Reductions in the tariff which reduced the price of alkali from about £11 to about £4 a ton stimulated trade to an extraordinary degree, but they had a melancholy effect on the 40,000 or 50,000 persons who were dependent on kelp-burning. Their situation in remote and ungenial islands made it difficult for them to find employment in other industries. Like the neighbouring Irish, they had a strong disinclination to remove from the hillside on which they and their forefathers had dwelt. The law gave them no claim to relief, and their landlords or chieftains were in many cases ruined by the change which had brought them to the verge of starvation. The battle of protection could not, in any circumstances, have been won; free trade was the inevitable result of British commerce.

But,

if the country gentlemen of England had condescended to make kelp and not corn the subject of the battle, they would have had a better case, and a purer, because a less selfish,

cause.

The famine in Western Scotland.

A population suddenly deprived of its chief industry became solely dependent for food on the crops which it was able to extract from its little holdings. No cereal except the oat would ripen in the moist climate of the Hebrides. Like the Irish, therefore, the Western Highlanders mainly depended on the potato, and in the autumn of 1845 the potato failed. Henry Kingsley has described in one of his best novels the terrible scenes which then followed: "The old folks died first. That was as it should be. . . . Then the children began to die; and this was very bitter, and very, very hard to bear. . . . And then they began to die. Yes! the oldest of the able-bodied men began to lie down, and to fall asleep in a strange quiet way. Perfectly happy, perfectly calm, they would lie for a day or two, and at last give over speaking. In the morning they would be found quietly dead."1

Nothing even in Ireland was more pitiful than the distress which was thus desolating the West Highlands; and, to add

1 Henry Kingsley adds: "This is no novelist's fancy: the author has seen what he is describing." Austin Elliot, ch. xli.; cf. Hansard, vol. lxxxix. P. 192.

to the misery of the Highlanders, their own misfortunes were for some time overlooked because the Irish were more numerous and more noisy. Yet the lairds of Western Scotland showed the Irish landlords an example which the latter might have followed with advantage. In too many cases the absentee Irish landlords remained either in London or abroad, and allowed their agents to take advantage of the crisis to clear their holdings and eject their tenantry. They clamoured for Government aid, and they protested against the injury to their own estates by the application of a poor law to Ireland.1 The Scotch laird, on the contrary, submitted to his own ruin in a vain attempt to save his people, and, when he applied to the Government, sought no relief for himself, but only demanded help for his tenantry.2

In the presence of the greater suffering in Ireland, the Government did little to abate the distress in Scotland. Immediate remedy for distress indeed there was none. All that the ministry could hope to do was to mitigate the suffering and to diminish the death-rate. But it was at least possible to provide against the recurrence of the disaster. Good might come even out of an Irish famine if its repetition were made impossible, or if the machinery for dealing with it The Irish were improved. Whatever other lesson was de- Poor Law. ducible from the crisis, the failure of the Irish poor law was evident. The Act of 1838 had provided an organisation throughout Ireland for the relief of the poor, but it had made no provision for their relief outside the workhouse. The guardians were empowered to relieve in the house, in the first place, such destitute poor persons as by reason of old age, infirmity, or defect were unable to support themselves, and destitute children; and, in the next place, such other persons as the said guardians should deem to be destitute poor, and unable to support themselves by their own industry or by other lawful means.3 The Act gave a preference, there

1 For the ejections, see (e.g.) the account in Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 1248; vol. xc. pp. 1006, 1007; vol. xci. p. 270. 2 Ibid., vol. xc. p. 315.

3 1 and 2 Vict. c. 56, sec. 41.

fore, to age, to youth, and to sickness, and it only dealt with the case of the able-bodied poor when there happened to be room for them. But in practice there was never room for all the old, young, and sick in Ireland. Even in ordinary years no accommodation was available for the able-bodied poor; while in 1847 the whole of the workhouses could not have contained 3 per cent. of the poor which required relief. The deficiency of the accommodation which the law had provided was the more inadequate from the conduct of Irish poor law guardians. They showed a strange indisposition to appreciate their real duties. The rates which they levied in Ireland merely yielded £298,000 in 1845 and £426,000 in 1846. The latter sum was only equivalent to a rate of 71d. in the pound on all Ireland. In one case, instead of raising the rates, they closed the workhouse.1

There was one obvious remedy for this state of things. If the principles of the English poor law were applied to Ireland

Its amendment.

