prise, as the prejudice against its use was disappearing and the demand for it was increasing,' and that the best chance of stopping the abuses inherent in large public works lay in throwing the whole cost of them on the locality. It consequently introduced a new bill authorising the Lord-Lieutenant to summon a Barony Sessions or County Sessions in any distressed district. It empowered and required the magistrates thus assembled to determine the particular work which should be undertaken. The works then decided on were to be carried out under the superintendence of public officers; their cost was, in the first instance, to be defrayed by the Treasury, but the advances made by the Treasury were to be repaid with interest upon them by the locality.2 Their failure. In 1846 66 On These measures, it was hoped, might do something to check the extravagance and the evils which had resulted from previous legislation. They proved unfortunately unequal to meet the crisis.3 In 1845 the disease had spread slowly throughout the country. the blight fell almost in an instant on the whole crop.1 the 27th of July," wrote Father Mathew, "I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3rd of August, I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetation." From every province, from every county, came 5 1 It was added that private enterprise was ready to undertake the importation of Indian corn if it were freed from public competition. Hansard, vol. lxxxviii. P. 778. 2 Hansard, vol. lxxxviii. pp. 775, 999. The labour rate was to be paid by the owner and not by the occupier. The Treasury minute, prescribing the manner in which the biil should be carried out, is reprinted from the Times in the Times pamphlet, "The Great Irish Famine of 1845-46," p. 27. 3 For a good account of the defects of this Act, see Mr. G. A. Hamilton's speech in 1849, Hansard, vol. cvi. p. 1405. The failure of the potato crop in 1846 was estimated to entail a loss of £11,250,000 on Ireland. The crop covered 1,500,000 acres, and at £10 an acre should have been worth £15,000,000. Three out of every four acres were lost. In addition one-third of the oat crop (4,000,000 acres, at £3, 10s. an acre) failed, and its failure inflicted a further loss of £4,666,000 on Ireland. These figures were given by Labouchere on the high authority of Mr. (afterwards Sir R.) Griffith. Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 88, Sir C. Trevelyan s Irish Crisis, p. 29. VOL. V. L A starving people the same universal cry of destitution. clamoured for admission to the relief works. number employed in October was 114,000, in November 285,000, in December 440,000, in January 1847, 570,000, in February 708.000, in March 734,000. It was impossible to exact from such multitudes a degree of labour which would act as a test of destitution.1 These figures would have been startling enough if relief had answered its purpose. Unhappily, it was too evident that, while a nation was crowding on the works, other thousands in remote districts were perishing of famine. One Dublin paper in the beginning of 1847 reported eight inquests on dead persons in Mayo; the Protestant clergyman of Skibbereen declared that the population of the union had been decimated by famine; an Irish member in the beginning of February said that one-fourth of the whole population would die if effectual relief were not afforded them; a month later it was estimated that 240,000 had already died; the Chief Secretary for Ireland, speaking with the responsibility of office upon him, spoke of his fellow-creatures perishing by thousands.2 The discontinuance of the Relief Works. Government itself was for the moment stunned by these circumstances. Against its own judgment, in defiance of its own precepts, it had been forced to undertake the task of finding employment for a people; and it was daily becoming evident that it was being stifled by its own success. Complaints continually arrived that the roads were blocked by the labourers on the works and by the stones which they were crushing. If work were paid by the day it proved impossible to exact any adequate labour from the workmen, and there was no machinery for enforcing 1 Irish Crisis, pp. 44, 46. The only serious attempt to check this disastrous state of things, in the autumn of 1846, was made by the issue of what was known as the Labouchere Letter. This was a circular allowing presentments to be made under the Labour Rate Act for the drainage, &c., of estates whose proprietors allowed them to be charged with the cost of repaying the advance. The measure as an expedient for diverting the people from the roads was a failure. Ibid., p. 49. The letter itself is reprinted in the Times pamphlet, p. 27. 2 Hansard, vol. lxxxix. pp. 77, 103, 943, and vol. xc. pp. 261, 1102. payments by results. If Ireland were not to be permanently pauperised, if England were not to sink under the burden of pauperising the Irish, it was plain that the relief works must be discontinued. At the beginning of March, Government had the courage to direct the discontinuance of employment. Twenty per cent. of the persons employed on the relief works were to be summarily discharged on the 20th of March; the remaining So per cent. were to be subsequently reduced from time to time in proportions to be fixed by the Treasury.1 This decision was followed by momentous consequences. The labourers were rapidly reduced in number. 