"My LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,—

"It is with the deepest concern that, upon your again assembling, I have to call your attention to the dearth of provisions which prevails in Ireland, and in parts of Scotland.

"In Ireland, especially, the loss of the usual food of the people has been the cause of severe sufferings, of disease, and of greatly increased mortality among the poorer classes. Outrages have become more frequent, chiefly directed against property, and the transit of provisions has been rendered unsafe in some parts of the country.

"With a view to mitigate these evils, very large numbers of men have been employed, and have received wages, in pursuance of an Act passed in the last session of Parliament. Some deviations from that Act, which have been authorized by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in order to promote more useful employment, will, I trust, receive your sanction. Means have been taken to lessen the pressure of want, in districts which are most remote from the ordinary sources of supply. Outrages have been repressed, as far as it was possible, by the military and police.

"It is satisfactory to me to observe, that in many of the most distressed districts, the patience and resignation of the people have been most exemplary.

"The deficiency of the harvest in France and Germany, and other parts of Europe, has added to the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of provisions.

"It will be your duty to consider, what further measures are required to alleviate the existing distress. I recommend to you to take into your serious consideration, whether, by increasing, for a limited period, the facilities for importing from foreign countries, and by the admission of sugar more freely into breweries and distilleries, the supply of food may be beneficially augmented.

"I have also to direct your earnest attention to the permanent consideration of Ireland. You will perceive, by the absence of political excitement, an opportunity for taking a dispassionate survey of the social evils which afflict that part of the United Kingdom. Various measures will be laid before you, which, if adopted by Parliament, may tend to raise the great mass of the people in comfort, to promote agriculture, and to lessen the pressure of that competition for the occupation of land, which has been the fruitful source of crime and misery."

In the House of Lords, the debate on the address in reply to the Queen's speech was not very remarkable. All the speakers admitted that which it was impossible to deny, the terrible reality of the famine, unequalled, as Lord Hatherton said he believed it to be, in past history, and certainly not to be paralleled in the history of modern times. Lord Brougham made a joke and raised a laugh at the expense of the Irish landlords. He inclined, he said, to the opinion that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner, but it was objected that such a course would have the effect of bringing the Irish proprietors to England at a time when their presence at home was much needed. "God forbid," exclaimed his lordship, "that I should be instrumental in bringing the Irish proprietors over to this country."[192] He further said, in one of those involved sentences of his, "that he held it to be impossible that, when the cry of hunger prevailed over the land—when there was a melancholy substance as well as the cry—when the country was distracted from day to day by accounts of the most heartrending spectacles he had ever seen, heard, or read of—that at a time when there was deep misery and distress prevailing, and proved in Ireland—rendered only the more heartrending, because the more touching, by the patience—the admirable and almost inimitable patience—with which it seemed to be borne—that at a time when that great calamity existed—when there were scenes enacted all over those districts, which they could find nothing existing in the page of disease and death and pestilence, ever following in the train of famine—to which nothing existing was to be found in the page of Josephus, or on the canvas of Poussin, or in the dismal chant of Dante ... that they should be in circumstances like these, and yet be able calmly and temperately to take up questions of permanent policy, he held to be absolutely and necessarily impossible."

More to the point were some of the remarks made by Lord Stanley, then in opposition. With regard to the awful visitation which afflicted the sister island from one end to the other, he said he believed that no exaggeration could, in many instances, exceed the dreadful reality. He was quite content, that for the prevention and palliation of the evil, for the purpose of rescuing the country from the guilt of permitting a large portion of its people knowingly to STARVE, there is no sacrifice, no efforts which her Majesty's Government can call upon the people of this country to make, which will not be cheerfully responded to by the members of your Lordships' house, and by the representatives of the people, who will, in this case, represent the deliberate and cordial sense of the whole country. The Labour-rate Act he pronounced "a great blunder." With regard to the non-establishment of food depots, he said that if he could accuse the Government of an error on that head, they were led into it by too rigid an adherence to the principles of political economy—to the abstract principles of political economy, that were meant for the permanent improvement of the people; but the question might arise as to the propriety of acting against such principles, in order to meet an extraordinary emergency.

In the House of Commons, one of the earliest speakers on the address was Smith O'Brien. He said, he thought he would be wanting in his duty to his country if he did not, on that occasion, make an appeal to the House on behalf of those whose sufferings could not be exaggerated—could not be described. He was asked, by assenting to the address, if he was prepared to say that the Government had been altogether guiltless of having produced that frightful state of things; and if he were called upon to affirm, that everything had been done by the Government, which might have been done by them, he would answer, that he believed it was in their power, to prevent one single individual from dying of starvation in Ireland. He did not impute to them the wilful intention of bringing about a state of things so disastrous, but it was his opinion, and the opinion of others in Ireland, that they had not introduced those measures which were suitable to the condition in which Ireland was placed, and had thus brought about the state of things which was now witnessed. "To the declaration of the Prime Minister, last session, that there was to be no legislative interference with the price of food, he believed they owed many of the disasters which had taken place in Ireland." This sentiment was received with cheers. Mr. O'Brien then made a point in favour of the Irish landlords. Was this, he asked, to be considered as a local calamity, or was it to be considered as a national calamity? If the Irish members were legislating in an Irish parliament, it would be considered by them as a national calamity, and all classes—the fund holder, the office holder, the mortgagee, the annuitant, would be called on to contribute to the general exertion to alleviate distress. He wished to learn whether the House considered this as an Imperial calamity or not; and whilst he, for his own part, refrained from any supplication to the Imperial treasury, he could assure the House, that there were millions in Ireland, who did not consider the Union a union in which all the advantages ought to be on the part of England. England had the advantage of the Irish absentee rents, and the advantage of applying all the resources of Ireland; and the Irish people did not consider that it ought to be looked upon as a union for the advantage of England alone, and no union when it was for the interests of Ireland. Nothing, he thought, could be more outrageous than that one class, who suffered most from the disasters which had taken place—namely, the landlords of Ireland—should be called upon to bear the whole burthen of this calamity.

Smith O'Brien was quite right in saying it was most unreasonable that the Irish landlords should be called upon to bear the whole expense of the Famine, but it is equally true, that, as a body, they made no effort worth the name to stay or mitigate the Famine, until it had knocked at their own hall doors in the shape of rates, present and prospective, that threatened them with the confiscation of their properties.

Mr. Labouchere, the Irish Chief Secretary, as was to be expected, was put up to defend the Government, and to foreshadow the future measures of relief. His line of defence was a strange one for an English minister to adopt. It was, that the agricultural population of Ireland, vast in its numbers, were always on the brink of starvation; so that when the potato blight swept the country from sea to sea, it was impossible for the Government to meet the disaster fully. An English journal of high repute,[193] whose words have been already quoted in these pages, truly said, that for five hundred years Ireland had been completely in the hands of England, to mould and fashion her as she pleased; and now at the end of those five centuries, a British statesman does not blush to urge, as an argument in favour of the Government of which he is a member, that the normal state of Ireland was—to be on the brink of starvation. This defence, weak and inconclusive from every point of view, served his colleagues and himself, of course, but little, while it was calculated to cover his nation with shame and confusion. He goes on to prove the fact, alas! too easily proved; he goes to Lord Devon's Commission, and tells us from it, that it is no exaggeration to say, that the people of Ireland are the worst housed, the worst clothed, and the worst fed of any people in Europe. It is a country, proceeds the Secretary, of which I find an account given from a most unexceptionable source, the Commission of Poor Law Enquiry in 1835. From this Report it appeared, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers, whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two shillings and six pence a week; and that of these one-half were destitute during thirty weeks of every year. "This," said he, "is the ordinary condition of Ireland, and it is upon such a country as this that the calamity has fallen—a calamity which I believe to be without a parallel in modern times."

Such was the defence of the Irish Chief Secretary. And here it is worth while remarking, that in the earlier stages of the Famine it was the practice of the government organs to throw doubt on the extent of its ravages which were published, and the Government, apparently acting on these views, most culpably delayed the measures by which the visitation could be successfully combated. Now, their part was to admit to the fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for their want of energy and success in overcoming it. On the same principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith, goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight. The money value of the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at L11,250,000: the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be L4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes L15,916,000. Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered the money value of the crop which had failed, or the stock of human food which had been supplied.

The chronic poverty and misery of Ireland, as set forth in the Report which the Poor Law Commissioners published in 1835, seems to have been the favourite armoury whence Mr. Labouchere loved to draw his logical weapons, for the defence of the Government on this occasion. In that Report he finds it stated that "Mayo alone would furnish beggars to all England."[194] Be it remembered, that the Poor Law Commissioners had published their Report eleven years before Mr. Labouchere made this speech, but he does not inform us what measures the British Government had in the meantime adopted, or if they had adopted any, to raise the people out of such a state of misery and degradation; but he clearly thinks he has brought forward a clever argument in his own and his colleagues' defence, when he states that one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, had such abundant and redundant pauperism. Yet this was in the "sister country"—the sister of that great and wealthy and enlightened England of which, no doubt, the Irish Secretary felt proud to be a native.

