The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 Part 9

writes Lord Cloncurry, "as the almost yearly famine of this country, abounding in all the necessaries of life, and endeavouring to beg or borrow some of its own money to escape starvation."[116]

The Earl of Devon, a man eminently qualified to offer an opinion at such a crisis, touched the true point, when he said, there was a matter which he regarded as of still greater importance than public works, and that was _the employment of the people in improving the soil and increasing the productive powers of the country_.

All relief from Government ceased, as we have seen, on the 15th of August. On the 17th, the Prime Minister went into a general statement of what had been done by Sir Robert Peel's Government to meet the Irish Famine. He detailed the measures adopted by them, in a spirit of approval, like Lord Lansdowne, and dwelt, of course, with especial laudation on the celebrated purchase of Indian meal;--its wisdom, its prudence, its generosity, its secrecy--not disturbing the general course of trade; its cheapness, coming, as it did, next in price to the potato, which the Irish had lost. Beyond doubt, there never was such a wonderful hit as that cargo of Indian meal. Sir Robert Peel flaunted it, with simpering modesty, to be sure, as his wont was, but flaunt it he did, in the face of every member who ventured to ask him what provision he had made against starvation in Ireland; and here again his successor seems to think that even he, who had nothing whatever to do with it, can take shelter under the ample protection it affords to all shortcomings with respect to the Irish Famine. But however good and praiseworthy this purchase of Indian meal was, the precedent it afforded was not to be followed; for, says the First Minister, "if it were to be considered as establis.h.i.+ng a principle, for the Government to apply the resources of the Treasury _for the purchase of food in foreign countries_, and that food were afterwards to be sold by retail at a low rate, it was evident that all trade would be disturbed, and _those supplies which would be naturally a portion of the commerce of this country would be applied for the relief of the people of Ireland_." Loud cheers hailed the announcement. "Likewise, that portion of the local trade in Ireland, which referred to the supply of districts, would be injured, and the Government would find itself charged with that duty most impossible to perform adequately--to supply with food a whole people."

The miserable, transparent, insulting fallacy that runs through this statement, is also found in almost all Sir Robert Peel's speeches on the famine, namely, that there was not food enough in Ireland for its people; and that it must be brought from foreign countries through the channels of commerce. Let any one look at the tables of our exports of food during the famine years, and he will see how the case stood. The food was in the country, on the very ground where it was required--beside the starving peasant, but was taken away before his eyes, while he was left to travel day after day three, four, five, and in many cases six or seven miles for a pound or two of Indian meal, carried three thousand miles to replace the wheat and oats of his own country, of which he was deprived; and there are recorded instances of men falling down dead at their own threshholds, after such journeys, without having tasted the food which they had sacrificed their lives to procure.[117]

It was a question of money also. The Government would not advance enough of money to buy the wheat, oats, or barley of the country; there must be a food found that was nearest in price to the potato. England could find a hundred millions of money to spend in fighting for the Grand Turk; she could find twenty millions for the slave-owners of her colonies; she could find twenty millions more for the luxury of shooting King Theodore, but a sufficient sum could not be afforded to save the lives of five millions of her own subjects.[118]

Lord John having announced the intention of the Government, to bring in a bill empowering the Lord Lieutenant to summon baronial and county sessions, for the purpose of providing public works for the Irish people, proposed that the Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury should issue Exchequer bills for 175,000 as a grant, and for 255,000 as a loan, to pay for the works that might be undertaken. He concluded in these words: "Sir, as I stated at the commencement, this is an especial case, requiring the intervention of Parliament. I consider that the circ.u.mstances I have stated, of that kind of food which const.i.tutes the subsistence of millions of people in Ireland being subjected to the dreadful ravages of this disease, const.i.tutes this a case of exception, and renders it imperative on the Government and the Parliament to take extraordinary measures of relief. I trust that the course I propose to pursue will not be without its counterbalancing advantages: that it will show the poorest among the Irish people that we are not insensible, here, to the claims which they have on us in the Parliament of the United Kingdom; that the whole credit of the Treasury and means of the country are ready to be used, as it is our bounden duty to use them, and will, whenever they can be usefully applied, be so disposed as to avert famine, and to maintain the people of Ireland; and that we are now disposed to take advantage of the unfortunate spread of this disease among the potatoes, to establish public works which may be of permanent utility. I trust, sir, that the present state of things will have that counterbalancing advantage in the midst of many misfortunes and evil consequences."[119]

