CHAPTER XXX.

The great Irish Famine-The Potato-Rot of 1845 and 1846-Modes of relief adopted by the Government-Mr. O'Connell's call upon England for help-His death-Munificent Subscriptions-Irish Landlords and Cottier Tenants- Navigation Laws suspended-Ten Hours' Factory Bill-Abundant Harvest in England-Monetary Pressure and Panic-Excitement on the subject of National Defences-The Duke of Wellington's Letter-Proposed increase of the Income Tax-The House of Commons on the night of the 24th of FebruaryNews of the Abdication of Louis Philippe-Real causes of the overthrow of the French Monarchy-The Revolution of 1848-Provisional Government appointed-Chartism in England revived by the Socialist Revolution-The tenth of April-Preparations of the Government-Physical-force Chartism at an end-The attempt at Insurrection in IrelandThe French Republic established in bloodshed-Paris in a State of Siege-Prince Louis Napoleon, President - Convulsions of the Continent-Progress of improvement in England-The Public Health Bill-The impulse to social amelioration given by Prince Albert-Free-Trade Banquet at Manchester to celebrate the final extinction of the CornLaws-Meeting of Parliament the next day-Tranquillity and Loyalty of England contrasted in the Royal Speech with the condition of the Continental Kingdoms.

Postscript.

Tables Sovereigns-Population-Occupations of the People-Census of Education-Census of Religious Worship-Revenue and Expenditure-Commerce.

ONE of the most intelligent and experienced of the official men attached to the Whig Government thus wrote in the beginning of 1848: "The time has not yet arrived at which any man can with confidence say that he fully appreciates the nature and the bearings of that great event which will long be inseparably associated with the year just departed." That event was "the great Irish Famine." This thoughtful writer adds, "Unless we are much deceived, posterity will trace up to that famine the commencement of a salutary revolution in the habits of a nation long singularly unfortunate, and will acknowledge that on this, as on many other occasions, Supreme Wisdom has educed permanent good out of transient evil.” *

We have seen how the first appearances of the Potato-Rot, which was to deprive the population of Ireland of their too-exclusive article of subsistence, induced that alarm in 1845 which was the turning-point in the memorable change of the policy of sir Robert Peel as to the supply of food for the population of all this kingdom. The disease in the crop of 1845 was not so universal as to prevent a considerable portion being saved; but the quantity that was

"Edinburgh Review," vol. lxxxvii. p. 229. Article "On the Irish Crisis," by Sir Charles Trevelyan.

548

THE POTATO-ROT-GOVERNMENT MEASURES.

[1846. found unfit for food when the store-pits were opened in 1846, fully testified to the wisdom of the step which sir Robert Peel took upon his own responsibility before he quitted office, of giving a commission to a great mercantile house to purchase a hundred thousand pounds' worth of Indian corn in the American markets. That supply was intrusted to Irish commissariat officers in the spring of 1846, to sell from various depôts at a moderate price, wherever the ordinary supplies of food were found to be deficient. The necessity for something more effectual than even such a timely but partial supply was soon apparent. In 1846 the fatal potato blight took place earlier, and was much more destructive, than in 1845. Father Mathew, the great temperance apostle of Ireland, has described how, on the 27th of July, he saw in a journey from Cork to Dublin the doomed plant blooming in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest; but how, on his return on the 3rd of August, he beheld one wide waste of putrefying vegetation: "In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands, and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless." The experience of the partial failure of 1845 had not taught the people that it was dangerous to depend upon one species of food alone. The great proportion of the early culture of 1846 was that of potatoes. Towards the end of July the potatoes began to show symptoms of the disease of the previous year. There was first a little brown spot on the leaf; the spots gradually increased in number and size, until the foliage withered, and the stem became brittle. Then, although the stalks remained green, the leaves suddenly blackened; the growth of the root was arrested; the staple food of a nation had perished. No potatoes were that year pitted. Those that were of any value when dug up were immediately sold or consumed, in the natural apprehension that they would rot. The autumn came, and it was now found that the potato crop had, with very few local exceptions, universally and entirely failed.

Before the distress in Ireland had reached its height-before the word "Famine" was the only term which could express the real state of human beings who would die for want of food if help were not bestowed upon them— the government of lord John Russell had devised various modes for the relief of sufferings and privations which were, even in their early stage, far more extensive than those which had been caused by the failure of the potato crop in various years during the previous quarter of a century.