After offering some defence for the free-trade policy of his chief, and having indicated the measures the Government had prepared for Ireland, he resumed his seat, and was followed by Lord George Bentinck.

Lord George had, within a short time, attained to great importance in the House of Commons. After the protectionist party was deserted ("betrayed" was their own word), by Sir Robert Peel, that large-hearted and high-minded nobleman was installed in his place, as their leader. On the present occasion, without being severe or unkind towards the Government, he pointed out their shortcomings and mistakes with regard to the Irish crisis. Speaking for himself and the party with whom he acted, he said: "We shall be prepared to give our calmest and best attention to any measures her Majesty's ministers may be prepared to bring forward as remedies for that destitution which unhappily exists. But, sir, at the same time, we must be expected to deal frankly with the conduct of ministers, and whilst we are not disposed to say that ministers acted wrongly in declining to call Parliament together, not disposed to censure them for having overridden the law, and suspended the duties of the legislature itself, we are disposed to say, that the measures to which they have had recourse are not those to which we can altogether agree. It is impossible to view the operation of their poor-employment Act, and say that it has answered any good purpose." He held strongly the opinion, that the Government should have supplied food to the people, at least in remote districts, where it could not be otherwise procured. On this point he thus expressed his sentiments: "With respect to the supply of food to the people he, for one, cannot agree altogether in those principles of political economy which had been advanced by the Right Hon. gentleman, the Irish Secretary. This political economy of non-interference with the import and retail trade may be good in ordinary times, but in times such as the present, when a calamity unexampled in the history of the world has suddenly fallen upon Ireland—when there are no merchants or retailers in the whole of the West—when a country of which the population has been accustomed to live upon potatoes of their own growth, produced within a few yards of their own doors, is suddenly deprived of this, the only food of the people, it was not reasonable to suppose that, suddenly merchants and retailers would spring up to supply the extraordinary demands of the people for food. Therefore, I should say that this was a time when her Majesty's Ministers should have broken through these, the severe rules of political economy, and should, themselves, have found the means of providing the people of Ireland with food. The Right Hon. gentleman has said, that ministers have done wisely in adhering to this decision, but I think differently from them. When, every day, we hear of persons being starved to death, and when the Right Hon. gentleman himself admits that in many parts of the country the population has been decimated, I cannot say, that I think ministers have done all they might have done to avert the fatal consequences of this famine."[195] Lord George then read a letter from the Rev. Mr. Townsend, of Skibbereen, in which it was stated that in one month from the 1st of December to the 1st of January, there were one hundred and forty deaths in the workhouse of that town; the people having entered the workhouse, as they said, "that they might be able to die decently under a roof and be sure of a coffin." The Rev. Mr. Townsend also mentioned that in the churchyard of his parish there were, at one time, fourteen funerals waiting, whilst the burial of a fifteenth corpse was being completed. In the next parish to his, there were nine funerals at once in the churchyard, and in two other adjoining ones, there were six together in each. To prove his assertion that the Government should have done more in supplying food to the people, his lordship said: "At this moment, we know that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 quarters of corn in stock on hand in the different ports of London, Liverpool and Glasgow. I want to know, then, what was to have prevented ministers from sending any part, or all of this food to the West of Ireland, to feed the starving people there?... It would have kept the retailers and forestallers in order, and prevented them from availing themselves of the Famine to obtain undue prices. What do we see with regard to Indian meal? Why Indian corn is, at this moment, selling in New York at three shillings, and at Liverpool and in Ireland at nine shillings per bushel."[196]

The Prime Minister spoke towards the close of the debate, and, with the apparent intention of answering a question put by Smith O'Brien, said he was quite willing to consider what had occurred in Ireland as "a national calamity," and that the national resources were fitly employed in endeavouring to meet it. The reason he gave for not having summoned Parliament in the Autumn, as O'Connell and many others had suggested, or rather demanded, was a striking proof of the evils of absenteeism. "We had to consider," he said, "that if we did meet Parliament, we should be acting against the opinion of the Irish Government, and against the opinion of almost every one I saw who was connected with Ireland, who thought that to take away at that time—at the commencement of the severe pressure—every person connected by property with Ireland, would inflict a very great injury upon that country, and that, consequently, Parliament should not be called together at that time."[197] If it could be looked upon as a great injury to Ireland to have the comparatively few proprietors who are resident there absent for even one short month, doing important business for Ireland, how terrible the evil must be of having the owners of L4,000,000 of her rental continually absent, and to have her representatives in both Houses of Parliament absent, not merely for a month, but for about seven months out of every twelve!

Sir Robert Peel supported the Premier's view, and in a sentence remarkable for the same sort of logic, said—"He believed nothing effectual ever would or ever could be done in Ireland, without the active, earnest, and unremitting cooperation of the landlords of that country." No doubt, it is the very truth; but how can landlords co-operate for the good of Ireland unless they reside in it, and try to understand something about it? Let them, therefore, reside, or reimburse the country for the evil and loss of their non-residence.

The address was, of course, voted without a division.

The First Minister made no unnecessary delay in bringing the state of Ireland formally before Parliament. On the 25th of January, six days after the opening of the session, he rose in a full house; expressed his sense of the great responsibility under which he laboured, and claimed its indulgence whilst he endeavoured to explain what had been already done to counteract the disastrous results of the potato blight in Ireland; to call their attention to those measures which the Government considered necessary to meet the existing emergency, and finally to submit to its consideration other measures, which, in the opinion of her Majesty's advisers, were calculated to improve the general condition of that country, and lay the foundation of its permanent improvement.

He proceeded to develope this somewhat pretentious programme.

Like other members of the Government, he commenced by quoting the reports of Poor Law Commissioners, to prove that even in what were regarded in Ireland as prosperous times, that country was on the verge of starvation. A pretty confession for an English Prime Minister, to be sure; yet such was his argument and his excuse. It may be imagined, he said, how those who, in the most prosperous years, were scarcely able to maintain themselves, and may be said to have been on the brink of famine, were utterly unable to resist the flood of calamity which poured in upon them with a crop so lamentably deficient; a calamity almost without a parallel, because acting upon a very large population, a population of eight millions of people,—in fact he should say it was like a famine of the 13th century acting upon a population of the 19th century. He then went into some figures to show how vast the operations of the Board of Works were. At present, he said, they had 11,587 officials, and half a million of people at work, at a weekly cost of between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds. He took up the objections against the Labour-rate Act, and the reproductive works authorized by the "Labouchere Letter." Very soon after the Labour-rate Act had come into operation there came, he said, on the part of the proprietors and country gentlemen of Ireland, a complaint that the works were useless, that they were not wanted, and that they were not reproductive. The First Minister, strange to say, did not attach any great value to these objections. "I think," he said, "the object being relief, and to combine relief with a certain amount of work, to show that habits of industry have not been entirely abandoned, that the productive nature of the work was a question of secondary importance. We spend in Ireland upwards of L1,000,000 a-year in poor-rates, and I do not believe that if enquiry were made it would be found that any productive works were the result." So much the worse; and it was one of the great objections to the Irish Poor-law system, that under it no provision was made for the profitable employment of able-bodied paupers. To call the productiveness or non-productiveness of the labour of half a million of men a matter of secondary importance was, certainly, most cool assurance on the part of a professed political economist, who must hold as a central dogma of that science that labour is the principal producer of capital. Everybody admitted that the crying want of Ireland was the want of capital; yet here is a Minister, holding in his hands her destinies during a life-and-death struggle for existence, and an ardent disciple of Adam Smith besides, expressing his belief that to expend in useless and even pernicious works the labour of half a million of men was a matter of secondary importance; and because it was, he did not attach any great weight to the objection! It was not, therefore, he said, such an objection that caused the Government to sanction a modification of the law as was announced in the letter of the Irish Chief Secretary, but because it was desirable to obtain the co-operation of the landed gentry of Ireland, and, if possible, to have the labour made reproductive, that the plan of reproductive works was sanctioned. But this plan did not win the Irish landowners, and they began a new agitation for townland divisions. On this point he quoted the following passage from a letter of Smith O'Brien, in which the Prime Minister said he fully concurred: "This plan had the merit of being intelligible, simple, and effective. It is undoubtedly better that the population should be so employed than in destroying good land, by making new lines of road which are wholly unnecessary, or in otherwise doing absolute mischief. It will, however, have the effect of still further pauperizing the labour of the country. To elucidate this result in the simplest manner, let us suppose that there are one hundred labourers in a district which belongs to two landlords, whose incomes are equal, and one of whom now employs fifty independent workmen, whilst the other does not employ a single labourer. It is at present necessary to provide for the maintenance of fifty unemployed labourers. These are now set to work upon the roads, and the expense of their maintenance falls upon the two proprietors in equal proportions. If the proposed plan be adopted, the improving landholder will naturally desire to exempt himself from taxation, without employing more hands than he at present requires. This he could do by dismissing all his present workmen. There would then be one hundred surplus labourers in the district. As these must be maintained at the expense of the two properties, each proprietor would eventually be compelled, in self-defence, to employ fifty. The landholder who originally employed this number will thus escape taxation, without engaging more labourers than he requires; but his labourers will cease to be independent workmen, chosen and paid by himself, and subject to his own control. They will be sent to him by the Relief Committee of the district; they will be placed under the superintendence of an expensive staff of stipendiaries appointed by the Board of Works, and will be paid out of the funds raised for the relief of the poor. A system not very dissimilar to this was acted upon in several parts of England, previous to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and was found to produce effects most demoralizing to the labouring population—paralyzing all the energies of independent labour and of individual enterprise, and in many respects operating most unjustly upon particular classes of property."[198] Referring to the value of independent labour, the Premier said: "I admit the evils of the present system, but I think that still greater danger would have ensued if we had done that which I conceive to be one of the most pernicious acts which a Government can do, the depriving labourers of their independence, and thus permanently injuring the great and important class to which those labourers belonged."

