Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

"On Tuesday evening last, a large armed party came to the house of a farmer named Connolly on the lands of Ballinderry, county Westmeath, within a mile of the town of Moats, and demanded why he had turned away two servant boys he had, and directed him to send off the two boys he had since. They then ordered the two men in his employment to be off, or it would be worse for them – an order, such is the state of the country, which was promptly obeyed."

"On Wednesday night last, a threatening notice was posted on the gate of a respectable farmer named Egan, ordering him at once to dismiss two Connaught men he had employed, and to take back his former labourers, whom he was obliged to dismiss for idleness."

"On the morning of the 16th, an armed party attacked the house of Pat Leray, of Stratlanstoun, and beat Leray and his son in a severe manner. The only reason assigned for this is, that Leray went to plough some land for his landlord, Captain Robinson of Rossmead."

"The same morning, the house of Pat Woods was attacked by the same party, and for the same cause of offence. Woods and his mother were severely beaten."

Now, those outrages have been perpetrated, not in any of the five condemned counties, but in Westmeath, where almost every proprietor is resident. What a state of society do they exhibit? Ruffians assailing men because they dared to change their servants, and beating old women solely because their sons were on good terms with their landlords. And those daring violations of the law were enacted in the open day by a party of thirty men, well armed with both pistols and bludgeons. A tithe of the outrages committed in Ireland are not only never heard of in this country, but never even reported to the police. Such is the power of those banded assassins – such the terror which they inspire – that their victims submit to their decrees in silence rather than bring further misfortunes upon their families. Sir James Graham, in his statement, mentioned the case of a man dying of his wounds, who refused to identify his murderers out of regard for the safety of his relatives and friends. A person of the name of Gleeson, who came into his land twenty years ago, was dreadfully beaten, and ordered to give up his farm; and, although five of his sons were present, not one of them informed the police. "Had they done so," says Sir James, "there is but little doubt the perpetrators would have been arrested. I have heard it said, and I do believe," (continued the most moderate of exponents,) "that, in the five counties, the great body of the people are tainted. I believe the bands are small, though perfectly organized; but the number of persons comprising these lawless bands is small compared with the great body of the people. But still evidence cannot be obtained, and the law is by reason of this inoperative. And if these small bands prevent the exercise of the law, these outrages remaining unchecked, the bulk of the population will not heed the law." And whose fault is it that those counties are tainted, and that the law in Ireland has ceased to be respected? Why, chiefly the fault of the government, of which the right honourable gentleman is so prominent a member. Had they acted as they should have done when they were placed in power, the state of that wretched country would be now widely different from what it is. Lord Normanby's jail deliveries, and the arrangements of his law-officers in regard to the formation of the juries, laid the foundation of the system of terror. Convicted malefactors were enlarged by "the gracious Viceroy," and the guilty received effectual protection from their accomplices in crime, who were admitted to the jury-box by his patriotic officials – the laws were rendered inoperative, and combination spread, and outrages multiplied. When the Conservative government were placed in power, the well-disposed expected that crime would have received a check; and the turbulent and seditious were prepared to submit to the blow, had it been immediately and fearlessly dealt them; but the opportunity was allowed to pass. The disaffected recovered from their temporary panic – atrocities became again the order of the day, and the assailed submitted in silence, because they saw no hope of obtaining redress. The Ministers permitted monster processions, after they had suppressed monster meetings. The friends of order and of the British constitution were disheartened and discountenanced; and, as a necessary consequence, the opinions of the agitators gained ground. Their organization became complete, and their power irresistible.