The 15th of August was fixed for the cessation of the Government works, as well as the Government relief, because it was considered that relief extended beyond that time would be, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in reply to a question from O'Connell, "an evil of great magnitude." When the relief was withdrawn, and the blight had manifested itself in such giant proportions, the friends of the people saw nothing but famine with all its attendant horrors at their doors. At this time I find the Secretary of the Mallow Relief Committee, the Rev. C.B. Gibson, calling the urgent attention of the Commissioners of Relief, in Dublin Castle, to the state of his district, and his facts may be taken as a fair specimen of the state of a great portion of the country at the moment. He had just made a house-to-house visitation of the portion of the country over which the operations of his committee extended, and he says, the people were already starving, their only food being potatoes no larger than marbles, the blight having stopped their growth. He took some of the best of those potatoes to his house, and found that twelve of them weighed just four ounces and a-half--merely the weight of one very ordinary sized full-grown potato. They sickened the people instead of satisfying their hunger. In many places the children were kept in bed for want of clothing, as also to enable them to silence, to some extent, the pangs of hunger; some of them had not had any food for a day and a-half. And such beds as those starving children had! Of many he describes one. It consisted of a heap of stones built up like a blacksmith's fire-place, (these are his words), with a little hay spread over it; bed clothes there were none. One of the children of this family had died of starvation a fortnight before. The people in every house were pallid and sickly, and to all appearance dying slowly for want of sufficient nourishment. Mick Sullivan, a specimen of the labouring cla.s.s, was the owner of a cabin in which Mr. Gibson found two starved and naked children; this man was obliged to pay a rent of 1 15s. a year for that cabin, and 2 5s. for half an English acre of potato garden, or rather for half an acre of mountain bog. He paid for these by his labour at 6d. a day. It took one hundred and sixty days' clear work to pay for them, and of course his potato garden was no use to him this year. Mr.

Gibson valued the furniture in another cabin, John Griffin's, at 15d. A week before Mr. Gibson's visit, the parish priest had found in the same district, a mother dividing among three of her children that nourishment which nature only intended for their infancy. And this was the moment at which the Government relief was withdrawn, because the harvest had come in. It is not matter for wonder that the Rev. Secretary of the Mallow Belief Committee indignantly asks, "Is not the social condition of the Hottentot, who was once thought to be the most wretched of mankind, superior to that of Mick Sullivan, or John Griffin, whose furniture you might purchase for fifteen pence? I will not compare the condition of such an Irish peasant to that of the red man of North America, who, with his hatchet and gun and bearskin, and soft moca.s.sins, and flashy feathers, and s.p.a.cious wigwam (lined with warm furs, and hung about with dried deer and buffalo), may well contemn the advantages of our poor countryman's civilization. The Irishman has neither the pleasure of savage liberty, nor the profit of English civilization."[120] "I think,"

adds Mr. Gibson, "the present the proper time for noticing the panegyric pa.s.sed by Lord Monteagle on the gentry of this country for their liberality.[121] He gives two or three examples; but they may be the exceptions, instead of the examples of the cla.s.s; and as his Lords.h.i.+p is one of the cla.s.s he seeks to protect, his testimony cannot be received as impartial. I shall now furnish you with more satisfactory data, from which to draw a conclusion. According to the Poor Law Valuation, the yearly rental of Rahan, the parish a part of which I have already described, is 5,854. From those who hold the possession in fee of this pauper parish, we received thirty-five pounds; from a gentleman farmer we received three pounds; in all, thirty-eight pounds. If this is benevolence, the inhabitants of Rahan would soon starve upon it. If it had not been for the exertions of the Mallow Relief Committee, a number of those people would not be alive this day."

With regard to the Treasury minute, announcing the stoppage of the Government works, he expresses his conviction that if they cease the result around Mallow will be starvation and death. In view of the facts placed before the Commissioners by Mr. Gibson, which could, he says, be verified on oath by every member of the Mallow Relief Committee, he calls upon them not to leave the people to starve, their only resource being their potato gardens, which are utterly destroyed.

Parliament rose on the 28th of August. The Queen's Speech was read by the Lord Chancellor. Her Majesty referred with thanks to the public spirit shown by the members of both Houses, in their attention to the business of the nation, during a laborious and protracted session She, of course, lamented the recurrence of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, and had given, she said, her cordial a.s.sent to the measures framed to meet that calamity. After the fas.h.i.+on of most royal speeches, she expressed her satisfaction at the diminution of crime--not throughout the United Kingdom--but in Ireland.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] _Times_ of 31st July, 1846.

[103] The italics are the Author's.

[104] "Grand Juries feared neither G.o.d nor man."--_Times_, August 22, 1846.

[105] Mr. Mitch.e.l.l evidently alludes to the pa.s.sage so often found in O'Connell's speeches, commencing--

"O Erin, shall it e'er be mine To wreak thy wrongs in battle line," etc.