Through all the Famine time, there is nothing more remarkable than the manner in which the expounders of the views of Government, as well as many others, managed, when it suited them, to confound two things which should have been kept most jealously distinct,—(1.) What was best for the Famine crisis itself; (2.) What was best for the permanent improvement of the country. The confounding of these two questions led to conclusions of the most unwarrantable and deceptive kind. In the present instance, the Prime Minister himself seems to fall into the same mistake; or he goes into it with his eyes open, that he may be able to draw conclusions to suit his purpose. The proposition laid down by him is by no means unreasonable in itself; in fact it may be accepted as true: the fallacy is, that he keeps out of sight the peculiar circumstances of the case, and puts his proposition stripped of those circumstances, which should greatly modify it, when applied to Ireland, as she then was. Here is the Premier's argument: Smith O'Brien, in the extract quoted, said it was found to be a great evil in England, before the Poor-laws were revised, that employers, instead of choosing their own workmen, had them sent to them by the parish authorities. This produced two bad results: (1.) The men did not give a good day's work, and so the employer was injured; (2.) In practice it was found most demoralizing to the labourers themselves, destroying their independence, and paralyzing individual enterprise. Lord John assents most approvingly to all this, and then applying it to the existing state of Ireland, says, that by such a system still greater dangers would have ensued, and that one of the most pernicious acts which a Government could do would be to adopt it, for it would deprive labourers of their independence, and thus permanently injure the great and important class to which they belonged. The fault in this reasoning is plain enough. If the system recommended for ensuring reproductive employment were to be a permanent arrangement, the evils which resulted from it in England would, in all likelihood, result from it here—for the time being; but the demoralization of labour would not, in the case, be greater than that already in existence on the Public Works, from which there was no reproduction; nor could it be near so great as what he was about to propose that the people should be fed without any labour, or labour test whatever. But nothing done to counteract the Famine should be regarded as a permanent arrangement, suitable to the ordinary wants of the country; on the contrary, the extraordinary means adopted to meet an extraordinary crisis should, from the nature of things, pass away with the crisis. The Famine once over in Ireland, labour would soon return to its ordinary channels. The simple question: "Was it better to employ the labour of the country on productive rather than on non-productive works during the Famine?" became involved and obscured by the enunciation of principles which applied only to an ordinary state of society. It is an amusing commentary on the line of argument adopted above by the First Minister, that he concludes this very speech with two distinct sets of measures for Ireland, one temporary, to meet the Famine, and another permanent.

The first great means he proposed for arresting the progress of the Famine was to establish soup-kitchens, and to give the people food without any labour test whatever. Was the townsland boundary system, which he had just condemned, half so demoralizing to the labourer as this? Certainly not; but this had the excuse, that there was now no time for anything but the immediate supply of food: exactly so; but when there was time, it was wasted in needless delay, and misused in barren discussions about questions of political economy, and the probable extent of the Famine, when its real extent was already well known.

The question of task work has been dealt with already. It was insisted on at a time when a very large number of the working poor were so exhausted with starvation that their physical capacity for work of any kind was almost completely gone. This fact is more than sufficiently proved by the evidence given at various coroners' inquests; still the Government persevered in insisting upon it, and Colonel Jones was amongst the most determined in doing so. In addressing the House on the present occasion, Lord John Russell said it was reported to the Government that the people on the Public Works were seen loitering about the roads; that the Government then introduced task work; that it met great opposition, but that the Lord Lieutenant remained firm, and had it carried out; an announcement which was received with "loud cheers." And no one would be inclined to find fault with task work, if the people had strength enough left to earn fair wages at it, but they had not—a fact which was, long before, evident to everybody but the Government; but even they saw it, or at least were compelled to acknowledge it at last, and then the Prime Minister is furnished with a convenient letter from the same Colonel Jones, so late, he tells the House, as the 19th of January, in which that gentleman informs the Premier that it would be better to give the people food for nothing than to give them any more money; and as for task work, the Colonel says of them, that "their strength was gone, and they had not power to exert themselves." This looks wonderfully like a letter written to order. The people, for many months, had been quite unequal to task work, but the Colonel could never see it until the line of policy resolved upon by his chief required him to clear his vision. "Sir," continued Lord John, "the opinion of the Government previously to the receipt of this letter was, that the system had become so vast in itself, while at the same time destitution and want of food had so greatly increased, that it was desirable, if possible, to attempt some temporary scheme by which, if possible, some of the evils which now met us might be mitigated, and with so vast an expenditure of money, some more effectual relief might be afforded." He then laid his new scheme before the House. 1. His first proposal was to form the country into districts, with a relief committee in each, empowered to receive subscriptions, levy rates, and receive donations from the Government. By these means the committees were to purchase food, and establish soup-kitchens in the different districts, where food was to be distributed without any labour test; the labourer, however, was to be allowed to work on his own plot of ground, for the next harvest. The Lord Lieutenant, he said, and the Board of Works were consulted about this, and approved of it. The system was to be carried out in the first instance by a preparatory measure, and then by a Bill to be proposed to Parliament. 2. As soon as circumstances would permit, by an easy transition, and without disturbing existing arrangements, no further presentments would be made, and no new public works undertaken. The Lord Lieutenant was of opinion that if the roads which had been already begun should be left in an unfinished state, much evil would result, and he therefore suggested that those roads should be completed. With respect to the money which had been already expended, and was being expended, on public works in Ireland, a claim had been made that it should not wholly be a burthen upon that country. Sir, said the Premier, passing by the remote causes of these evils, and looking at the present resources of Ireland, I think it would not be right that the whole burthen should remain on Irish property. We shall, therefore, propose, on a future day, that an arrangement shall be made by Parliament, by which, in each succeeding year, when an instalment becomes due, the payment of one-half of that instalment shall suffice, and that the other half shall be remitted. We purpose, however, that the whole debt shall be kept up until the half of it be paid; thus providing that one-half of the whole charge shall fall upon the public. "I should state," he continued, "that with regard to the financial part of the question, the sums paid have been issued out of the Consolidated Fund, and that there is not contemplated any new issue of Exchequer bills. At the same time it must be considered, when I make this proposition to Parliament, that it is placing a very considerable burthen on the finances of the country; and that by placing that burthen upon its finances, I do feel myself disabled from making some proposition, which otherwise I should be called on to make, and which would involve further advances, but which I think it is now hardly fair to the people of this country to propose. When it is said—'Let the burthen be borne by the Consolidated Fund, or by the Imperial Treasury, and the Imperial Exchequer,' I must always recollect that these sums are not granted by Government or by Parliament without the most serious consideration, and that they are sums derived from the people of this country, by their payment of the taxes upon soap, sugar, tea, and coffee; from the surplus of which we are enabled to come to the assistance of Ireland. And, sir, while I feel that there is a disposition in this country to do everything that is liberal towards Ireland, in this respect, we must also consider the difficulties and privations to which the people of England will be subjected." These words of the First Minister were evidently spoken in a spirit of kindness and compassion; still it is hard for an Irishman to avoid feeling that they are degrading and offensive. Ireland is not regarded as part and parcel of the United Kingdom in any part of the quotation. He speaks of placing a serious burthen on the finances "of this country," meaning England only. Again: the sums advanced are, he feels, derived from the people "of this country," by their payment of taxes on the necessaries of life, from the surplus of which "we are" enabled to come to the assistance of Ireland—of Ireland as an alien—a beggar,—who clings to us and looks to us in her misery, but who has no claim upon us, except her starvation and our great bounty;—to all which an advanced Irish nationalist might well reply—"Why not cut her adrift then, and let her shift for herself, as she has so often craved and demanded?" It would seem to be assumed by the Prime Minister, that Ireland never paid any taxes, never helped to fight any battles for England, never manned any ships, never did anything to entitle her people to be kept from dying of starvation, when the Famine-plague fell upon her. Lord John Russell keenly felt the placing of a considerable burthen upon the finances of England—"this country" was his word. All the unjust, and unnecessary, and extravagant wars ever waged by England, were burthens upon the finances of the country, just as much as the grants to relieve the Irish famine; and it is a question if a Minister ever felt it necessary to make so many apologies in asking the sinews of war from Parliament, as Lord John did, when asking the means of saving millions of the Queen's subjects from death by a famine, for the existence of which they could in nowise be held responsible.