The uncalled-for contest in which the Peel administration have chosen to engage with the agricultural interest of England, has added to the mischief. Their unexampled political tergiversation has deprived them of the support of almost all their former adherents; and now, when they see the evil consequences of the vacillating policy which they have pursued with regard to Ireland, and are desirous of repressing the enormities which they have permitted to accumulate around them, their mouthpiece is obliged to recount a mass of horrors sufficient to curdle the blood of the most unfeeling, without daring to give utterance to one burst of honest indignation, lest by doing so he should deprive his government of the only assistance by means of which they can hope to accomplish their free-trade projects; and with a full knowledge that neither life nor property are secure in Ireland, they are compelled to succumb to the threats of their temporary allies, and virtually to abandon even the emasculated measure which they dared to introduce, by consenting to postponements which must deprive it of all moral weight, and still further encourage vexatious opposition. But can the ministers suppose that the Irish liberals support them for any other purpose than that of attaining their own ends? Whatever may be their ultimate effects upon the condition of this country, it is clear that the repeal of the corn-laws, and the alterations in the tariff, must be most hurtful to Ireland.

No one can entertain a doubt but that pork will be raised, and bacon cured, to such an extent in America, as to deprive the Irish cotter of the assistance he has heretofore derived from his pig, and that foreign butter will supplant his in the English market: and that, in consequence, Irish lands must greatly fall in value, unless they be applied to the rearing and fattening of cattle; and such being the case, what a prospect have both the Irish gentry and the Irish people before them, – ruin, if the small farmers are allowed to continue in occupation; and desolation and insurrection if they be removed. The government express an anxiety to secure the employment of the people on the reclamation of waste lands, and they propose to advance the money to enable the proprietors to pay them; but, at the same moment, by removing protection, they render it certain that such proceedings must be attended with a total loss. Whatever may be said by theorists, the profit to be derived from reclamation of waste lands in Ireland is at least but problematical. The repeal of the corn-laws must render any such attempt ruinous; and, as if it were not enough to expose the Irish farmer to foreign competition, the ministry are now trying, and "they hope with success," to destroy the home market; by substituting Indian corn, which can never be raised in the country, in place of oats and potatoes, which have hitherto constituted the food of the people. Now, putting out of consideration the interest of the gentry, what, we may ask, is to become of the Irish farmer and of the Irish labourer, if the crops which yield profit to the one, and employment to the other, were to be superseded by a species of grain which their climate cannot produce.

The Irish Radicals are quite aware of the misfortunes which the ministerial measures will inflict upon their country; yet they urge the government to their adoption, in the hope of being able to profit by means of the discontent and ruin which they must effect.

But if we are surprised at the conduct of the government in complacently witnessing, for four years, the existence of a state of things in a portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. Let any man read the reported speech of the Home Secretary, and from it he would never be able to discover that there existed at this moment, in that portion of the empire, so disgraced by crime and distracted by dissensions, an Association whose whole occupation is to disseminate falsehood and preach sedition – an organized band of men who levy tribute on their dupes, and who, in return for their pence, administer political poison to the minds of their victims – a political body, whose interest it is that acrimony, and ill-will, and civil strife, should prevail; because in the storm of passions which they evoke, they reap the harvest of pelf on which they live – whose acts have been pronounced by the tribunals of their country to be illegal, and whose leaders have been denounced by this individual minister as "convicted conspirators" – an Association whose doctrines, preached by a political priesthood and enforced by a sanguinary mob, have rendered life and property insecure, and the quiet existence of independence and industry impossible.

The ministry admitted the extent of this evil, when they prosecuted "the political martyrs;" yet now, when the power of the Conciliation Hall conspirators is more dangerous, because more time has been given them to consolidate their strength – in laying before Parliament the condition of Ireland, and in referring to the causes by which it has been produced, her Majesty's servants affect an utter ignorance of the existence of a body which they heretofore thought it necessary to arraign, and by their silence tacitly exculpate from all blame those men at whose doors they formerly, and with justice, laid all the blood which has been shed, and all the crime which has been committed in Ireland.

