GLASGOW.
Looks more American than any other city I have seen in Europe. Half of Pittsburgh spliced on to half of Philadelphia would make a city very like Glasgow. Iron is said to be made cheaper here than elsewhere in the world, the ore being alloyed with a carbonaceous substance which facilitates the process and reduces the cost of melting. Tall chimneys and black columns of smoke are abundant in the vicinity. The city is about twice the size of Edinburgh, with more than double the trade of that capital, and has risen rapidly from relative insignificance. New rows of stately houses have recently been built, and the "court end" of the city is extending rapidly toward the West. A brown or dark gray stone, as in Edinburgh, is the principal material used, and gives the city a very substantial appearance. Most of the town, being new, has wide and straight streets; in the older part, they are perverse and irrational, as old concerns are apt obstinately to be. They have an old Cathedral here (now Presbyterian) of which the citizens seem quite proud, I can't perceive why. Architecturally, it seems to me a sad waste of stone and labor. The other churches are also mainly Presbyterian, and, while making less pretensions, are far more creditable to the taste of their designers. The town is built on both sides of the Clyde, which is crossed by fine stone bridges, but seven-eighths of it lie on the north. Ancient Glasgow, embracing the narrow and crooked streets, lies nearly in the center, and is crowded with a squalid and miserable population, at least half the women and children, including mothers with children in their arms, and grandmothers, or those who might well be such, being without shoes or stockings in the cold and muddy streets. Intemperance has many votaries here, as indeed, throughout Scotland; "Dealers in Spirits," or words to that effect, being a fearfully common sign. I am afraid the good cause of Total Abstinence is making no headway here—Glasgow has a daily paper (the first in Scotland) and many weeklies, one of the best of them being a new one, "The Sentinel," which has a way of going straight to the core of public questions, and standing always on the side of thorough Reform. Success to it, and a warm good-bye to the rugged land of Song and Story—the loved home of Scott and Burns.
XL.
IRELAND—ULSTER.
Dublin, Thursday, July 31, 1851.
Though the night was thick, the wind was light, and we had a very good passage across the North Channel, though our boat was very middling, and I was nearly poisoned by some of my fellow-sleepers in the gentlemen's cabin insisting that every window should be closed. O to be Pope for one little week, just long enough to set half a million pulpits throughout the world to ringing the changes on the importance, the vital necessity, of pure, fresh air! The darkness, or rather the general misapprehension, which prevails on this subject, is a frightful source of disease and misery. Nine-tenths of mankind have such a dread of "a draught" or current of air that they will shut themselves up, forty together, in a close room, car or cabin, and there poison each other with the exhalations of their mutual lungs, until disease and often death are the consequences. Why won't they study and learn that a "draught" of pure air will injure only those who by draughts of Alcoholic poison or some other evil habit or glaring violation of the laws of life, have rendered themselves morbidly susceptible, and that even a cold is better than the noxiousness of air, already exhausted of its oxygen by inhalation? Nothing physical is so sorely needed by the great majority as a realizing sense of the blessedness, the indispensable necessity of pure, fresh air.
We landed at Belfast at 5 this morning under a pouring rain, which slacked off two hours later, but the skies are still clouded, as they have been since Tuesday of last week, and there has been some sprinkling through the day.
Of course the Crops are suffering badly. Flax is a great staple of the North of Ireland, and three fourths of it is beaten flat to the earth. Wheat is injured and poor, though not so generally prostrate; Oats look feeble, and as if half drowned; some of these are, and considerable Barley is thrown down; Grass is light, much of it uncut, and much that is cut has lain under the stormy or cloudy skies through the last week and looks badly; only the Potatoes look strong and thrifty, and promise an ample yield. I shall be agreeably disappointed if Ireland realizes a fair average harvest this year.
Belfast is a busy, growing town, the emporium of the Linen Manufacture, and the capital of the Province of Ulster, the Northern quarter of Ireland. It seems prosperous, though no wise remarkably so; and I have been painfully disappointed in the apparent condition of the rural peasantry on the line of travel from Belfast to Dublin, which I had understood formed an exception to the general misery of Ireland. Out of the towns not one habitation in ten is fit for human beings to live in, but mere low, cramped hovels of rock, mud and straw; not one-half the families on the way seem to have so much as an acre of land to each household; not half the men to be seen have coats to their backs; and not one in four of the women and children have each a pair of shoes or stockings. And those feet!—if the owners would only wash them once a week, the general aspect of affairs in this section would be materially brightened. Wretchedness, rags and despair salute me on every side; and if this be the best part of Ireland, what must the state of the worst be?