Lord John next proposed a loan of L50,000 for one year, to enable landed proprietors to furnish seed for land. He had, he said, some misgivings about proposing this loan to Parliament, but still the Government thought it right to do so. The loan was not to be made to the small tenants themselves, which he considered would be disadvantageous, but to the proprietors, which course, he thought would be safe and beneficial. His lordship then read an extract from an address signed by the Marquis of Sligo and Mr. George H. Moore, in which the people were earnestly entreated to petition Parliament to take such steps as might ensure an immediate and sufficient supply of food. "I own, sir," he continued, "that I am astonished at this—I am astonished that, at a time like this, men of education—men who seek to relieve their countrymen from the difficulties which encompass them, should tell them to demand from Parliament, such steps as may be necessary for an immediate, a constant and a cheap supply of food. Why, sir, that is a task which it is impossible for us to accomplish—that is a task which they should tell their countrymen, that it is impossible for us to perform—that the visitation under which they are suffering has made it impossible for man; that is a task which is beyond all human power; all that we can possibly do being, in some mode, to alleviate the existing distress—to lighten somewhat the dreadful calamity which has befallen them. They should not imagine that it is in our power to turn scarcity, and even famine into plenty. But, sir, what surprises me all the more in reference to this announcement, is, that it so happens that at Castlebar, where the people of the surrounding country are requested to meet, there is a Union workhouse, which Union workhouse should contain 600 inmates, but which, at present, contains not more than 130—the doors being closed against other persons seeking, and in need of admittance, and the guardians saying, that it is impossible for them to levy the rates, in order to enable other persons in want of food to come to that workhouse for relief. Amongst those who have not paid the rates, who have not furnished the money by which famine might have been, to a certain degree, averted, are some who, we cannot but suppose, are fully able to pay what is due from them; and I cannot but see in this proposal a most unhappy tendency—an unhappy tendency, which I have more than once remarked—to recommend to others to do some vague and impossible thing—to call upon Government, or Parliament to do something, the practicability of which is not considered; to confer some benefit that may be visionary or impossible, whilst the plain practical duty of paying the rates, for the sustenance of starving men, women and children in the neighbourhood, is left neglected and unperformed" (hear, hear, from all sides).

The Premier next proceeded to lay before the House other measures which the Government considered would be of permanent as well as immediate benefit to Ireland.

These measures were three in number: 1. An improved drainage act; 2. An Act for the reclamation of waste lands, and, 3. A system of out-door relief, at the discretion of the guardians of the poor. Of the Drainage Act, which he was about to propose, he said, it would be founded on various previous Drainage Acts, but more especially upon the Act of the previous session, and the Treasury Minute of the 1st of December. According to those Acts and that Minute, he proposed that, "When the improvement of an estate, by draining and other operations, by reclamation of waste lands—when a certain improvement in the value of the lands reclaimed will be produced, so that the legal heirs will not be prejudiced, can be made, a certain advance shall be made from the public funds." The usual rate of interest for such advances from the Treasury used to be five per cent.; by the act of 1846 the rate payable on such advances was reduced to three and a half per cent., with repayment in twenty-two years; making six and a half per cent, in each year, until the expiration of twenty-two years, when the advance, principal and interest, would be repaid. The Government now proposed to take the terms of the Drainage Act, and to extend them to various improvements, not confining the operation of the measure to drainage alone; and to do away with those technical difficulties which arose under the former Act, and which rendered it difficult for tenants for life to borrow money. This Act only applied to private estates, but the Government now intended to consolidate former Drainage Acts of a more general nature, so that the drainage of districts could be carried out by the majority of the proprietors of any district agreeing upon the drainage of such district, the minority being bound by their acts. 2. A further announcement, and a very striking one, was made by the Premier; namely, that the Government intended to propose that the State should undertake the reclamation of a portion of the waste lands in Ireland; he alluded to various reports of Commissions upon the reclamation of waste lands, and to the works of eminent writers, who were of opinion that, in many cases, the reclamation of such waste lands would provide profitable employment for large masses of the people; and would render land, now valueless, of great value, as it would be made capable of cultivation. He quoted Sir Robert Kane (then Dr. Kane), who said, "in his most interesting work on the Industrial Resources of Ireland," that the estimate, that 4,600,000 acres of waste land might be reclaimed, and be reduced to the condition of cultivated land, was by no means an exaggerated estimate. "We propose, then, sir," continued Lord John, "to devote a million to this purpose, and that the land reclaimed should, if the proprietor is willing to part with it, be purchased from him, but that if he does not improve it in the method just before stated, by loan, or by his own resources, and if he refuses to sell it, there should be a compulsory power in the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to take and improve all such waste lands, so situated, as are below a certain annual value, namely two and sixpence per acre." This announcement was received by the House with an approving "hear, hear." He went on to say, that lands of this nature were only to be improved and reclaimed so far as general operations were concerned, such as the making of roads through them, general drainage, and necessary buildings; that the lands so reclaimed should be divided into lots, which should not be below nor above a certain amount. Without binding himself to any precise amount, he would say, by way of illustration, not less than twenty-five, and not more than fifty acres; that when so reclaimed and subdivided, the lands might be either sold or let to poor tenants for a certain number of years, with the determination, that the portion thus let should likewise be sold at the end of the term. "I own, sir," said his lordship, "that I expect a very great advantage gradually to arise from the adoption of this plan. I expect that great numbers of persons, who have hitherto been driven to despair, and many of them to crime, by the great demand for land in Ireland, will earn a competent livelihood from the produce of these lands. I think, likewise, with regard to those who will purchase the lands, so reclaimed and improved, that there will arise a class of small proprietors, who will form a very valuable class in the social fabric of Ireland." He further expressed his opinion, that he did not think that small holdings were the great evil of Ireland, he rather thought that the particular way in which land was held has often been the source of insecurity and want of cultivation. From the state of the County Armagh he came to the conclusion, he said, that small holdings were not the great evil of Ireland. In that county the greatest subdivisions had taken place, and yet it was one of the most flourishing, and best cultivated counties in Ireland. Compare it, or in fact compare the whole province of Ulster with the province of Munster, and many more small holdings will be found in the former than in the latter.

The whole of the Premier's plan for the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland, was received with marked approbation by the House.[199]

Having at some length explained the principle on which out-door relief was to be given, he adverted to the subject of emigration, about which, he said, the most extravagant expectations had been excited and entertained in Ireland, but which never could be realized. Emigration did not, he said, consist in landing a certain number of people on the shores of America; they should be looked to when they would arrive there; and his opinion was, that the best mode of promoting emigration was by affording aid on the arrival of the emigrants at the place of their destination. This had been extensively done, the previous year, at Montreal, and he should be sorry to give any other stimulus to emigration. He then went on to prove that Ireland was not overpeopled; and as it was not, emigration, in his opinion, had not become a necessity for that country. He again quoted Sir Robert Kane, who had stated that there were resources in Ireland, which, if properly developed, would enable that country to maintain seventeen millions of inhabitants. He, Lord John, did not go so far as that, but he did not think the population of the country was excessive, and there was nothing in the country to prevent the highest improvement. Other countries, he said, had been quite as badly off as Ireland was now asserted to be, which were, at present, in the highest state of prosperity.