On the 28th of August, 1846, the royal assent was given to three Acts especially directed to meet the inevitable failure of the great Irish esculent. They were Acts for the employment of the poor in the distressed districts for a limited period; for providing additional funds for provisional loans and grants for public works; and for authorizing a further issue of money in aid of public works. The application of these measures was a tentative process. The Labour Rate Act at the beginning of September was directed to be applied to twenty-four districts, proclaimed to be in a state of distress. At the beginning of October this measure was found ineffectual, and the LordLieutenant issued a circular authorizing the undertaking of works of permanent utility. In the House of Commons, on the 20th of January, 1847, lord John Russell described how the Labour Rate Act and other Acts of the last session had worked. An immense staff of servants, upwards of eleven

1847.]

O'CONNELL'S CALL FOR HELP-HIS DEATH.

549

thousand, had been employed to furnish labour to half a million of adults, representing two millions of souls, at an expense estimated for January of 800,000l. It was difficult to find trustworthy servants, and to prevent the improper employment upon the works of persons by no means destitute. It was desirable for the government to adopt new measures; to form Relief Committees empowered to receive subscriptions and levy rates, and to be intrusted with donations from the State. Out of the sums thus raised they were to purchase food, and deliver rations to the famishing inhabitants. The system of affording relief through public works had utterly broken down; the payment of money was evidently liable to gross abuse; and undrest food, such as meal, might be exchanged for less needful articles by the improvident. Rations of cooked food offered the most effectual mode of relieving the helpless and prostrate people. Then began that beneficial system which was limited by the Act to the 1st of October, and which reached its highest point in July, 1847, when upwards of three millions of persons received separate rations. The Famine was stayed. The harvest was approaching in which the staple food was not affected by the disease. Impressively has it been said by sir Charles Trevelyan-" This enterprise was in truth the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country. Organized armies, amounting altogether to some hundreds of thousands, had been rationed before; but neither ancient nor modern history can furnish a parallel to the fact, that upwards of three millions of persons were fed every day in the neighbourhood of their own homes, by administrative arrangements emanating from and controlled by one central office." *

The last time that the voice of Daniel O'Connell was heard in Parliament was on the 8th of February, 1847. He called upon the House of Commons to do something speedy and efficacious-some great act of national generosity, calculated upon a broad and liberal scale. "Ireland is in your hands-in your power. If you do not save her, she cannot save herself." The great demagogue was dying. The wretched parodists of his system of agitation, which was as powerful for good as for evil-the ranting and swaggering young Irelanders, who, as Charles Lamb said of the early dramatists, used blood as they would "the paint of the property-man in the theatre"-had separated from him when he declared against the employment of physical force to obtain the Repeal of the Union. In the famine he perhaps clearly saw how social evils had been neglected for the advocacy of purely political objects, very uncertain in their possible benefits for the future, and deeply injurious in their present tendency to put aside all real improvement. He died at Genoa on the 15th of May. Had he lived he would have seen and acknowledged how England had answered, not merely his call upon her generosity, but had yielded at once and wholly to the cry that had gone up to Heaven from the afflicted land, and had stretched forth her hand to succour and to save. Distressing as it must be, even at this distance of time, to look back upon the amount of human misery produced by this national calamity, there were circumstances connected with its relief that we can regard with pride and admiration. The noble exertions of public officers and private individuals, the unstinting employment of the pecuniary resources of the government, the

"Edinburgh Review," vol. lxxxvii. p. 269.

550

MUNIFICENT SUBSCRIPTIONS.

[1847.

munificence of the subscriptions sent to Ireland from the sister kingdom, the tender sympathy with the sufferers of every true English heart-these might be considered by a captious few as the mere payment of a debt from the happier island; but if so the payment was large and liberal, and such as could scarcely have been anticipated, even by those who best understood the English character. Captain Mann, an officer of the Coast Guard, who had seen the whole course of this great affliction, and who, when the worst was over, said, "I frequently look back upon it as a fearful and horrid dream," was of opinion that "such sufferings, and such help, cannot be easily forgotten." The Government in 1846 and 1847 advanced more than seven millions of money. The British Association for the Relief of the Distress in Ireland and Scotland applied to Ireland half a million sterling of the subscriptions raised. The Society of Friends collected in addition 168,000l.; and many persons in England contributed largely, independently of any association. Sir Robert Peel, in his Cabinet Memorandum of November 1, 1845, thought there would be no hope of contributions here for Irish relief. He apprehended that the charitable would have Monster meetings and Repeal rent too present to their minds to make any great exertions.* All such feelings quickly passed away. England did her duty. "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." It was during the eventful years from 1846 to 1850 that the vast amount of Emigration took place which has been called the Irish Exodus. Before the gold discoveries in Australia, the emigrants from England and Scotland were comparatively few. "It is to Ireland that we must chiefly ascribe the departure during those five years, of a million and a quarter of emigrants from the ports of the United Kingdom, three-fourths of whom went to the United States." ‡