See the quibbles by which the Home Secretary seeks to make the coercion measure which he advocates a sort of collateral support to the corn-law question, which he desires to pass: – "Now, sir, in reference to this measure which I am about to propose, painful as it is, and unconstitutional as I admit it to be, I must say that I, for one, foreseeing some time ago that the necessity for some such measure would shortly arrive, felt that I could not reconcile it to my conscience and sense of duty to be a party to it, when, at the same time, with the great increase of crime, I saw the extreme physical distress of the people of Ireland, arising from a deficiency of that which they had been accustomed to make their principal food. I felt, I say, that it was of vital importance that provision should first be made, by an effort on the part of the government, to relieve the physical wants of the people before this measure should be brought forward; and I resolved that I could not be a party to the measure unless I had the sanction of my colleagues to a bill which would have the effect of opening the corn trade, and placing articles of the first necessity within the reach of the people of Ireland." But this cannot avail the right honourable gentleman; for his own returns show that the amount of crime was infinitely greater up to the month of August 1845, when provisions were most abundant, and the prospects of the new harvest most cheering, than now, when it suits his convenience to notice its existence, or to sustain the potato panic. "When the greatest increase of crime existed," he could not possibly have anticipated "the extreme physical distress of the people," because no such distress was then heard of. But because his object was to make the suppression of crime auxiliary to other measures of the government, he takes no step to accomplish it until he comes backed by the exaggerations of political knaves, and the reports of philosophical quacks, to prove his case, in order that the humanity of his auditory may be excited; and that, before he is called upon to coerce, he may be permitted to repeal the corn-laws, on the pretence of relieving "the physical wants of the people."

We are far from denying that a great loss has been sustained in the potato crop; but that loss does not in reality affect the food of the people so much as would appear at first sight; for the cattle and pigs which used to get sound potatoes in other years, were exclusively fed on diseased ones in this: neither has the rot been attended with pecuniary loss to any considerable extent; for the diseased part being removed, the remainder was as fit to use as the soundest potato; and more pigs were reared and fatted than usual on the rotted portions, and they never fatted better or bore a higher price. But, (and this fact has been studiously suppressed by Sir Robert Peel,) even admitting that the loss has been great, there could be no famine. The crop of oats exceeded by a third any crop known in the memory of man, and the price of oats in October last exceeded the average price at that season for many years past by nearly one-half. Consequently rather more than half the quantity which the tenantry required to sell in other years to make up a given sum, answered the same purpose on this; and even such of the tenantry as paid their rents had an unusual quantity left after disposing of what enabled them to meet their engagements; and this has been converted into meal and stored in their houses, or remains in stack in their haggards. Now, oatmeal always constitutes a principal ingredient in the food of every Irish peasant from this season forward; and yet the ministers never once alluded to the great quantity of oats which they must know to be in the country, nor to the fact that there has been, as the season advanced, a steady and progressive decline in its price. In the Dublin market, on the 18th November 1845, oats brought from fourteen to sixteen and sixpence the barrel; on the 28th of March 1846, it sold from twelve to fifteen shillings; while at the same period in the last year, when no famine was anticipated, it fetched twelve shillings; and there can be no doubt but it will experience a still further fall as the season advances, for potatoes now are, on the whole, lower than they were a month ago; and the holders of meal will soon begin to perceive that they cannot realize the prices which the exaggerations of the government led them to expect, and they will supply the markets more freely.

It is extraordinary to see how people here can be humbugged. Mr O'Connell, some time since, produced in the House a return from a priest, which professed to give the state of his parishioners, as regarded the amount of food each family possessed. In this document it was stated, (and the announcement was received with loud cries of "hear, hear,") that a certain number of families had not a week's provisions; and no doubt this was true; and the same reverend gentleman, or any other in any part of Ireland, might make just the same report at the same period in any year, even when potatoes sold for eightpence the cwt.: – All the class of small cotters have generally used the produce of their con-acres at this season, and they commence to buy – the work which they always have in abundance in the spring enabling them to pay. They purchase weekly; and the fact that a certain number of them had not a week's provisions, at the time this return was made, in their possession, no more implies the presence of famine in that particular locality, than the fact, that the labourers in London have generally no greater supply proves the existence of a scarcity in the metropolis. Both parties purchase weekly, and consequently have never more than a week's provisions by them.

No doubt, there is a deficiency of provisions in particular neighbourhoods; but, take the kingdom all over, there is a sufficiency; and if the government had not, for their own purposes, magnified the danger, the pressure on the people would now be less than it is.