the scenes of 1846 could hardly be repeated. Landlords would not dare to evict their tenantry if the ejected tenantry became in consequence a burden on the rates. Guardians of the poor could not neglect their duties if they were made responsible for the relief of the destitute ablebodied poor. A good poor law, firmly administered, promised to prove the best possible preventive, and the Government accordingly decided that a new poor law should become the corner-stone of its policy. The main feature of the bill which was consequently brought in was the introduction, when the workhouse was full, of relief outside the house. The Government hoped to prevent the abuse inseparable from outdoor relief by granting it only for temporary periods, on the express recommendation of the Poor Law Commissioners, and by enforcing a rigid labour test. These precautions, however, did not reconcile a great many people to the measure. The institution of outdoor relief, so it was roundly declared, would

1 At Castlebar. The guardians, frightened at the expenditure, closed the house. Yet the rates did not exceed 35. in the pound. Hansard, vol. xc. p. 13.

swallow up the rent of Ireland. Out of a gross rental of £17,000,000 no less than £9,000,000 were diverted into the pockets of the mortgagees. The remaining £8,000,000, it was argued, could not by any possibility suffice for the support of the 2,500,000 poor whom it was assumed would be thrown on the land.1

These arguments did not prevent the passage of the measure, but they drew attention to the condition of the Irish landlords. When their poverty was made a reason for resisting an effectual poor law, some measure seemed necessary for removing the encumbered proprietor. The Government decided Encumbered on facilitating the sale of the limited owner's estate. Estates Act. A bill for the purpose, introduced by Cottenham as Chancellor, passed through all its stages in the Lords, but was ultimately dropped in the Commons. A more elaborate measure was, however, carried in another Parliament in the succeeding year, and means were thereby afforded for enabling the embarrassed owners of life estates to sell their property and discharge their liabilities.3

Its results.

These measures were in many respects wise; they were in every respect well-intentioned; and perhaps no Government could have easily foreseen the difficulties which ultimately arose from them. It seemed impossible to imagine that anything but good could come from the substitution of a solvent for an insolvent landowner. Yet the result proved that the new proprietor, often a mere speculator, occasionally a non-resident, had less sympathy with and less

1 For the bill, Hansard, vol. xcii. p. 60. In the case of tenancies of £4 and upwards, the rate was to be divided between landlord and tenant. In smaller tenancies it was to fall wholly on the landlord. Ibid., p. 70. Stanley endeavoured to throw the rate wholly on the occupier. Ibid., p. 557.

2 Ibid., vol. xci. p. 262, and vol. xciii. p. 1192.

3 The Act required the sales to be conducted under the direction of the Court of Chancery. But, as Peel put it in 1849, the Court of Chancery was a place which every one, from the Chancellor downwards, advised his own friends never to enter. Ibid., vol. civ. p. 112. And in accordance with his advice the ministry decided in that year on entrusting the functions of the Court of Chancery to a Special Commission. Ibid., p. 892, vol. cv. p. 357, and 12 and 13 Vict. c. 77.

thought for his tenantry than the old landlord. One result, therefore, of the Encumbered Estates Act was the exaction of a higher rental; and the greater rents which were thus demanded prepared the way, thirty years afterwards, for a new land question.

This result was not foreseen at the time; and the ministry hoped that the institution of an adequate system of relief and the substitution of a solvent for an insolvent proprietary would remedy present evils and ward off future dangers. All parties, however, were not satisfied with these measures. Bentinck

Bentinck's proposal for making railways.

proposed that the Government should set the poor to work by the wholesale construction of railways in Ireland. When the shareholders of a line found one-third of the capital, he suggested that the Government should advance the remaining two-thirds at 3 per cent. interest. He contemplated making these advances to the extent of £16,000,000; and he hoped thus to provide for an expenditure of £24.000.000 on public works of utility. As the loan advanced by the State was to form a first charge on the undertaking, a railway which earned £2, 6s. 8d. per cent. on its whole capital would be able to pay £3, 10s. per cent. on the portion of its capital advanced by the Government.1

The proposal was coldly received by the ministry. Russell declined, indeed, to resist its introduction, but intimated his intention of opposing it at a later stage. Before the second reading came on an intimation was conveyed to his supporters that they must make up their minds to choose between the bill and the Government.2 The hint was hardly necessary to secure the rejection of the measure, but it increased the majority against it, and after three nights' debate, it was thrown out by a large majority.3

This division seemed for the moment to seal the fate of the question. By a singular chance, however, the men who had

1 Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 773; Disraeli's Lord G. Bentinck, p. 375.

2 The announcement was made at a meeting of the Liberal party at the Foreign Office. Ibid., p. 386, and Hansard, vol. lxxxix. p. 1216. 3 By 332 votes to 118. Ibid., vol. xc. p. 123.