Sir James Graham wrote to sir Robert Peel at the commencement of the alarm with respect to the potato crop, "A great national risk is always incurred when a population so dense as that of Ireland subsists on the potato; for it is the cheapest and the lowest food, and if it fail no substitute can be found for starving multitudes." § Why was the population of Ireland driven to subsist on the cheapest and the lowest food? Why was the agriculture of the South and West in a neglected state, little wheat being grown, with oats inferior for milling purposes, and green crops almost unknown? Why was the sole foundation for a sufficiency of food the renting of a bit of land on which a family could be located in a miserable cabin; the population rapidly increasing, inasmuch as land used for raising potatoes will support three times the number as the same land laid down to corn will support? These small tenures paid the landlord a higher rent than could have been obtained by letting to cultivators on a large scale. The rent of the cottier tenantry was always forthcoming, either in money or in kind. This certain payment, however delayed, was the absolute condition of their precarious existence upon the cheapest and the lowest food. Too often, even in

"Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel," p. 143.

Sir Charles Trevelyan- " Edinburgh Review," vol. lxxxvii. p. 316.

See the Twenty-second Report of the Emigration Commissioners, 1862. Table, p. 65. "Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel," p. 114.

1847.]

IRISH LANDLORDS AND COTTIER TENANTS.

551

the best times, they were standing on the margin of absolute want, especially when they were waiting for the ingathering of their crop. It was as truly as boldly said, by a great political economist, soon after the Irish crisis"With individual exceptions (some of them very honourable ones), the owners of Irish estates do nothing for the land but drain it of its produce." He had previously said "In no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Mr. O'Connell, in the speech we have quoted, replied to some such inference :-"It is asserted that the Irish landlords do not do their duty. Several of them have done their duty; others have not. But recollect how incumbered is the property of Ireland, how many of her estates are in Chancery, how many in the hands of trustees." The legislalature did recollect this; and in 1849 passed the Act by which a Commission for the sale of Incumbered Estates was established. From the beneficial operations of this Commission, and through a better spirit infused into the proprietors of unincumbered estates, much of the land has come into the hands of skilful cultivators; and that race of cottier tenantry, of whose family one or more of its members was supported by beggary, has in great part vanished. Religiously and wisely did the Society of Friends in Ireland regard the mysterious dispensation with which their country had been visited in the blight of the potato, "as a means permitted by an Allwise Providence to exhibit more strikingly the unsound state of its social condition."

The question of a probable scarcity of food, not only in Ireland and in the Highlands and Isles of Scotland but in the kingdom generally, was very early in the session brought before parliament; upon a proposal of the government for the total suspension of all import duties upon corn, and of the Navigation Laws through which importation was restricted. There was very little opposition to this measure. The Protectionists were paralyzed by the fearful presence of the Irish famine, which forbad the consideration. of class interests whilst three millions of people were crying out for food. Sir Robert Peel has justly said, that if subsequent events could fairly be taken into account, the various measures taken by parliament to mitigate the sufferings of 1846 and 1847, and "the hurried suspension of the Navigation Laws and of the remaining duties on articles of subsistence, would exercise no unfavourable influence on the opinion which might be formed on the precautionary measures of 1846." Unanimously as these measures were passed, as an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, there was scarcely a debate during the session in which the Repeal of the Corn-Laws, and the abolition or reduction of Protective Duties, were not denounced as causes of present injury and of future mischief. When the Budget was brought forward, lord George Bentinck denied that free-trade had caused any increased consumption, as affirmed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, except inslave-grown sugar and in foreign silks; and he read an address from the Spitalfields weavers to himself, which thus concluded:-" We entertain the idea that had your lordship possessed the reins of government, the people of Ireland would not have perished to the extent they have,

* John Stuart Mill—" Principles of Political Economy," book ii. chap. ii. sect. 6.