To illustrate this he would read a description of a country, in which the following evils were said to exist. The writer, an old English author, says:—"The husbandman be thrust out of their own, or else either by covin or fraud, or violent oppression, they be put beside it; or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all. By one means, therefore, or by the other, either by hook or by crook, they must needs depart away, poor wretched souls—men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers with their young babes, and the whole household, small in substance, and much in number, as husbandry requires many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale—yet, being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of nought; and, when they have wandered about till that be spent, what can they then do but steal, and then justly pardy be hanged, or else go about a-begging? Sir," said the Prime Minister, "is this vivid description unlike the story of an ejectment in Ireland?—of an ejectment, where the wretched families turned out are obliged to sell their little all, and forced in a few days either to steal or go about begging? And yet the description which I have read is a description of England, by Sir Thomas More—a description of the England of his day.[200] And lest it should be considered highly coloured or fanciful, let it be recollected that there are accounts written by magistrates, in which it is stated that in every county there were 200 or 300 persons who lived by thieving—who went about, say the contemporary chroniclers, by sixty at a time—who carried away sheep and cattle, so that no husbandman was secure, and against whom no defence was sufficient: that in one reign alone no less than 70,000 of these marauders were hanged. Sir, this is an account of what England once was—the England in which we now see so much security. And in the absence of the outrages described as formerly existing, I think we have a proof that their existence was owing to the state of society at the time, and not the nature of the country. I will now read you a description of another country, at a different period, at the end of the seventeenth century:—"There are at this day (besides a great number of families very meanly provided for by the Church boxes, with others, who, with living upon bad food, fall into various diseases) 200,000 people begging from door to door. These are not only no ways advantageous, but a very grievous burthen to so poor a country; and though the number of them be, perhaps, double what was formerly, by reason of the very great distress, yet in all times there have been about 100,000 of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or submission, either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and nature—fathers incestuously accompanying their own daughters, the son with the mother, and the brother with the sister. No magistrate could ever discover, or be informed, which way any of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them; and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread, or some sort of provision, to, perhaps, forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they rob many poor people, who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together." Such, sir, is a description of industrious, sober, civilized, religious Scotland. Such is a description of what that country was at the end of the seventeenth century. Dare we, sir, say that the particular laws—that the particular state of a country—has no influence; that a country which has been in a perfectly disordered condition—where robberies have been frequent—where industry has been interrupted—may not yet become orderly, civilized, and industrious? We should be unworthy of being members of this British Parliament were we to give way to despair." To prove that the miseries of Ireland could be neither attributed to the soil or the people, the Premier said, at the close of his singularly able and lucid speech: "There is no doubt of the fertility of the land; that fertility has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers of all nations. There is no doubt either, I must say, of the strength and industry of its inhabitants. The man who is loitering idly by the mountain-side, in Tipperary or in Derry, whose potato plot has furnished him merely with occupation for a few days in the year, whose wages and whose pig have enabled him to pay his rent, and eke out afterwards a miserable subsistence—that man, I say, may have a brother in Liverpool, or Glasgow, or London, who, by the sweat of his brow, from morning to night, is competing with the strongest and steadiest labourer of England and Scotland, and is earning wages equal to any of them. I do not, sir, therefore, think that either the fertility of the soil of Ireland, or the strength and industry of its inhabitants, is at fault."[201]

During the delivery of the speech here summarized, Lord John Russell was frequently interrupted with an amount of applause very unusual in the House of Commons, and at its close he is reported to have sat down amidst vociferous and continued cheering.

And no wonder, for never did an English Minister touch the grievances of Ireland with a bolder or truer hand than he did on this occasion; but amongst his proposals, that which was of the greatest value, the reclamation of the waste lands, was abandoned,—in fact, was never brought forward. May we not well ask, Why were not the permanent measures, now proposed, thought of long before, and passed into laws? Statesmen appear to have understood them well enough: why then did it require a famine to have them brought officially before Parliament? Because it seemed to be the rule with successive Governments to do nothing for Ireland until they were forced to it by agitation, rebellion, famine, or some abnormal state of things, which could not be passed over or resisted. Here we have a plan sketched for the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland, which, if in operation for twenty years before, would have gone far to make the famine transient and partial, instead of general and overwhelming, as it was. Still the plan was very welcome when it came, as it offered the prospect of great future prosperity for this country; everybody felt this, and hence it was hailed with the most unusual marks of approbation by the House of Commons. But, the turning point of the famine crisis over, one of the most valuable measures ever proposed for the benefit of Ireland was shamefully abandoned. One is inclined to suspect that the Government never really intended to carry the measure,—it was too good—too much to the advantage of the people—too great a boon to this country. Mr. Labouchere, as Irish Secretary, had charge of it; he never seemed in any hurry to bring it forward, and after a notice or two, followed by postponements, it ceased to be heard of. Some excuse for the Government may, perhaps, be found in the fact that the Tories would, in all probability, have opposed it, and Lord John was only Minister on sufferance; he could be displaced at any moment Sir Robert Peel pleased, who expressed himself against the reclamation scheme in his speech during the debate on the Premier's "group of measures" for Ireland, but with this exception, Sir Robert gave his full support to those proposals. He said it was better for Ireland to have self-reliance than be looking to Dublin Castle; and he advised Irish proprietors to act independently of the Castle. "With respect to the proposition for the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland," said Sir Robert, "I shall only so far allude to that proposition as to express a hope that the noble lord will pause before he expends so much of the public money on those lands." The noble lord did pause, and every Minister since his time has continued to pause; so that the four and a-half millions of waste acres are still unreclaimed, and the public money which, as was proved, might be profitably expended on them, has been saved for other purposes, such as foreign wars, which, since the Irish Famine, have cost as much as would reclaim them twenty times over, although no one, I should think, would call those wars "reproductive employment;"—nay, the money spent on the Crimean war alone, undertaken to keep the Grand Turk on his throne, would reclaim them twenty times over.

The Government having evidently abandoned their promise of bringing forward a measure for the reclamation of Irish waste lands, Mr. Poulett Scrope, (an English member!) on the 22nd of June, moved the following resolution in the House of Commons: "That the waste lands of Ireland offer an available resource for the immediate employment and future maintenance of a part of her population, now apparently redundant; and that it is expedient to apply them to this great national object, making equitable compensation to their present proprietors." The hon. member proceeded to speak in support of his resolution, but, says Hansard, he had not proceeded far when the House was counted out. (!) With respect to this "count out," the following appeared in the pages of a Dublin morning journal, from its London correspondent: "In my private note of last night I enclosed you a copy of a resolution, which Mr. Poulett Scrope had given notice of his intention to move, with respect to the waste lands of Ireland. When I closed my letter, the hon. gentleman's motion stood next on the paper to that which the Commons were engaged in discussing, but although the House was tolerably full, about a hundred members being present, I expressed my conviction that a 'count out' would abruptly terminate that which ought to be a debate of the greatest possible consequence, The despatch which conveyed my anticipations of another deliberate insult being offered to the Irish nation, was not forwarded from the House of Commons more than an hour before the 'count' took place. There can be little doubt that the Government were privy to this disreputable manoeuvre, as a debate upon the subject of reclaiming Irish waste lands, particularly after their broken promises, would, just at the present moment, and on the eve of a general election, be exceedingly inconvenient and distasteful.... When the 'count out' took place, there were only thirty members present, including thirteen Irish members! Where were the virtuous and conscientious men in whom the constituencies of Ireland had reposed confidence? Why did they not attend in numbers sufficient to prevent Mr. Poulett Scrope's laudable effort on behalf of Ireland from being burked?"[202]

During the debate which followed Lord John Russell's speech on the state of Ireland, Mr. Bernal Osborne accused Parliament of shutting its eyes, for a series of years, to the fact that there were two millions and a-half of destitute poor in Ireland, until honorable members had been suddenly awakened to the circumstance by the potato famine. They were now endeavouring, by convulsive efforts of legislation, to correct evils which had been in a great measure incurred through the neglect and carelessness of that House. "Hear, hear," responded the neglectful and careless House. He thought the Minister would have exercised a much wiser discretion if, in addition to the soup-shops, he had turned his serious attention to the tilling of the land for the next harvest. He combated Lord John Russell's argument drawn from the prosperity of the small farmers of Armagh, inasmuch as that county had manufactures as well as agriculture, and expressed his opinion that small farms were at the root of the evils of Ireland.[203]

Mr. Smith O'Brien (then enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion that the loss in potatoes, considering the value of offal for pigs and the rise in prices, was from twenty to thirty millions of money. He believed the Government could have made such exertion as would have prevented the death of ONE INDIVIDUAL in Ireland from starvation. He thought the legitimate course was to have called Parliament together at the earliest possible moment, (cheers,) and nothing surprised him more than the statement of the Chief Secretary, that the Irish people had not a general desire for Parliament to meet in November.

Sir Robert Inglis, referring to the assertion that absentees did not discharge the duties of proprietors, said he found it stated in a speech of the late Bishop Jebb, in 1822, when there was a similar calamity, that a large subscription was raised in a western county by the resident proprietors, but the absentees, who received out of it a rental of L83,000 a-year, only subscribed L83.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Right Hon. Charles Wood), defended the absentees, but was severe upon local proprietors. He held that the occupiers of land, and not the absentee landlords, were mainly chargeable with the neglect of their duties to the people in this trying crisis. Many of the absentees, he said, were most exemplary in their conduct in alleviating the present distress, amongst whom he named Colonel Wyndham, who was furnishing daily rations to ten thousand people.

I wonder how many more such absentees could the Chancellor of the Exchequer name.