We express surprise that the assertions of Mr O'Connell and the agitators continue to be credited by the people, although they have been a thousand times rejected and belied; but her Majesty's ministers exhibit a still greater extent of gullibility, if they really, as they affect to do, believe in the statements made by the Radical members and their organs of the press, after the repeated instances in which those statements have been proved to be erroneous. On the 20th November, the Mansion-house Committee proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the British empire, and in the presence of an all-seeing Providence, "That in Ireland famine of a most hideous description must be immediate and pressing, and pestilence of the most frightfull kind, and not remote, unless immediately prevented." And on the 17th of December, Mr O'Connell announced, that "Some say the crop will last till April. Even those most sanguine admit that we will have a famine in April– others say the crop will last till March – others that it will not last beyond February – others that a famine will come on before the month of January is over —for my own part, I believe the last;" yet, here we are, thanks to a beneficent Providence, now approaching the 1st of May, neither suffering from famine nor from pestilence, with almost all the crops sown, and with well-supplied and steadily-falling markets; and yet the Premier eagerly grasps at any new exaggeration of those men, for the purpose of supporting his own overdrawn pictures of fresh distress.

But there is, in reality, neither that distress nor that scarcity in Ireland which we are taught to believe exist there. The people are fond of coarse food, which we think unfit for men, but they prefer it – witness the various insinuations of the paupers against the use of Indian corn flour.

That the Irish consider the constant use of "bread and meat" as an infliction, is proved by a rather ludicrous account given of their feelings on this head in his evidence before Lord Devon's Committee, by Mr Thomas Glennon, No. 418, part second. After telling the Commissioners that many persons had emigrated from his neighbourhood to South America, "that they had succeeded there, and sent large remittances to their friends through his hands," he is asked – "Have they sent any statement how the climate agrees with them?" "It agrees very well with them, and the only difficulty they find is, that they have not potatoes to eat; the bread and meat, and constant eating, is what disagrees with them." Now, surely, if we ought to consult the political prejudices of the Irish people when legislating for them, as the Premier says we should do, we ought not altogether to disregard their culinary tastes, or force them to eat a diet which they dislike, only because we prize it ourselves.

The extraordinary blunders which some of those enthusiastic men who undertake to legislate on Irish subjects so frequently commit, would excite feelings of ridicule, if the observations in which they see fit to indulge were not calculated to produce mischief in quarters where their insignificance is not known, and where their flippant fallacies may be mistaken for facts. Thus, Mr Poulett Scrope exclaims, – "What! are 130 work-houses, capable of containing 100,000 people, to be considered sufficient to supply accommodation for 2,800,000 destitute paupers?" If the honourable gentleman took the trouble of consulting documentary evidence, he would have found that they were much more than sufficient. It is true that the commissioners reported that there were in a population of 8,000,000, 2,800,000 in a state of destitution, and they proposed that 100, subsequently they suggested that 130 houses, capable of containing 100,000 persons, should be built for their accommodation. In the 9th report of those gentlemen, we find that, in the quarter ending December 1842, eighty-six houses, built to contain 73,960 paupers, were in operation in Ireland, and that on the average, only 27,000 persons availed themselves of the relief they afforded, "about one-third the number they were capable of accommodating." In the report for 1843, we see that in ninety-two houses, built to contain 78,160, in which relief had been administered from the 10th January 1844, the average number of inmates was 31,578, and the gross number to whom relief had been afforded during the year, was 53,582. And in the 11th report, the last published, "in 105 houses which were open from January 1844 to January 1845, the gross number relieved was 68,371, and the average number of inmates 37,780, although those 105 houses were capable of accommodating 84,000 individuals."10 Thus we have it clearly proved, that those houses never at any time contained one-half, and very seldom more than one-third of the numbers they were constructed to accommodate– and yet Mr Scrope waxes furious because more houses are not built, while those already erected are not half occupied.