From Belfast we had railroad to Armagh, 35 miles; then 13 miles by omnibus to Castle Blayney. We came over this latter route with ten or twelve passengers, and a tun or so of luggage on the outside of the Railroad Company's omnibus, with thirteen of us stowed inside, beside a youngster in arms, who illustrated the doctrine of Innate Depravity by a perpetual fight with his mother. Yet, thus overloaded we were driven the thirteen miles of muddy road in about two hours, taking at Castle Blayney another railroad train, which brought us almost to Drogheda, some 25 miles, where we had to take another omnibus for a mile or two, for want of a railroad bridge over the Boyne, thus reaching another train which brought us into Dublin, 32 miles. The North of Ireland is yet destitute of any other railroads than such patches and fragments as these, whereby I am precluded from seeing Londonderry, and its vicinity, which I much desired. At length we were brought into Dublin at half-past three o'clock, or in eight hours from Belfast, about one hundred and thirty miles.
The face of the country through this part of Ireland is moderately rolling, though some fair hills appear in the distance. The land is generally good, though there are considerable tracts of hard, thin soil. Small bogs are frequently seen, but no one exceeding a dozen acres; the large ones lying farther inland. Taking so little room and supplying the poor with a handy and cheap fuel, I doubt that these little bogs are any detriment to the country. Some of them have been made to take on a soil (by draining, cutting, drying and burning the upper strata of peat, and spreading the ashes over the entire surface), and are now quite productive.—Drainage and ridging are almost universally resorted to, showing the extraordinary humidity of the atmosphere. The Potato is now generally in blossom, and, having a large breadth of the land, and being in fine condition, gives an appearance of thrift and beauty to the landscape. But, in spite of this, the general yield of Ireland in 1851 is destined to be meager. There is more misery in store for this unhappy people.
We cross two small lakes some ten to fifteen miles north of this city, and run for some distance close to the shore of the Channel. At length, a vision of dwellings, edifices and spires bounds the horizon of the level plain to the south-west, and in a few minutes we are in Dublin.
XLI.
WEST OF IRELAND—ATLANTIC MAILS.
Galway, Ireland, Aug. 2, 1851.
I came down here yesterday from Dublin (126½ miles) by the first Railroad train ever run through for the traveling public, hoping not only to acquire some personal knowledge of the West of Ireland, but also to gain some idea of the advantages and difficulties attending the proposed establishment of a direct communication by Mail Steamers between this port and our own country. And although my trip is necessarily a hurried one, yet, having been rowed down and nearly across the Bay, so as to gain some knowledge of its conformation and its entrance, and having traversed the town in every direction, and made the acquaintance of some of its most intelligent citizens, I shall at all events return with a clearer idea of the whole subject than ever so much distant study of maps, charts and books could have given me.
The Midland Railroad from Dublin passes by Maynooth, Mullingar, Athlone (where it crosses the Shannon by a noble iron bridge), and Ballinasloe to this place, at the head of Galway Bay, some twenty-five miles inland from the broad Atlantic. The country is remarkably level throughout, and very little rock-cutting and but a moderate amount of excavation have been required in making the Railroad, of which a part (from Dublin to Mullingar) has been for some time in operation, while the residue has just been opened. (The old stage-road from Dublin to Galway measures 133 miles, or nearly seven more than the Railroad.) I presume there is nowhere an elevation of forty feet to the mile, and with a good double track (now nearly completed), there can be no difficulty in running express trains through in three hours. From Dublin to Holyhead will require four hours, and from Holyhead to London six more, making fifteen hours in all (including two for coming into Galway) for the transportation of the Mails from the broad Atlantic off this port to London. Allow three more for leeway, and still the entire Mails may be distributed in London about the time that the steamship can now be telegraphed as off Holyhead, and at least twelve (I hope fifteen) hours earlier than the Mails can now be received in London, to say nothing of the saving of thirty or forty hours on the Mails to and from Ireland, and twenty or so for those of Scotland. Is there any good reason why those hours should not be saved? I can perceive none, even though the steamships should still proceed to Liverpool as heretofore.