It is a curious fact that the Liberator, in the lapse of years, forgot where he had originally found the pa.s.sage, as the following extract from the proceedings of the Repeal a.s.sociation, on the 12th of April, 1844, will show:--

"Mr. O'Connell--As Mr. Steele began by correcting some errors which had crept into a published report of some of his observations, there is quite enough in that fact to justify me in following his example. The errors to which I allude appear in a book recently published by a Frenchman, the Viscount D'Arlingcourt, whom I met accidentally at Tara, and who felt somewhat surprised and mortified, on being informed that I had not heard of him before. In his work he speaks of the meeting, and he makes me state to him that six lines which I wrote in an _alb.u.m_ he presented to me for the purpose, were my own composition. Now, I am a plain prose writer, and I neither wrote, nor said I wrote, the lines in question. You may recollect them; they are as follows:--

O Erin shall it e'er be mine, To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave!

(Cheers.)

The rhythm is perfect, the versification excellent, and my disinclination to take the parentage is not because of any defect in them; but it is a matter of fact, there is only one word which I inserted, and which I claim as my own composition--that word is 'Erin.'

In the original lines the word was 'Scotland;' they are from a poem of Miss Mitford, called '"Wallace '--a poem not as well known as it ought to be."

"Mr. Maurice O'Connell--The lines are by Miss Holcroft."

"Mr. O'Connell--My son differs with me as to the authors.h.i.+p, but I cannot help that; but there is one thing we cannot dispute about, and that is, the lines are not mine."

Although Mr. Maurice O'Connell undertook to set his father right, he was equally at fault himself, for the lines are Scott's.

In the Lord of the Isles, canto 4, stanza 30, King Robert says:--

'O Scotland! shall it e'er be mine To wreak thy wrongs in battle line; To raise my victorhead and see Thy hills, thy dales, thy people free,--That glance of bliss is all I crave, Betwixt my labours and my grave." Then down the hill he slowly went, etc.

[106] The author was present at the two days' discussion. As Smith O'Brien, on leaving, went towards the door, several persons seizing him by the hands and arms, said to him, in a spirit of earnest, but friendly appeal--"Sure you are not going away, Sir. O'Brien?" He only answered by a determined shake of his head, and moved on. For some time after the departure of Smith O'Brien and his supporters silent depression reigned in the Hall. John Augustus O'Neill, in an eloquent speech, endeavoured to put the meeting in good spirits again, but with very limited success.

Every one seemed to feel that a great calamity had occurred. O'Brien and Mitchel spoke with cool, collected determination--more especially the latter. John O'Connell took his stand on the Rules of the a.s.sociation, as embodied in the Peace Resolutions. I was near him during his speech on each day; and although evidently labouring under the gravity of the occasion, he never ceased to be master of himself. His style was clear, but his voice being neither powerful nor resonant, he failed to make that impression upon his hearers which was warranted by his reasoning.

Meagher's delivery of the sword speech had more of ostentation than grace in it. A common gesture of his (if it can be called such) was to place his arms a-kimbo, and turn his head a little to one side, suggesting the idea that this att.i.tudinizing was meant to attract admiration to himself rather than to his argument. His voice was good, but his intonation unmusical, and he invariably ended his sentences on too high a note; but his fiery rhetoric carried the audience almost completely with him, and he was cheered again and again to the echo.

[107] Many a fine, stalwart peasant said to me, during the great era of the Monster Meetings, "I'm afraid, sir, we'll never get the union without fighting for it." I know for a fact, that wives and daughters and sisters endeavoured to dissuade fathers and husbands and brothers from going to the great Tara Meeting--suspecting, as they said, that "bad work would come out of it," _i.e._, fighting.

[108] _Daily and Weekly Press. Census of Ireland, 1851._

[109] _Correspondence relating to the measures adopted for the relief of the distress in Ireland (Commissariat Series), p. 3._

[110] This estimate is said to have been compiled from the best available sources for Thom's Almanac and Directory for 1847. The quant.i.ty of potatoes in each of the four Provinces, and their probable value were:

Ulster, 352.665 acres, valued at 4,457,562 Munster, 460,630 " " 6,030,739 10s.

Leinster, 217,854 " " 2,814,150 Connaught, 206,292 " " 2,645,468 ------- --------- 1,237,441 15,947,919 10s.

[111] Letters on the state of Ireland, by the Earl of Rosse: London, 1847. _Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1993_. These letters were originally sent to the _Times_, but that journal having refused them insertion, the n.o.ble author published them in a pamphlet. The Rev. Theobald Mathew said, I do not know on what authority, that two millions of acres of potatoes were irrevocably lost, being worth to those who raised them 20 an acre. This estimate would make the loss 40,000,000.

