained, and all the funds had been raised by loan which the state of Ireland required, the Government was then in a position to consider what assistancecould be given to railroads in common with other works of public utility; and 620,000ℓ.was voted by Parliament to be lent to Railways which were legally able to borrow, owing to their having paid up half their capital, and could undertake to expend within a certain fixed time, another sum of their own equal to that advanced to them. By the aid thus given, the great South-Western Railway of Ireland will be enabled to employ a large number of men throughout the winter, and the important object of opening the communication between Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, will be accomplished at a much earlier period than would otherwise have been the case.
The other works in progress in Ireland, with the aid of grants or loans from Parliament, are as follows: the Shannon navigation, which has been in operation for several years; the construction of new floating docks and markets at Limerick; works at Hawlbowline, with a view to render that place more useful as a naval station; four great works of combined navigation and drainage; the construction of three new colleges, and of several prisons and lunatic asylums; and the repair and construction offishery piers, for which 50,000ℓ.was voted in the session of 1846, and a further sum of 40,000ℓ.in the session of 1847.
*****
Having thus furnished as clear a sketch as the variety and complexity of the incidents would allow, of this remarkable crisis in our national affairs, when the events of many years were crowded into two short seasons, and a foundation was laid for social changes of the highest importance, it may be asked, what fruits have yet appeared of this portentous seed-time, and what the experience is which we have purchased at so heavy a cost?
First, it has been proved to demonstration, that local distress cannot be relieved out of national funds without great abuses and evils, tending, by a direct and rapid process, to an entire disorganisation of society. This is, in effect, to expose the common stock to a general scramble. All are interested in getting as much as they can. It is nobody’s concern to put a check on the expenditure. If the poor man prefers idling on relief works or being rationed with his wife and children, to hard labour; if the farmer discharges his labourers andmakes the state of things a plea for not paying rates or rent; if the landed proprietor joins in the common cry, hoping to obtain some present advantage, and trusting to the chance of escaping future repayments, it is not the men, but the system, which is in fault. Ireland is not the only country which would have been thrown off its balance by the attraction of “public money”à discrétion. This false principle eats like a canker into the moral health and physical prosperity of the people. All classes “make a poor mouth,” as it is expressively called in Ireland. They conceal their advantages, exaggerate their difficulties, and relax their exertions. The cotter does not sow his holding, the proprietor does not employ his poor in improving his estate, because by doing so they would disentitle themselves to their “share of the relief.” The common wealth suffers both by the lavish consumption and the diminished production, and the bees of the hive, however they may redouble their exertions, must soon sink under the accumulated burden. The officers of Government, overborne by numbers, and unable to test the interested representations pressed upon them from all quarters, cannotexercise their usual watchful care over the expenditure of the public money. Those persons who have the will to do their duty, have not the power. Those who have the power, have not the will. There is only one way in which the relief of the destitute ever has been, or ever will be, conducted consistently with the general welfare, and that is bymaking it a local charge. Those who know how to discriminate between the different claims for relief, then become actuated by a powerful motive to use that knowledge aright. They are spendingtheir own money. At the same time, those who have the means of employing the people in reproductive works, have the strongest inducement given them to do so. The struggle now is to keep the poor off the rates, and if their labour only replaces the cost of their food, it is cheaper than having to maintain them in perfect idleness.
Another point which has been established by the result of these extensive experiments in the science, if it may be so called, of relieving the destitute, is that two things ought to be carefully separated which are often confounded. Improvement is always a good thing, and relief is occasionally a necessarything, but the mixture of the two is almost always bad; and when it is attempted on a large scale without proper means of keeping it in check, it is likely to affect in a very injurious manner the ordinary motives and processes by which the business of society is carried on. Relief, taken by itself, offers, if it is properly administered, no motive to misrepresent the condition of the people; and being burdensome to the higher, and distasteful to the lower classes, it is capable of being carefully tested and subjected to effectual controul. But when relief is connected with profitable improvements and full wages, the most influential persons in each locality become at once interested in establishing a case in favour of it, and the higher are always ready to join with the lower classes in pressing forwardrelief workson a plea of urgent general distress, which it may be impossible to analyse and difficult to resist. Relief ought to be confined as much as possible to the infirm and helpless. Wages, by means of which improvements are carried on, should be given by preference to the able-bodied and vigorous. Relief ought to be on the lowest scale necessary for subsistence. Wages should besufficiently liberal to secure the best exertions of the labourer. Relief should be made so unattractive as to furnish no motive to ask for it, except in the absence of every other means of subsistence. Improvements should be encouraged and urged forward by every practicable means, both as regards the parties undertaking them, and those by whom they are executed. If labour is connected with relief, it should only be as a test of the destitution of the applicant, and of his being consequently entitled to a bare subsistence, in the same way as confinement in a workhouse is also a test; and the true way to make relief conducive to improvement, is to give the rich no choice between maintaining the able-bodied labourers as paupers, or employing them on full wages on profitable works, and to take care that the poor have no reason to prefer living on public alms, to the active exercise of their industry in their own behalf.
Among all our discouragements, there are not wanting many and sure grounds of hope for the future. The best sign of all is, that the case of Ireland is at last understood. Irish affairs are no longer a craft and mystery. The abyss has been fathomed. Thefamine has acted with a force which nothing could resist, and has exposed to view the real state of the country, so that he who runs may read. We have gained, both by what has been unlearned and by what has been learned during the last two years: and the result is, that the great majority of people, both in Ireland and England, are now agreed upon the course which ought to be pursued, in order to arrive at the wished-for end. The attention of the two countries has also been so long directed to the same subject, that a new reciprocity of interest and feeling has been established, and the public opinion of each has begun to act upon the other with a force which was never felt before.
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 theGovernment 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 ofbearing. 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 doing67.”
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 multitudehad failed68. 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 emotionthan those of her sons and daughters69. 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 Englandwas 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 potato70; conacre, and theexcessive 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 holdersto 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 degree71; 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-desiredchange 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 lots72, which opensthe 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 beendivers 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 persecution73, when the Irish weretreated 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 besidesIreland. 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.