Galway Bay is abundantly large enough and safe enough for steamships, even as it is, though its security is susceptible of easy improvement. It has abundant depth inside, but hardly twenty feet at low water on a bar in the harbor, so that large steamships coming in would be obliged to anchor a mile or so from the dock for high water if they did not arrive so as to hit it, as they must now wait off the bar at Liverpool, only much further from the dock. But what I contemplate as a beginning is not the bringing in of the Steamships but of their Mails. Let a small steamboat be waiting outside when a Mail Steamer is expected (as now off the bar at Liverpool), and let the Mails and such passengers as would like to feel the firm earth under their feet once more, be swiftly transferred to the little boat, run up to Galway, put on an express train, started for Dublin, and thence sent over to Holyhead, and dispatched to London and Liverpool forthwith. Let Irish Mails for Galway, Dublin, &c., and Scotch Mails for Glasgow be made up on our side, and let us see, by three or four fair trials, what saving of time could be effected by landing the Mails at Galway, and then we shall be in a position to determine the extent and character of the permanent changes which are required. That a saving of fully twelve hours for England and thirty for Ireland may be secured by making Galway the European terminus of the Atlantic Mail Route, I am very confident, while in the calculations of those who feel a local and personal interest in the change the saving is far greater. But this is quite enough to justify the inconsiderable expense which the experiment I urge would involve.
Galway was formerly a place of far greater commerce and consequence than it now is. It long enjoyed an extensive and profitable direct trade with Spain, which, since the Union of Ireland with England, is entirely transferred to London, so that not a shadow of it remains. At a later day, it exported considerable Grain, Bacon, &c., to England, but the general decline of Irish Industry, and the low prices of food since Free Trade, have nearly destroyed this trade also, and there are now, except fishing-boats, scarcely half a dozen vessels in the harbor, and of these the two principal are a Russian from the Black Sea selling Corn, to a district whose resources are Agricultural or nothing, and a smart-looking Yankee clipper taking in a load of emigrants and luggage for New-York—the export of her population being about the only branch of Ireland's commerce which yet survives the general ruin. Galway had once 60,000 inhabitants; she may now have at most 30,000; but there is no American seaport with 5,000 which does not far surpass her annual aggregate of trade and industry. What should we think in America of a seaport of at least 35,000 inhabitants, the capital of a large, populous county, located at the head of a noble, spacious bay, looking off on the broad Atlantic some twenty miles distant, with cities of twenty, fifty, and a hundred thousand inhabitants within a few hours' reach on either side of her, yet not owning a single steamboat of any shape or nature, and not even visited by one daily, weekly, monthly, or at any stated period? Truly, the desolation of Ireland must be witnessed or it cannot be realized.
I judge that of nearly thirty thousand people who live here not ten thousand have any regular employment or means of livelihood. The majority pick up a job when they can, but are inevitably idle and suffering two-thirds of the time. Of course, the Million learn nothing, have nothing, and come to nothing. They are scarcely in fault, but those who ought to teach them, counsel them, employ them, until they shall be qualified to employ themselves, are deplorably culpable. Here are gentlemen and ladies of education and wealth (dozens where there were formerly hundreds) who year after year and generation after generation have lived in luxury on the income wrung from these poor creatures in the shape of Rent, without ever giving them a helping hand or a kind word in return—without even suspecting that they were under moral obligation to do so. Here is a Priesthood, the conscience-keepers and religious instructors of this fortunate class, who also have fared sumptuously and amassed wealth out of the tithes wrenched by law-sanctioned robbery from the products of this same wretched peasantry, yet never proffered them anything in return but conversion to the faith of their plunderers—certainly not a tempting proffer under the circumstances. And here also is a Priesthood beloved, reverenced, confided in by this peasantry, and loving them in return, who I think have done far less than they might and should have done to raise them out of the slough in which generation after generation are sinking deeper and deeper. I speak plainly on this point, for I feel strongly. The Catholic Priesthood of Ireland resist the education of the Peasantry under Protestant auspices and influences, for which we will presume