734,000 persons had been employed in March; only 525,000 were employed in April; only 419,000 in May; only 101,000 at the beginning, and only 28,000 at the end, of June. In August the Relief Act expired, and the whole machinery for the employment of the people by the State was terminated.? Relief Government, indeed, could not discharge tens of thousands of starving labourers without instituting some fresh machinery for their relief. It acccordingly resolved on the The organi organisation of temporary relief committees through-sation of out Ireland. Relief, it was thought, could be ad- Committees. ministered in kind; and the chances of abuse could be lessened by throwing on each locality the duty of gradually repaying one-half of the advances which the Government was willing to make for the purchase of food. A bill introduced for this purpose at the end of January was hurried rapidly through Parliament. Relief committees were gradually organised under it throughout Ireland. At one moment no less than 3,000,000 persons received daily rations under the scheme, and a population was in this way kept alive till the harvest, and the operations which the harvest occasioned enabled society to resume its ordinary aspect.3 At the same 1 Hansard, vol. xc. p. 1248. 2 Irish Crisis, p. 47; cf. Hansard, vol. xciv. p. 53. 3 Lansdowne's explanation of the Government scheme is in Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 355. Russell's, ibid., p. 426. For the second reading of the bill in the Commons, ibid., p. 765; in the Lords, ibid., p. 1352. The Act became the 10 & 11 Vict. c. 7. For the numbers fed under it, Sir C. Trevelyan's Irish Crisis, p. 64. measures. time bills were carried suspending the duty which Peel had Fresh still left on foreign corn, and relaxing the regulations of the Navigation Laws which prevented its importation in vessels which were not British and which were not manned by British seamen.1 These measures were passed without opposition. The lamentable spectacle of "a nation breaking stones upon the road," and destroying the roads by doing so,3 disarmed hostility. But, as the session wore on, opposition was no longer silent. Two kinds of critics assailed the policy of the ministry. Irish members, fresh from the awful spectacle of a famine-stricken country, clamoured continually, Give, give, give! English Radicals, alarmed at the prospect of a pauperised Ireland supported by English taxpayers, protested against the folly and injustice of compelling one nation to maintain the other. It so happened that their arguments were enforced by the example of another portion of the Empire. Those whom duty or relaxation has The Western Highlands. carried to the Western Highlands may, perhaps, amidst the natural beauties which surround them, have reflected on the resemblance which the inhabitants present to their Irish neighbours. Sprung from Irish ancestors, the West Highlanders still retain many of the characteristics of the Irish race. Ill-fed, ill-housed, they cultivate the little enclosures on which their cabins are built, and depend for their subsistence on the precarious crop which they are able with difficulty to grow around their humble dwellings. The seas team with fish, nature has provided them with natural harbours, yet their want of enterprise induces them to neglect the fishery, and they see their seas swept by hardier fishermen from other ports. If the summer be propitious they pass their 1 The suspension of the Corn Law was suggested in the Speech from the throne, Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 3. In the Lords' debate on the Address Stanley declared that the suspension of the Navigation Act would be preferable. Ibid., p. 30. Two days afterwards Russell introduced measures suspending both Acts, ibid., p. 210. They were passed through both Houses in four days, ibid., p. 355. France had previously suspended her Navigation Laws, ibid., p. 353. 2 Lord George Bentinck, p. 355. 3 Hansard, vol. xc. p. 627. 4 "They sit down and howl for English money." Ibid., vol. lxxxix. p. 955. life in happiness; if rain or tempest diminish their store they ascribe their misfortunes to the anger of an offended Deity. Superstitious habits of thought raise the presbyter to the position of the priest. B:oad as are the outward differences between the Presbyterian and the Papist religion, both are marked by the same intolerance and the same sacerdotalism. The Papist and the Presbyterian would fly at one another's throats, yet there is little distinction between them except in vestments, in ritual, and in names. Kelp. During the first third of this century the West Highlanders, like the Irish, rapidly multiplied. Their multiplication was stimulated by a peculiar cause. The sea washed on their foreshores at every tide large quantities of seaweed; and the weed or kelp, when burned, produced an ash which contained a strong alkali, and formed a chief ingredient in the manufacture of soap and other commodities. The proprietors of the Western Hebrides derived a large annual revenue from licensing their tenantry as kelp-burners, and the boast of one of them is still recollected, that his shores were lined with a silver fringe. Until after the accession of George IV., the incineration of kelp formed the chief industry of these islands. The price of alkali averaged £10, and occasionally exceeded £20 a ton. After the war, however, the kelp-burners were subjected to competition. The barilla, a plant of foreign growth, yields on incineration a larger percentage of alkali than kelp. Alkali therefore could be produced more economically from the one than from the other. Protective duties alone maintained the industry of the kelp-burners. In 1787 Parliament imposed a duty of £5, 5s. a ton on barilla; Vansittart, in 1819, raised the duty on alkali to £11 a ton. In 1822, forced to make some concessions, he reduced the duty on barilla from £11 to £8. In 1823 Robinson further reduced it to £5. In 1830 Goulburn lowered it to £2; while, in 1844, Peel fixed the duty on alkali at 30s., the duty on barilla at only 5s. a ton. In 1845 the duty was repealed. 1 Hansard, vol. ii. p. 214. But cf. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary, ad verb. Tariff, Barilla, and Kelp. So little was the question understood that Scrope, in his Life of Lord Sydenham, p. 44, talks of the kelp-fishery. |