The speakers who were supporters of the Government, and indeed almost all the English members, were excessively severe on the Irish landlords. Mr. Roebuck, in the course of a very bitter speech, during the debate on the address, said: "Now let me say a word about Irish landlords" (sensation). "I had no doubt," he continued, "but that that sentence would be met by some sort of feeling on the part of those, the Irish landlords, for whom the British Parliament has been legislating for the last three hundred years. Yes, it has been legislating for them, as a body, against the people of Ireland—it has been maintaining them against the people of Ireland—it has been permitting them to work for their own personal purposes, the mischief of the people of Ireland."

Sir Charles Napier, in reply to Mr. Roebuck and others who attacked the Irish landlords, said, that whether the landlords of Ireland had or had not done their duty, he did not pretend to say; and more than that, he thought that many gentlemen, who were so violent against the landlords of Ireland, knew just as much about them as he did. Of this he was quite satisfied, that if they had not done their duty the Government were to blame for not having forced them to it, long before the existing calamity appeared. Had the English proprietors, he would ask, who had large estates in Ireland, done their duty? It was not enough to tell him that their agents were doing all in their power, and he maintained that the presence of such men as the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and other large landed proprietors, upon their estates in Ireland, would do much to relieve the people.

Mr. Labouchere defended the Labour-rate Act, and complained that the Government had not received from the gentry of Ireland, or from the Relief Committees, that cordial support which they had a right to expect. He said, the more the real condition of Ireland was examined, the more tremendous would their difficulties be found. He believed the great majority of the House was disposed to treat Ireland with a becoming and proper spirit, and that no one contended that Ireland was to be considered a mendicant applying for alms to the Imperial Legislature. He thought the relief should be granted as a matter of justice, and that the relation between the two countries should be considered as the relation between the members of a family, whose one member had been afflicted by some great and sudden and tremendous distress; and that just as the other members of the family would be bound, in a spirit of humanity and justice, to come to the relief of the starving member, so it was incumbent on the Imperial Legislature to come forward and relieve the starving members of the United Kingdom, at the present moment. These sentiments were received with marked approbation. He defended the non-interference of the Government in the supply of provisions for Ireland: and in dealing with this, not easy question, he reasoned thus: "We have been blamed," he said, "amongst other things, by honorable members, who have said to us, 'When you had the corn in the country, why did you not sell it under the cost price—why did you not allow the Relief Committees to dispose of it at less than its own cost—it would have been so much better.' His answer was, because the Government thought it of infinite consequence to foster, in every manner, the retail trade of Ireland." There is a confounding of two important questions here by Mr. Labouchere, which should be kept quite distinct, and it even looks like an intentional confounding of them. What certain members of Parliament may have privately said to Mr. Labouchere, we have no means of ascertaining except from the information he here gives; but he was Irish Secretary, and he ought to have known—was bound to know—that the country asked two questions about the supply of food, instead of one: 1. The first was, "Why did the Government allow the corn crop of Ireland to be taken out of the country to feed others, and await their chance of getting Indian meal from a distance of three thousand miles, to save from starving (which they failed to do) the people who raised that crop?" The Secretary's answer to his own-made question, is no answer to that. 2. The second question asked by the country was—why did not the Government sell corn and meal to the starving people at some price or another, in districts where there was no retail trade, and where the creation of it would be the work of years? There is no answer given to that by Mr. Labouchere. It is on record, that the people died of starvation with the money in their hands ready to purchase food, but it would not be sold to them, although thousands of tons of meal were in the Government stores, at the doors of which they knocked in vain. Where were the retailers then, who were to have sprung into existence under the political economy wand of Lord John Russell and Mr. Labouchere? Mr. Trevelyan, their mouth-piece, said that the corn in the Government stores should be held over to meet the pressure expected in May and June. Why did they not keep the Irish corn crop for May and June, or use it for immediate need and import Indian meal for May and June?

After further considerable discussion and many modifications, "The Poor Relief (Ireland) Bill," granting outdoor relief and establishing soup kitchens, became law on the 16th of April. The name of William Henry Gregory, then member for the City of Dublin, and afterwards for the County of Galway, must remain for ever associated with this measure, on account of two clauses which he succeeded in having incorporated with it. The first was to this effect: that any tenant, rated at a net value not exceeding L5, and who would give up to his landlord, the possession of his land, should be assisted to emigrate by the Guardians of his Union, the landlord to forego any claim for rent, and to provide two-thirds of such fair and reasonable sum as might be necessary for the emigration of such occupier and his family; the Guardians being empowered to pay to the emigrating family, any sum not exceeding half what the landlord should give, the same to be levied off the rates. This clause, although not devoid of redeeming features, was proposed and carried in the interest of the landlord-clearing-system, yet it was agreed to without what could be called even a show of opposition. It is, however, on the second clause—the renowned quarter-acre-clause—that Mr. Gregory's enduring fame, as an Irish legislator, may be said to rest. It is well entitled to be transcribed here in full: "And be it further enacted, that no person who shall be in the occupation, whether under lease or agreement, or as tenant at will, or from year to year, or in any other manner whatever, of any land of greater extent than the quarter of a statute acre, shall be deemed and taken to be a destitute poor person under the provisions of this Act, or of any former Act of Parliament. Nor shall it be lawful for any Board of Guardians to grant any relief whatever, in or out of the Workhouse, to any such occupier, his wife or children. And if any person, having been such occupier as aforesaid, shall apply to any Board of Guardians for relief as a destitute poor person, it shall not be lawful for such Guardians to grant such relief, until they shall be satisfied that such person has, bona fide, and without collusion, absolutely parted with and surrendered any right or title which he may have had to the occupation of any land over and above such extent as aforesaid, of one quarter of a statute acre." So that by this carefully prepared clause, the head of a family who happened to hold a single foot of ground over one rood, was put outside the pale of relief, with his whole family. A more complete engine for the slaughter and expatriation of a people was never designed. The previous clause offered facilities for emigrating to those who would give up their land—the quarter-acre-clause compelled them to give it up, or die of hunger. In the fulness of his generosity Mr. Gregory had, he said, originally intended to insert "half an acre" in the clause, but, like many well-intentioned men, he was over-ruled: he had, he said, been lately in Ireland, and people there who had more knowledge of the subject than he could lay claim to, told him half an acre was too extensive, so he made it a quarter of an acre. It is not hard to conjecture who his advisers were on this occasion.

This clause met with more opposition than the former one, but only from a small band of kind, good-hearted men, Smith O'Brien called it a cruel enactment; but as he had heard the Government were for it, he knew, he said, to remonstrate against it was useless. Mr. Curteis, the member for Rye, said the clause was meant for the benefit of Irish landlords—a class that deserved little sympathy from the House or the country. Sir George Grey, one of the Secretaries of State, supported the clause, because he had always understood that small holdings were the bane of Ireland; from which observation it is clear he accepted it as an exterminating clause. Now, suppose it is admitted that small holdings were the bane of Ireland, who, we may be permitted to ask, created them? The very landlords who now sought to abolish them, at the expense of millions of lives. Again, if small holdings were the bane of Ireland, was the midst of an unparalleled famine the proper time to remove the bane? Ought not such a bane be the subject of legislation, when society was in its normal state? Sir George thought not, and hence he virtually says to the landlords, "Now is your time to get rid of the people; they have served your purpose; they are useful to you no longer; why should they cumber the ground?" Mr. Poulett Scrope objected to carrying the clause so suddenly into execution, as it would be a complete clearance of the small farmers of Ireland, and would amount to a social revolution in the state of things in that country. Mr. Sharman Crawford said he would divide the House against the clause, which he did. Strange as it may seem, some Liberal Irish members present supported the clause. Mr. Morgan John O'Connell said he looked on it as a valuable alteration in the bill. Alderman Humphrey said the phrase "quarter-acre" ought to be changed to five acres; whereupon he was told, almost in terms by Sir George Grey, that he did not understand what he was talking about. Sir George said "he was afraid his honourable friend, Alderman Humphrey, did not really see the effect of his own amendment. All holders of land, up to 4-3/4 acres, would, according to such an amendment, be enabled to obtain relief without selling their land." "Giving up to the landlord," not "selling," is the phrase in the clause. In spite of Sir George Grey's opinion to the contrary, it would seem to ordinary readers that the worthy Alderman knew quite well the force of his amendment; it was meant to feed the starving people, even though they happened to have a little land. Mr Gregory, replying in defence of his clause, used these words: "Many honourable members insisted that the operation of a clause of this kind would destroy all the small farmers. If it could have such an effect, he did not see of what use such small farmers could possibly be;" because, I suppose, they could not survive a famine that threatened the lords of the soil with bankruptcy or extinction, as they were constantly proclaiming. Mr. Gregory's words—the words of a liberal, and a pretended friend of the people—and Mr. Gregory's clause are things that should be for ever remembered by the descendants of the slaughtered and expatriated small farmers of Ireland. On a division, there were 119 for the clause and 9 against it. Here are the nine who opposed the never-to-be-forgotten quarter-acre-Gregory clause: William Sharman Crawford, B. Escott, Sir De Lacy Evans, Alderman Humphrey, A. M'Carthy, G.P. Scrope, W. Williams. Tellers: William Smith O'Brien and J. Curteis.[204]

FOOTNOTES:

[192] So given, in the daily journals, but in Hansard the passage is much modified, and the hit at the Irish landlords disappears.