they have good reason; but, in thus cutting them off from one chance of improving their social and intellectual condition, they double their own moral responsibility to secure the Education of the Poor in some manner not inconsistent with the preservation of their faith. And, seeing what I have seen and do see of the unequaled power of this Priesthood—a power immensely greater in Ireland than in Italy, for there the Priests are generally regarded as the allies of the tyrant and plundering class, while here they are doubly beloved as its enemies and its victims—I feel an undoubting conviction that simply an earnest determination of the Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland that every Catholic child in the country shall receive a good education would secure its own fulfilment within five years, and thenceforth for ever. Let but one generation be well educated, and there can be no rational apprehension that their children or grandchildren will be allowed to grow up in ignorance and helplessness. Knowledge is self-perpetuating, self-extending. And, dreadfully destitute as this country is, the Priesthood of the People can command the means of educating that People, which nobody without their coöperation can accomplish. Let the Catholic Bishops unite in an earnest and potential call for teachers, and they can summon thousands and tens of thousands of capable and qualified persons from convents, from seminaries, from cloisters, from drawing-rooms, even from foreign lands if need be, to devote their time and efforts to the work without earthly recompense or any stipulation save for a bare subsistence, which the less needy Catholics, or even the more liberal Protestants, in every parish would gladly proffer them. There is really no serious obstacle in the way of this first great step toward Ireland's regeneration if the Priesthood will zealously attempt it.
But closely allied to this subject, and not inferior to it in importance, stands that of Industrial Training. The Irish Peasantry are idle, the English say truly enough; but who inquires whether there is any work within their reach? Suppose there was always something to do, what avails that to millions who know not how to do that precise something? Walking with a friend through one of the back streets of Galway beside the outlet of the Lakes, I came where a girl of ten years old was breaking up hard brook pebbles into suitable fragments to mend roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received for that labor. She answered, "Six-pence a car-load." "How long will it take you to break a car-load?" "About a fortnight." Further questions respecting her family, &c., were answered with equal directness and propriety, and with manifest truth. Here was a mere child, who should have been sent to school, delving from morning till night at an employment utterly unsuited to her sex and her strength, and which I should consider dangerous to her eyesight, to earn for her poor parents a half-penny per day. Think of this, ye who talk, not always without reason, of "factory slaves" and the meagre rewards of labor in America. In any community where labor is even decently rewarded, that child should have been enabled to earn every day at least as much as her fortnight's work on the stone-heap would command. And even in Galway, a concerted and systematic Industrial Education for the Poor would enable her to earn at some light and suitable employment six times what she now does.
In every street of the town you constantly meet girls of fourteen to twenty, as well as old women and children, utterly barefoot and in ragged clothing. I should judge from the streets that not more than one-fourth of the females of Galway belong to the shoe-wearing aristocracy. Now no one acquainted with Human Nature will pretend that girls of fourteen to twenty will walk the streets barefoot if the means of buying shoes and stockings by honest labor are fairly within their reach. But here there are none such for thousands. Born in wretched huts of rough stone and rotten straw, compared with which the poorest log-cabin is a palace, with a turf fire, no window, and a mass of filth heaped up before the door, untaught even to read, and growing up in a region where no manufactures nor arts are prosecuted, the Irish peasant-girl arrives at womanhood less qualified by experience, observation or training for industrial efficiency and usefulness than the daughter of any Choctaw or Sioux Indian. Of course, not all the Irish, even of the wretchedly poor, are thus unskilled and helpless, but a deplorably large class is; and it is this class whose awkwardness and utter ignorance are too often made the theme of unthinking levity and ridicule when the poor exile from home and kindled lands in New York and undertakes housework or anything else for a living. The "awkwardness," which means only inability to do what one has never even seen done, is not confined to any class or nation, and should be regarded with every allowance.