Lord George Bentinck, to whose opinions and to whose statements great weight is deservedly attached, expresses his dissatisfaction at the working of the Irish Poor-law, because while £5,000,000 is expended annually in this country in succouring 16,000,000, only £250,000 is spent in Ireland in giving relief to 8,000,000 of the people. But if his lordship took time to consider, he would see that the disproportionate expenditure was not caused by any restrictions which the Irish law imposed, but by the unwillingness of the Irish people to take advantage of its enactments. If he had recourse to the returns of the commissioners, he would have found, that while in the year ending January 1844 the gross number of those who received parochial relief in Ireland was 53,582, the number of those who received similar relief in England amounted to 4,279,565, considerably more than one-fourth of the population, of whom 958,057 actually entered the Bastiles. Thus we have nearly the sixteenth part of the population seeking in-door relief in England and Wales, and not the one hundred and twentieth part in Ireland. But the small numbers admitted in Ireland, and the small expenditure incurred in succouring the poor in that country, is not the fault of the law. It sets no limit to the benevolence of the guardians. Neither is it the fault of those who administer it; for the guardians being almost all thorough-paced patriots, of whom the great majority pay under ten shillings annually to the tax, never reject applicants, and frequently solicit persons to become candidates for admission. And when we consider that those who, we are told, "dwell in ditches and live on weeds," and to whom "beds and blankets are rare luxuries," have only to apply for shelter where they can have good beds and better diet than the commissioners assure us they are even accustomed to at home, we cannot but express surprise at the taste of our neighbours, who prefer dirt and starvation to cleanliness and abundance; and our sympathy for persons who bewail their sufferings, and yet will not accept the proffered relief, must be greatly diminished.

The truth is, and facts such as those prove it, that though there is more squalid filth and raggedness in Ireland, (for those are national tastes,) there is much less of real misery or distress in that country than exists in England.

To make their coercive policy palatable to their present supporters, the ministry announce the immediate introduction of a bill to regulate the arrangements between landlord and tenant, and to secure the latter adequate compensation for any improvements he may have effected. It is always better for governments to leave the adjustment of private rights to the parties concerned in them. But if they are to be guided in their legislation by the evidence given before the land-commissioners, and not by the report which it pleased those gentlemen to adopt, there never was a case in which such interference was less called for. We do not find in the whole mass a solitary well substantiated instance in which an improving and rent-paying tenant was dispossessed by the landlord for the purpose of availing himself of the additional value which had been given to his land. And Mr Stewart, an extensive agent and land-valuator, declared in his examination, "that he considered improving tenants had, at the expiration of their tenures, a just claim upon the consideration of their landlords —a claim," he continues, "which, in a great number of instances coming under my own observation, I never yet knew to be disregarded." Can the government believe that contingent and trifling rewards for levelling old ditches, and for building ill-constructed houses, will be sufficient to satisfy men who, according to Mr Maher's sworn testimony, "desire no such improvements, even when they are paid promptly for their execution;" or that drainage will be effected, in the hope of their being allowed a paltry consideration in case they are dispossessed, "by persons who threaten with death those who are willing to give them at once the full value of their labour?" Not a bit of it. Any attempt to legislate on the subject will only increase the present difficulties. If you give the tenant a right to execute such improvements as he pleases, and guarantee him remuneration, who is to be the umpire between the occupier and the landlord? – "a commissioner." Well, where are you to get respectable men to act in such a capacity, with the certainty that if they decided honestly, they would become unpopular, and secure the reward of death? And if you take those commissioners from the class of small farmers, and pay them by the business they transact, why, then, there will be no limit to jobbing and dishonesty – each of them will bid for popularity and increase of income, by deciding in favour of the tenant, and against the landlord, in all instances – and litigation and confusion without end will be the consequence. As to Mr O'Connell's other remedies – extension of municipal reform, and increase of representation – grant them, and what could the change effect? No extension of municipal reform can possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are – with one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles prevail in all. They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him? And as to the increase in the Irish representation, what benefit could that be to the country, when, admitting that the number of members were increased, the additional ones would only swell the amount of those who altogether, and purposely, absent themselves from their duties, under the sanction of their constituents, and by the express dictation of their leader.