QUESTION OF ESTABLISHING A SYSTEM OF POOR-LAWS IN IRELAND.
A board of commissioners had been for some time busied with the consideration of a system of poor-laws in Ireland, and in the last session a report containing the result of their inquiries was laid before parliament. This report, however, was not satisfactory to government. They thought it desirable that some inquiry should be made as to how far it might be practicable to introduce into Ireland a system of relief based upon the principles of the new English poor-law. For this purpose, Mr. Nicholls, one of the commissioners, was sent to Ireland to prosecute the matter by personal investigation. The report of Mr. Nicholls was very able, and on it government grounded the measure which they intended to bring forward on the subject. This measure was introduced in the commons by Lord John Russell on the 13th of February. In introducing it, his lordship called the attention of the house to that part of the king’s speech at the opening of the session, in which the establishment of some legal provision for the poor was recommended. At the same time he laid on the table of the house a copy of Mr. Nicholl’s report upon the subject. In his speech, his lordship first dwelt upon the benefits derivable to a country from a well-administered system of poor-laws; upon its tendency to preserve peace, prevent vagrancy, diminish crime, and establish harmony among all classes of society. Having dwelt on this subject at length, Lord John Russell then stated the leading provisions of the bill as recommended by the commissioner. With respect to the expense of the system, he said, it had been calculated that the whole average charge for each person in the English workhouses, including lodging, fuel, clothing, and diet, was one shilling and sixpence per week. If, therefore, we take one hundred union houses, each containing eight hundred inmates, and suppose them all fully occupied, the annual expense for the whole would be £312,000.
In order to understand the nature of the bill brought in by Lord John Russell, however, it is necessary to give a brief extract of the report made by Mr. Nicholls. He stated that he found the people almost universally favourable to the introduction of a poor-law. But with respect to the question of how far the introduction of the English poor-law was practicable in Ireland, two difficulties suggested themselves—first, whether the workhouse system could be relied on as a test of destitution in Ireland; and secondly, whether the means and machinery existed there for the formation of unions as in England. The great principle of the workhouse system is, that the support which is afforded at the public charge there should be less desirable than that to be obtained by independent exertion. It would be impossible to make the lodging, clothing, and diet of the inmates of an Irish workhouse inferior to those of the Irish peasantry, and therefore this security would not be found for the efficiency of the workhouse-test. On the other hand, it is to be remembered that the Irish are naturally or by habit a migratory people, fond of change, full of hope, and eager for experiment. They had never been tied down to one limited settlement, and consequently confinement of any kind would be irksome, and therefore the test of the workhouse is likely to prove fully as efficient in Ireland as in England. With respect to the’ supply of local machinery for the execution of the law, Mr. Nicholls considered that by making the unions sufficiently large, there would be no difficulty of obtaining boards of guardians of competent intelligence and activity. These might, he said, be elected by the contributors to the county cess; but Mr. Nicholls thought that, in the first instance, large general powers should be vested in some competent authority to control and direct the proceedings of the board of guardians, and, where necessary, to supersede their functions altogether. He further proposed, that the same central authority should be empowered to dispense with the election of the first board of guardians, and to appoint such persons as it should think proper to act in their stead. It was further proposed, that the number of magistrates acting officially as guardians should not exceed one-third of the elected members of the board; and that no clergyman or minister of any denomination should be eligible to act as ex-officio guardian. The enactment of a provision for the destitute at the common charge, would give the community a right to interfere with the proceedings of individuals, so as to prevent the spread of destitution, and enable it to guard itself from loss and damage by the negligence or obstinacy of any of its members. With this view, it was recommended that the central authority should appoint, or empower the board of guardians to appoint, one or more wardens or head-boroughs for every parish, who might superintend the affairs of the district. Assuming the general practicability and expediency of establishing a system of poor-law in Ireland on principles the same with those of the English law, Mr. Nicholls proceeded to consider the details of its application in that country. It was proposed that all relief out of the workhouse should be absolutely refused. Another point to be insisted upon, was, that no individual of a family should be admitted unless all its members entered the house. All relief was to be given by the orders and direction of the central authority. With respect to the formation and regulation of the local machinery, the report recommended that, as in England, the appointment of guardians should be vested in the rate-payers and owners of property in the union. A scale was proposed, by which the number of votes possessed by an individual rate-payer might be raised from one to five, as his rating increased from five pounds to two hundred. The commissioners had proposed that the owner should pay two-thirds of the rate, and that the remainder should fall on the tenant: Mr. Nicholls thought that it would be better to divide the charge equally between the two parties. It was not recommended to establish a parochial settlement in Ireland, as the habits of the people were migratory: if a law settlement should be established, it would be a union of settlement, making the limits of the union the boundary. The simpler the conditions on which this settlement was made to depend, it would be the better. They might, it was stated, be limited to two—birth, and actual residence for a term of years; but, on the whole, it would be better to dispense with settlement altogether. One great object in the establishment of a legal relief for the destitute would be the right it afforded to take measures for the suppression of mendicancy. The present state of Ireland, and the feelings and habits of the people, threw considerable difficulty in the way of an immediate enforcement of such a prohibition. The best method, it was stated, would probably be to enact a general prohibition, and to cast upon the central authority the responsibility of bringing the act into operation in the several unions, as the workhouses became fitted for the reception of inmates. With respect to emigration, Mr. Nicholls did not think it should be looked to as an ordinary resource; the necessity for its adoption would be regarded as an indication of disease, which it would be better to prevent than thus to relieve. The source, however, would be one which must be employed as a means of relief whenever any population became excessive in any district, and no opening for migration to other districts could be found. In the conclusion of his report, Mr. Nicholls considered the nature and appointment of the central authority upon which the whole administration of the new system would depend. He was in favour of its being carried into effect by the existing English board, inasmuch as the object being to carry the English system into Ireland, it could only be done by persons practically conversant with its administration.