An Industrial School, especially for girls, in every town, village and parish of Ireland, is one of the crying needs of the time. I am confident there are in Galway alone five thousand women and girls who would hail with gratitude and thoroughly improve an opportunity to earn six-pence per day. If they could be taught needle-work, plain dressmaking, straw-braiding, and a few of the simplest branches of manufactures, such as are carried on in households, they might and would at once emerge from the destitution and social degradation which now enshroud them into independence, comfort and consideration. Knowing how to work and to earn a decent subsistence, they would very soon seek and acquire a knowledge of letters if previously ignorant of them. In short, the Industrial Education of the Irish Peasantry is the noblest and the most hopeful idea yet broached for their intellectual and social elevation, and I have great hope of its speedy triumph. It is now being agitated in Dublin and many other localities, a central and many auxiliary schools having already been established. But I will speak further on this point in another letter.
Galway has an immense and steady water-power within half a mile of its harbor, on the outlet of Lakes Corrib and Mash, by means of which it enjoys an admirable internal navigation extending some sixty miles northward. Here Manufactures might be established with a certainty of commanding the cheapest power, cheapest labor and cheapest fuel to be had in the world. I never saw a spot where so much water power yet unused could be obtained at so trifling a cost as here directly on the west line of the town and within half a mile of its center. A beautiful Marble is found on the line of the Railroad only a few miles from the town, and all along the line to Dublin the abundance and excellence of the building-stone are remarkable. Timber and Brick come down the Lake outlet as fast as they are wanted, while Provisions are here cheap as in any part of the British Isles. Nature has plainly designed Galway for a great and prosperous city, the site of extensive manufactures, the emporium of an important trade, and the gateway of Europe toward America; but whether all this is or is not to be dashed by the fatality which has hitherto attended Irish prospects, remains to be seen. I trust that it is not, but that a new Liverpool is destined soon to arise here; and that, should I ever again visit Europe, I shall first land on the quay of Galway.
XLII.
IRELAND—SOUTH.
Dublin, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 1851.
I had hoped to see all of Ireland that is accessible by Railroad from this city, but Time will not permit. Having remained here over Sunday, I had only Monday left for a trip Southward, and that would just suffice for reaching Limerick and returning without attempting Cork. So at 7 yesterday morning I took the "Great Southern and Western Railroad," and was set down in Limerick (130 miles) at a quarter before 1, passing Kildare, with its "Curragh" or spacious race-ground, Maryborough and Thurles on the way. Portarlington, Mount Melick, Mountrath and Templemore—all considerable towns—lie a few miles from the Railroad, on the right or west, as Naas, Cashel and Tipperary are not far from it on the left; while another Railroad, the "Irish South-Eastern," diverges at Kildare to Carlow, Bagnalstown and Kilkenny (146 miles from Dublin) on the South; while from Kilkenny the "Kilkenny and Waterford" has already been constructed to Thomastown (some 20 miles), and is to reach Waterford, at the head of ship navigation on the common estuary at the mouth of the Suir and Barrow, when completed.
I left the Great Southern and Western at Limerick Junction, 107 miles S. S. W. of Dublin, and took the crossroad from Tipperary to Limerick (30 miles), but the main road proceeds south-westerly to Charleville, 22½ miles further, and thence leads due south to Mallow, on the Blackwater, and then south by east to Cork, 164½ miles from Dublin, while another railroad has just been opened from Cork to Bandon, 18¾ miles still further south-west, making a completed line from Dublin to Bandon, 183½ miles, with branches to Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny, the latter to be continued to Waterford. In a country so easily traversed by Railroads, and so swarming with population as Ireland, these roads should be not only most useful but most productive to their stockholders, but they are very far from it. Few of the peasantry can afford to travel by them, except when leaving the country for ever, and their scanty patches of ground produce little surplus food for exportation, while they can afford to buy little that the Railroads bring in. Were the population of Ireland as well fed and as enterprising as that of New-England, with an industry as well diversified, her Railroads would pay ten per cent, on their cost; as things now are, they do not pay two per cent. Thus the rapacity of Capital defeats itself, and actually impoverishes its owners when it deprives Labor of a fair reward. If all the property-holders of Ireland would to-day combine in a firm resolve to pay at least half a dollar per day for men's labor, and to employ all that should present themselves, introducing new arts and manufactures and improving their estates in order to furnish such employment, they would not only speedily banish destitution and ignorance from the land but they would double the value of their own possessions. This is one of the truths which sloth, rapacity and extravagance are slow to learn, yet which they cannot safely ignore. The decay and ruin of nearly all the "old families" in Ireland are among the penalties of disregarding it.