"Allow me an opportunity of correcting the error which is widely diffused among the public, and even in Parliament itself, that in Hansard's Debates we have the means of obtaining an authentic report of parliamentary proceedings. This is an entire delusion. Hansard is a private publication, dependent on the ordinary newspaper reports, supplemented by such corrections as members make themselves."—Letter of Mr. Mitchell Henry, M.P., to the Times of July 14th, 1873.

[193] The Morning Chronicle.

[194] In some reports of the speech the words are "beggars enough for all Europe."

[195] Mr. D'Israeli, in his Political Biography of Lord George Bentinck, quotes this passage, and, as it seems to me, manipulates it unfairly, by ending it at the word "decimated," as if there were a full stop there, whereas the sense in the original only requires a comma, and so it is in Hansard. To make the sense terminate at "decimated," he moulds a sentence and a half into one, thus: "The Chief Secretary says, that the ministers did wisely in this decision, but I differ from him when I hear, every day, of persons being starved to death, and when he, himself, admits that in many parts of the country the population had been decimated;" the censure on the Government contained in the words immediately succeeding, is omitted. The reason why Mr. D'Israeli did this is obvious from what follows, which shows he did not agree with Lord George, in censuring the Government for not opening depots, and he undertakes to prove that they should not have done so. He uses, amongst others, the old trite argument, when he says: there is reason to believe that the establishment of Government depots at the end of '46, however cautiously introduced, tended in the localities to arrest the development of that retail trade, which was then rapidly extending throughout Ireland."—Lord George Bentinck, a political Biography, 5th Ed., pp. 360, 363.

There is reason to believe, says Mr. D'Israeli; yes, there is the best reason to believe, that tens of thousands died of starvation in Munster and Connaught, because food depots were not introduced, or, at least, because they were not opened for the sale of food to the public. The word "development" which he uses, sufficiently refutes his whole theory. There was no time for development; millions were starving who must die or get food within a few days. What a time to begin to develop a trade in articles of food among a people without capital, who never had such a trade before! The effect of Government not interfering in the sale of food is shown by the prices Lord George quotes a little further on.

[196] Mr. D'Israeli took good care not to quote this passage in his Biography of Lord George Bentinck.

[197] It was more than hinted that he did not follow the advice of the Irish Government in other important matters concerning the Famine.

[198] In the middle of November, Mr. Smith O'Brien commenced a series of letters to the landed proprietors of Ireland. Whilst he was preparing the first of these, which was introductory, and intended to awaken the class he was addressing to a sense of their danger and their duty, the Agricultural Society of Ireland published their objections to the system of carrying out reproductive works laid down in the Chief Secretary's letter; and it was in commenting on their views that he wrote the passage quoted above by the Prime Minister. His second letter dealt with the knotty question of land tenure. In it he urges strongly and well a principle which has become a part of the Land Act of 1870, namely, the tenant's right to compensation. He says: "I begin with the subject of tenure: uniform experience of human nature teaches that men will not toil for the benefit of others as they toil for themselves. You are very sensitive about the maintenance of the due rights of property.... The same feelings influence your tenant; he will not expend his capital upon your land unless the return of such capital be guaranteed to him." His third letter is devoted to the question of drainage, and the reclamation of waste lands. He undertook to show how advantageous a peasant proprietary would be, changing, as it would, numbers of persons from the catalogue of those who have little to gain by maintaining the rights of property, to that of those who have everything to lose by their violation. He, however, tells the landlords plainly that they will not obtain from the Imperial treasury the money necessary for the undertaking he recommends, unless they mortgage their estates, and pledge the county rates first. "An Irish member," he writes, "who would propose to apply ten millions of money to the reclamation of land in Ireland, would be laughed to scorn in the British legislature. Yet Parliament would consent almost without a question—perhaps amidst the cheers of all parties—to the expenditure of this amount in piratical incursions, such as those made upon the inhabitants of Affghanistan, Scinde, Syria, and other nations, who have never injured us." The fourth letter is a continuation of the same subjects. The fifth discusses the railway question, then in its infancy. The sixth deals with public works and public instruction. The public works which he specially discusses and recommends are—internal navigation, and fishery piers and harbours; he does not enter into systems of education, he only calls for more liberal grants. The seventh and concluding letter of the series is devoted to what the writer calls fiscal arrangements. These letters showed much practical ability, and knowledge of the true wants of the country. They were written in a calm moderate spirit, but, emanating from a man of his political views, they do not seem to have received the attention they deserved.

No doubt, the difficulty stated by Smith O'Brien, and approvingly quoted by the Prime Minister, did exist in the townland boundary scheme; it was, perhaps, as great a one as the boundary scheme in the Chief Secretary's letter; but sacrifices should have been cheerfully submitted to on such a terrible occasion; and the greatest and realest difficulty of all was, that the landlords, as a body, had little or no sympathy with the people, and were not prepared to make sacrifices to save their lives.

[199] The following is Mr. D'Israeli's account of the waste land reclamation proposal: it does not, by any means, seem to be in accord with the spirit with which that proposal was received by Parliament:—"In the course of the next ten days the Government measures of relief distinctly transpired. One of these was a public undertaking to reclaim a portion of the waste lands of Ireland: but it was finally proposed by the first Minister, sneered at a few days after by his own Chancellor of the Exchequer, and finally fell prostrate before a bland admonition from Sir Robert Peel, who was skilful always in detecting when the Cabinet was not confident in a measure, and by an adroit interposition often obtained the credit with the country of directing the Ministry, when really he had only discovered their foregone conclusion."—Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, p. 367, 5th Edition.

[200] In the Utopia.

[201] "The people are not indolent. Of that there has been abundant proof. Give them a definite object, a fair chance of profit, and they will work as well as the people of this or any other country. Of this I have had ample opportunity of judging, on works where thousands have been employed, both here [England] and in Ireland."—A twelve months' residence in Ireland, during the Famine and the Public Works in 1846-7, by Wm. Henry Smith, C.E., late conducting Civil Engineer of Public Works.—London, 1848; p. 120.

"A foreign railway company, a few months ago, advertised in the English papers for Irish labourers to work on their lines, where they would receive one-third more wages than the French people themselves were receiving. He [the Irishman] would do the same amount of work at home, if properly fed; but the principle is much the same as keeping a horse without his oats, and expecting him to get through his work the same as if well fed. The Irishman at the English harvest, or as a railway labourer, and the London heavy goods or coal porter, is not excelled in his willingness or industry."—Ib. 196.

"It is a mistake to suppose the Irish people will not work. They are both willing and desirous to work, and, when in regular employment, are always peaceable and orderly."—His Excellency Lord Clarendon's Letter to the Lord Mayor of London, on the "Plantation Scheme," dated Viceregal Lodge, June 26, 1849.

[202] Freeman's Journal, 23rd June, 1847.

[203] Armagh could be scarcely said to have had any manufactures at this time, as machinery, erected in the large factories of Belfast and other places, had abolished the hand-looms at which the people worked in their cottages, and the linen trade had been greatly depressed for years before; but no doubt there was a time when it was a material help to the inhabitants of that and other Northern counties.

[204] Immediately after the above clause was added to the "Poor Relief (Ireland) Bill," Lord George Bentinck made the following attack upon the Irish-famine policy of the Government: "The noble Lord," says the report, "proceeded to contend that, if the Government had had recourse to the system he had recommended, it would have raised the condition of the people, and the House would not have heard of the tens of thousands and the hundreds of thousands of deaths; but they could not learn from the Government how many, for there was one point upon which the Irish Government were totally ignorant, or which they concealed, which was, the mortality which had occurred during their administration of Irish affairs (hear, hear). They shrink (continued the noble lord, energetically) from telling us; they are ashamed to tell us. They know the people have been dying by thousands, and I dare them to inquire what has been the number of those who have died through their mismanagement, their principles of free trade (oh, oh). Yes, free trade; free trade in the lives of the Irish people (laughter, cries of 'oh, oh, oh,' and great confusion); leaving the people to take care of themselves, when Providence has swept away their food from the face of the earth. There were no stores, nor mills, nor granaries. Then why (the noble Lord continued, with much vehemence) don't he give us the information, if he don't shrink from it? Never before was there an instance of a Christian government allowing so many people to perish—(oh, oh)—without interfering (great confusion and cries of 'oh, oh'). Yes, you will groan; but you will hear this. The time will come when we shall know what the amount of mortality has been; and though you may groan, and try to keep the truth down, it shall be known, and the time will come when the public and the world will be able to estimate, at its proper value, your management of the affairs of Ireland (murmurs and confusion)."