Such were the principles on which the measure introduced by Lord John Russell was founded. On its introduction, Irish members of all parties expressed their satisfaction with it. Mr. O’Connell, however, though he did not oppose it, expressed himself less sanguine as to its beneficial results. The hundred workhouses which it was proposed to erect would afford shelter and relief to eighty thousand persons in Ireland only; and he asked, what proportion that bore to the mass of destitution in Ireland? He objected also to the proposed gradual introduction of the measure. They would thereby create a state of transition, during which neither relief nor charity would be afforded to the suffering population of the country. He disapproved, also, of that part of the plan which confined relief and employment to the workhouses. There was no part of Ireland, he said, which might not be made ten times more productive than it was, and yet it was proposed to feed men in idleness in a workhouse. The system of workhouses acted well in England, where a sort of slave labour was adopted in them, to force the idle to seek employment elsewhere; but what could be expected from it in Ireland where men worked for twopence per day? Many expected that a poor-rate in Ireland would prevent the influx of Irish labourers into England; there could not be a greater mistake: unmarried men would still go to England; and so would the married, leaving their families to be maintained in the workhouse. The experiment, he saw, must be made; and, notwithstanding his objections, he would certainly give every aid in working out its details. Mr. O’Connell urged the necessity of extensive emigration on the consideration of government; but Sir Robert Peel said that he was not sanguine as to any benefits to be derived therefrom. The long sea-voyage would always stand in the way of its adoption to any extent. As to public works, to vote money merely to employ people, that would only aggravate existing evils by interfering with the natural demand for labour. Sir Robert Peel, however, was disposed cordially to support the measure in its general objects; as was also Lord Stanley.
The second reading of the bill did not take place till the end of April. The interval seems to have confirmed Mr. O’Connell in his hostility to the measure. It was not his intention directly to oppose it—some measure of the kind was inevitable; but his deliberate judgment was, that it would aggravate, instead of mitigate, the existing evils of the Irish peasantry. Those evils he ascribed to English misgovernment: the distinct and direct object of the penal laws was to enforce ignorance and poverty by act of parliament. For a century, the Irish had had laws requiring the people to be ignorant, and punishing them for being industrious. And what, he asked, were the natural consequences of this legislation? He entered into a variety of statistical details to prove that, with a less fertile soil, the quantity of agricultural produce raised in England was as four to one compared with that of Ireland; though, according to the number of acres under cultivation, it ought not to exceed two to one. He then proceeded to read numerous extracts from the reports of the commissioners, descriptive of the extreme misery of the Irish peasantry. He described men as lying in bed for want of food; turning thieves in order to be sent to jail; lying on rotten straw in mud cabins, with scarcely any covering; feeding on unripe potatoes and yellow weed, and feigning sickness, in order to get into hospitals. He continued:—“This is the condition of a country blest by nature with fertility, but barren from the want of cultivation, and whose inhabitants stalk through the land enduring the extremity of misery and want. Did we govern ourselves? Who did this? You, Englishmen!—I say, you did it? It is the result of your policy and domination!” With respect to the bill before the house, Mr. O’Connell ridiculed the proposition of relieving the destitution of 2,300,000 persons by building poor-houses to shelter eighty thousand at the expense of £312,000 a year. The charities in Dublin alone amounted to half that sum, and the farmers gave away in kind from a million to a million and a half yearly. As for tranquillizing the country, Mr. O’Connell said that the bill would not have any such effect. On the contrary, as all relief was to be given in the workhouse, every man who was refused would have a pretext for prædial resistance. The man refused would be the very man to resent the refusal; he would go to others and induce them to adopt his quarrel, and perhaps to avenge what he would consider to be his wrong. In conclusion, Mr. O’Connell admitted that he was opposed to a law of settlement, and also to a labour-rate: he thought emigration should be tried on a large scale; and he was still an advocate for a tax on absentees. However much he disapproved of the bill, he would not vote against it: he had not moral courage enough to resist a poor-law altogether. A long and angry debate ensued, which issued in nothing practical.
The only point in the measure in which any serious opposition was raised, respected the law of settlement. On the 12th of May, when the order of the day was read for the house to go into committee on the bill, Mr. Lucas moved,—“That it be an instruction to the committee to introduce a provision for settlement, so as more justly to apportion the pecuniary charges to be incurred and levied under the name of poor-rates.” Mr. Lucas suggested a particular scheme of settlement, by which he conceived most of the evils attaching to the system as hitherto practised might be avoided; but his statement of its nature and probable operation was not very intelligible, and his motion was negatived, after some discussion of the subject, by a majority of one hundred and twenty against sixty-eight. The bill did not proceed beyond this stage of its progress, in consequence of the demise of the crown.