To talk of an excess of labor, or an inability to employ it, in such a country as Ireland, is to insult the general understanding. In the first place, there is an immediate and urgent demand for at least Half a Million comfortable rain-proof dwellings. The inconceivable wretched hovels in which nine-tenths of the peasantry endure existence inevitably engender indolence, filthiness and disease. Generation after generation grows up ignorant and squalid from never having had a fireside by which they could sit down to read or study, nor an example of home comfort and cleanliness in their own class to profit by. In those narrow, unlighted, earth-floored, straw-thatched cabins, there is no room for the father and his sons to sit down and enjoy an evening, so they straggle off to the nearest groggery or other den in search of the comfort their home denies them. Of course, men who have grown up in this way have no idea of anything better and are slow to mend; but the personal influence of their superiors in wealth and station is very great, and might be ten times greater if the more fortunate class would make themselves familiar with the wants and woes, the feelings and aspirations of the poor, and act toward them as friends and wiser brethren, instead of seeming to regard them only as strange dogs to be repelled or as sheep to be sheared. But the first practical point to be struggled for is that of steady employment and just reward for labor. So long as men's wages (without board) range from fourpence to one and six-pence per day, and women's from a penny to six-pence (which, so far as I can learn, are the current rates at present, and nothing to do for half the year at any price), no radical improvement can be hoped for. A family with nothing to do, very little to eat and only a hog-pen to live in, will neither acquire mental expansion, moral integrity, nor habits of neatness and industry. On the contrary, however deficient they may originally be in these respects, they are morally certain to grow worse so long as their circumstances remain unchanged. But draw them out of their wretched hovel into a neat, dry, glass-lighted, comfortable dwelling, offer them work at all seasons, and a fair recompense for doing it, and you will have at least rendered improvement possible. The feasibility of cleanliness will instill the love of it, at least in the younger members; the opportunity of earning will awaken the instinct of saving as well as the desire to maintain a comely appearance in the eyes of friends and neighbors. The laborer, well paid, will naturally be adequately fed, and both able and willing to perform thrice the work per day he now does or can; seeing the more efficient often step above them to posts better paid and more respected, the dullest workers will aspire to greater knowledge and skill in order that they too may attain more eligible positions. "It is the first step that costs"—the others follow almost of course. If the Aristocracy of Ireland would unitedly resolve that every individual in the land should henceforth have constant work and just recompense, the outlay involved need not be great and the return would be abundant and certain. They have ample water-power for a thousand factories, machine-shops, foundries, &c., which has run to waste since creation, and can never bring them a dollar while Irish Industry remains as rude, ill-paid and inefficient as it now is. Every dollar wisely spent in improving this power will add two to the value of their estates. So they have stone-quarries of immense value all over the island which never produced anything and never will while the millions live in hovels and confine their attention to growing oats and potatoes for a subsistence. Agriculture alone and especially such Agriculture, can never adequately employ the people; when the Oats and Potatoes have been harvested, the peasant has very little to do but eat them until the season for planting them returns. But introduce a hundred new arts and processes—let each village have its mechanics, each county its manufacturers of the various wares and fabrics really needed in the country, and the excess of work done over the present aggregate would speedily transform general poverty into general competence. The Six Millions of People in Ireland are doing far less work this year than the Three Millions of New-England, although the Irish in New-England are at least as industrious and efficient as the natives. They work well everywhere but at home, because they everywhere else find the more powerful class ready to employ them, instruct them, pay them. In Ireland alone are they required to work for six pence to eighteen pence per day, and even at these rates stand idle half the year for want of anything to do; so that the rent which they would readily double (for better tenements) if they were fully employed and fairly paid, now benumbs and crushes them, and their little patches of land, which ought to be in the highest degree productive, are often the worst cultivated of any this side of the Alps. Ignorance, want, and hopelessness have paralysed their energies, and the consequent decay of the Peasantry has involved most of the Aristocracy in the general ruin. The Encumbered Estates Commission is now rapidly passing the soil of Ireland out of the hands of its bankrupt landlords into those of a new generation. May these be wise enough to profit by the warning before them, and by uniting to elevate the condition of the Laboring Millions place their own prosperity on a solid and lasting foundation!