CHAPTER XI.

Lord George Bentinck's Railway Scheme; he thought the finishing of the railways would be useful; he was a practical man, and wished to use the labour of the people on useful and profitable work—The State of England in 1841-2—The remedy that relieved England ought to have the same effect in Ireland—Under certain arrangements, there could have been no Irish Famine—Tons of Blue Books—No new Acts necessary for Railways—1,500 miles of Railway were passed—Only 123 miles made—Lord George Bentinck's Speech—Waste of power-traffic—Great Southern and Western Railway—Principles of the Railway Bill—Shareholders—What employment would the Railway Bill give?—Mode of raising the money—L20,000,000 paid to slave-owners—Why not do the same thing for Ireland?—Foreign Securities in which English money has been expended—Assurances of support to Lord George—The Irish Members in a dilemma—The Irish Party continue to meet—Meeting at the Premier's in Chesham Place—Smith O'Brien waits on Lord George—The Government stake their existence on postponing the second reading of Lord Bentinck's Bill—Why?—No good reason—Desertion of the Irish Members—Sir John Gray on the question—The Prime Minister's Speech—The Chancellor of the Exchequer's Speech a mockery—Loans to Ireland (falsely) asserted not to have been repaid—Mr. Hudson's Speech—The Chancellor going on no authority—Mr. Hudson's Railway Statistics—The Chancellor of the Exchequer hard on Irish Landlords—His way of giving relief—Sir Robert Peel on the Railway Bill—The Railway Bill a doomed measure—Peel's eulogium on industry in general, and on Mr. Bianconi in particular—Lord G. Bentinck's reply—His arguments skipped by his opponents—Appoint a Commission, like Mr. Pitt in 1793—Money spent on making Railways—The Irish Vote on the Bill—Names.

No effort of statesmanship to overcome the Famine is remembered with such gratitude in Ireland as Lord George Bentinck's generous proposal to spend sixteen millions of money in the construction of railways, for the employment of its people.

In the autumn of 1846, when the Potato Blight had become an accepted fact by all except those who had some motive for discrediting it, he began to think that to finish the railways, already projected in Ireland, would be the best and promptest way of employing its people upon reproductive works. He was a great enemy to unprofitable labour. To the Labour-rate Act, which became law at the close of the session of 1846, Lord George was conscientiously opposed; because, whilst millions of money were to be spent under it, the labour of the people was to be thrown away upon profitless or pernicious undertakings. His was an eminently practical mind, and, being so, he did not rest satisfied with reflections and speculations upon the plan he had conceived. He took counsel with men who were the most eminent, both for scientific and practical knowledge, with regard to the construction of railways. Among them, of course, was Robert Stephenson. The result of his conference with those gentlemen was, that two engineers of acknowledged ability were despatched by him to Ireland, to examine and report upon the whole question of Irish railways.

Lord George, reflecting upon the perilous state of England in 1841-2, came to the conclusion that it was the vast employment afforded by railway enterprize which relieved the pauperism of those years; a pauperism so great, that it was enough to create alarm, and almost dismay, in the breasts of English statesmen. There were at that time a million and a-half of people upon the rates: between eighty and ninety thousand able-bodied men within the walls of the Workhouses, and four hundred thousand able-bodied men receiving outdoor relief. It seemed to him that this pauperism was not only relieved, but was actually changed into affluence and prosperity by the vast employment which the railway works, then rapidly springing into existence, afforded. "Suddenly, and for several years," says Mr. D'Israeli, quoting Lord George, "an additional sum of thirteen millions of pounds sterling a-year was spent in the wages of our native industry; two hundred thousand able-bodied labourers received each upon an average, twenty-two shillings a-week, stimulating the revenue, both in excise and customs, by their enormous consumption of malt and spirits, tobacco and tea."[205]

Lord George saw no reason why the same remedy, if applied to Ireland, should not be attended with the like success. He was sustained, too, by the reports of Parliamentary Commissioners, as well as by the natural and common-sense view of the subject. Many years before, in 1836, a commission had been issued to enquire into the expediency of promoting the construction of railways in Ireland. The Commissioners, in their report, recommended that a system of railway communication should be established there by Government advances. Ten years had passed; but, of course, nothing was done. Yes, another commission! The noted Devon one was, I should have said, issued some years after the former by another Government, which "confirmed all the recommendations of the Railway Commissioners of '36, and pointed to those new methods of communication, by the assistance of loans from the Government, as the best means of providing employment for the people."[206] Had the recommendations of those Commissioners been carried out, or even begun within a reasonable time, there could have been no Irish famine in the sense in which we are now obliged to chronicle it. There must have been extensive employment at wages that would have afforded great numbers other and better food than the potato. As it was, all that resulted from those commissions, and countless others of the like kind, were the ponderous Blue Books, which contained their reports, and the evidence upon which they were founded. And, indeed, so many tons of those had been, from time to time, produced and stowed away in Government vaults and rubbish stores, that, had they contained some of the nutritive qualities which, go to sustain human life, they would have been an appreciable contribution towards feeding the starving Irish people during the Famine.

No new Acts were necessary to be passed through Parliament, to authorize the construction of railways in Ireland, in order to justify the Government in advancing the necessary funds. When Lord George Bentinck brought his plan before the House of Commons, there were Acts in existence authorizing the construction of more than 1,500 miles of railway in this country, some of those Acts having been passed so far back as eleven years before; yet, at the close of 1846, only 123 miles had been completed. Here, then, was the field in which Lord George had made up his mind that the superabounding but wasted labour of the famishing people should find profitable employment. After taking the advice of his political friends, and securing their approval and support, he, on Thursday, the 4th of February, introduced his Bill to the House of Commons, in, says Mr. D'Israeli, the best speech he ever made. It was evidently prepared with great care, and was both lucid and argumentative.

His exordium was solemn and earnest, and he seemed much impressed with the importance and magnitude of the subject with which he was about to deal. For the principle of the Bill, and for the faults that principle might contain, he alone, he said, was responsible; but as to the details, they had been wrought out by the ablest minds in England; amongst whom he named Hudson, Stephenson, and Laing. "It is not my intention," he said, "to make a very long preface, or to enter into any general discussion as regards the state or condition of Ireland: suffice it for me, that this great fact stares us in the face, that at this moment there are 500,000 able-bodied persons in Ireland living upon the funds of the State. That there are 500,000 able-bodied persons, commanded by a staff of 11,587 persons, employed upon works which have been variously described as 'works worse than idleness;' by the yeomanry of Ulster as 'public follies;' and by the Inspector of the Government himself, Colonel Douglas, as 'works which will answer no other purpose than that of obstructing the public conveyances.'" The calamity was great, but he did not, he said, despond. "We, who at one period of the war were expending, upon an average, for three years, L103,000,000 sterling a-year, will not be downhearted at having to provide for a deficiency and for a disaster that may be estimated at L10,000,000." He quoted the two Commissions above referred to, and said that railway Acts had been passed for 1,523 miles of railway, whilst at the moment he was speaking only 123 miles were completed, 164 miles being in course of construction. There must, he thought, be some weakness in Ireland up to this, as 2,600 miles of railway had been constructed in England and Scotland, and Acts passed for 5,400 miles more—8,000 miles in all. The denseness of population, said his lordship, is in favour of Ireland as against England and Scotland. "But, Sir," he continued, "perhaps you will tell me this may be a very good argument as far as population is concerned, but what is the use of population if they have no means of paying for their conveyance by railways? Sir, my friend, who sits beside me (Mr. Hudson) will tell you that in all railway speculation population is held to be the first element of success—property second,"

He then went on to show that the traffic upon the Irish railways already opened, was greater than upon the English and Scotch lines. This argument met the assertions of some persons, who said that if money were advanced to make Irish railways they would never pay; and it would be asked, if they are paying, why not have them done by private enterprise? Lord George confessed that he could not answer this question satisfactorily, but English capitalists would not come forward, partly, he thought, through distrust, and partly through ignorance, whilst the calamity of the Famine had, of course, a great effect in preventing the small amount of Irish capital which did exist from coming forward. The prejudice which English capitalists had against investing in Irish undertakings, is strikingly illustrated by a fact stated by Lord George in the course of his speech. It was this: the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland was one of the many the completion of which was arrested by want of funds, yet a portion of it was open for traffic. He compared it with a well known English railway. The Irish one, he said, had cost in its construction L15,000 per mile; the English, upwards of L26,000 per mile; the weekly traffic on the two railways, allowing for some difference in their extent, was about the same on both, varying in amount from L1,000 to L1,300 per week; yet the unfinished British railway was at L40 premium in the market,—the unfinished Irish one at L2 discount.