[112] _Mayne on the Potato Failure_. The potato crop, for the most part, continued to look well up to the end of July, but the blight had appeared, in the most decided way, during the first half of that month, although not then very apparent to a casual observer. Mr. Mayne, like many persons at the time, attributed the blight to an insect which some called _Aphis Vastator_, others _Thrips minutissima_. There was a gla.s.s case in the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, showing this insect feeding on the leaves and stalks of the potato plant. Mr. Mayne and those who agreed with him, seem, in this instance, to have mistaken cause for effect. Indeed the insect, it would appear, was a natural parasite of the potato, and some observers have gone so far as to a.s.sert that the _Aphis Vastator_ abounded more on healthy plants than upon those affected with the blight.

[113] _Letter to the Duke of Leinster quoted in Irish Census for 1851_.

M. Zander, of Boitzenberg, in Prussia, published, about this time, a method by which full sized potatoes could be produced in one year from the seed, and he further stated that the seedlings so produced had resisted the blight. The old idea was, that it took three years to produce full-sized potatoes from the seed. M. Zander's method was tried in various parts of Ireland and England, its chief peculiarity being that the seed was sown on a light hot bed, and the plants so produced were transferred to the ground in which they were to produce the crop.

Full-sized potatoes were the result, each plant producing, on an average, 1-1/2 lbs. of potatoes, or rather more than 29 tons to the Irish acre. This method appeared satisfactory to those who interested themselves about it, but it does not seem to have been followed up.

[114] Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society.

This opinion as to fogs preceding or accompanying the potato blight was corroborated from various parts of the United Kingdom. A correspondent of the _Gardener's Chronicle_, under date 14th Nov., 1846, writes: "In the early part of August, 1846, there was not a diseased potato in the North Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re. Late in August, I think the 25th, a very thick dense fog prevailed. The air was not, however, at all _chill_. The heat and closeness was most oppressive. This continued all night, and anything similar to it I never before saw, with so high a temperature.

It occurred also on the following night. _On the morning after the fog, the whole of the potato fields had precisely the disorganized appearance they have after a night's frost_. They soon became black, and the disease followed in a very few days."

In the _Gardener's Chronicle_ of the 5th of September, it is mentioned that shortly before, and about the time the disease appeared at Aberdeen, "there was a succession of unusually dense fogs, followed by great warmth."

In one of the Orkney Islands it was remarked by a farmer that "a very dense fog rested in patches on certain parts of the island; at times it was so defined, that the observer could point out the exact measure of ground over which it rested. It hung low, and had the appearance of a light powdering of snow. In pa.s.sing, it fell down on his small farm, and _he smelt it very unpleasant_, exactly like, he says, the bilge water of a s.h.i.+p--a sulphurous sort of stench. After the wind rose and cleared off those clouds or lumps of fog, there _remained on the gra.s.s_ over which they had hung, as well as on the _potato shaws_, [stalks,] _an appearance of grey dew or h.o.a.r frost. The next morning he noticed the leaves of his potatoes slightly spotted_ ... Before ten days, not a shaw was in his potato patch more than if it had been a bare fallow ...

_Everywhere through the island, the disease, after the fog, began in spots and corners of fields_, and spread more slowly over all."--_Observations on the probable cause of the Failure of the Potato Crop, by David Milne, Esq., p. 37. Halliday Pamphlets_, vol. 1, 994.

[115] See post, p. 165.

[116] Public Letter of 25th of August.

[117] In the debate on the "Fever (Ireland) Bill," on the 18th of March, Mr. Scrope said, "He must observe that he held to the opinion that the first resource for the people of Ireland which should have been looked to, on the failure of the potato crop, should have been the oats which they themselves had grown by the side of their potatoes, and that the burthen should have been thrown upon the Unions of taking care that a sufficient stock of those oats should have been stored to provide against necessity."

In replying to Mr. Scrope, Sir James Graham called this "a forced purchase of oats which would be most injurious, by increasing the demand for the article." Mr. Wakley addressing himself to that observation, said "he would ask, was not England open to the same or similar effects?

Did not the guardians of the poor in this country make purchases upon the spot? Surely, meat, flour, and other provisions for the workhouses were purchased in the immediate neighbourhood of such workhouses--in short, was not everything given in the workhouses obtained in the immediate vicinity of them?"--_Hansard, vol. 150. Columns 1168 and 1191._

[118] "Gentlemen, when I reflect that as much as 30,000,000 of money have been expended in one year in contending with foreign countries for objects of infinitely less importance to us."

Sir H.W. Barren (interrupting) "30,000,000 per annum."

Lord Stuart--I stated so--infinitely of less importance than a.s.sisting to relieve an immensity of our fellow-countrymen from starvation. I have not, nor can I feel any distrust in those to whom her Majesty has entrusted the government of the country so as to believe they could hesitate ... in granting a sixth of that sum for rendering Ireland prosperous and contented."--_Speech of Lord Stuart de Decies_ at Dungarvan, recommending the Government to reclaim the waste lands, November 13, 1846.