Mr. Fagan, a commercial man of sound practical ability, who sat in the House of Commons for the County Wexford, put forward, in the famine period, a scheme for the reclamation of the waste lands.[254] It was mainly based upon the principle, that the men whose labour reclaimed those lands should have a beneficial interest in them. The wealth—the capital of the poor man, he said, lie in the health and strength with which God has endowed him, and if he be denied the means of employing this capital profitably, what matters it to him that the harvest is bountiful—that the corn stores are full? Mr. Fagan discusses several plans according to which Irish waste lands might be reclaimed. 1. Individual exertion. This, in his opinion, would not answer, because it would be too slow, too isolated, to do the work in a broad, comprehensive manner, and within a reasonable time. 2. The next plan which he passes in review is what he terms joint-stock enterprise. This he also rejects, as being expensive in management, and therefore unremunerative. 3. Reclamation by the Government, so commonly advocated, he also rejects, because he did not think such an undertaking within the legitimate sphere of the Government, and that it would be inconsistent with sound policy.
Having set aside these three modes of reclamation, he puts forward his own.
1. He was of opinion that the principle of individual industry should be applied to the reclamation of the waste lands, and that a reasonable share of the fruits of the industry of the reclaimer should be secured to him. Where enlightened proprietors have done this, their wastes, he says, became fertile, and agrarian outrages were unknown. Give, in a word, the Irish peasant the same interest in reclaiming the waste at home, that he gets in reclaiming the waste abroad, and the same beneficial results will follow.
2. For the right working of this principle, the waste lands should be resumed by the State. This he regarded as an indispensable preliminary. Pay the proprietors fully for them, let the ground be valued as it is valued for railways; paid for at its present, not its prospective value, and let it be vested in Commissioners. Lots of convenient size should be made, and sold, when reclaimed; but at no higher price than twenty-four years' purchase. The State should also empower the Commissioner to sell waste, in lots of not less than ten acres; ten acres to be the minimum of reclaimed lots also. Existing proprietors should have the option of reclaiming or selling; but in the former case security should be given that the work would be immediately proceeded with.
Mr. Fagan would ask no pecuniary aid from the Government to carry out his plan; he would meet the expenses of it by an agency tax, that is, a tax upon house and land agencies, and upon all agencies. In saying this he must have meant, that he would not ask money out of the Consolidated Fund; for he could not but have seen that in carrying it out by a tax of any kind, he would be doing so by the aid of the Government. The effect of Mr. Fagan's plan would have been, to create, to a certain extent, a peasant proprietary.
Mr. Poulett Scrope, then representing the borough of Stroud in Parliament, took much interest in Irish questions, more especially during the Famine; at which time he, in a series of letters addressed to Lord John Russell, put forward his views on the legislation which he considered necessary under the existing circumstances of this country. Three Bills in his opinion, should have been at once proceeded with in Parliament; one to facilitate the sale of encumbered estates; one to improve the relations between landlord and tenant; and the third for commencing without delay the reclamation of the waste lands. This last he considered as of the most pressing urgency. Strange enough, that since Mr. Scrope wrote, laws have been passed on the two former subjects, whilst the one considered by him the most necessary, still remains unlegislated on. His great object was, he said, to create employment, and to create it in the production of food, if possible. Surely, says Mr. Scrope, if this can be created for the people at home, it is much better, for a thousand reasons, than to attempt to find it for them in America. "I cannot refrain," he writes, "from expressing astonishment at the degree to which the almost inexhaustible resources offered by the waste lands of Ireland for the production of employment of the wretched and unwillingly idle labourers of that country, have been overlooked and neglected, no less by statesmen than individual proprietors."[255]
From whatever cause, Irish landowners did not, to any considerable extent, take up, in earnest, the question of the reclamation of waste lands. Roused by the pressure of the times and the impending poor-rate, the majority of them looked, says Mr. Scrope, "for salvation" to other means—to the eviction of their numerous tenantry—the clearing of their estates from the seemingly superfluous population by emigration or ejectment. "Yet," he continues, "nothing can be more true or more capable of demonstration than the assertion that there is no real redundancy of population in Ireland. Nay, that even in the most distressed and apparently overcrowded districts, a wise and prudent management of their natural resources might find profitable employment for all, to the great advantage of the proprietors themselves, and the still greater benefit of the people and the public, which is so deeply interested in the result."[256]
The readers of these pages cannot forget that Mayo suffered as much as, if not more than, any other county, during the Famine; yet here was the state of its surface at the time of that dreadful visitation: entire area of the County Mayo, 1,300,000 acres; of these only 500,000 acres were under cultivation, 800,000 acres being unreclaimed; of which 800,000 acres, Griffith says, nearly 500,000 could be reclaimed with profit;—that is, just half the county was cultivated. The Dean of Killala gave the following evidence about the same county before the Devon Commission: Quest. 73. "Is there sufficient employment for the people in the cultivation of the arable land?" Answ. "No; it does not employ them half the year." Quest. 74. "But there would be employment for them in reclaiming the waste?" Answ. "Yes; more than ample, if there was encouragement given. Where I reside there are many thousands of acres waste, because it would not be let at a moderate rent." Quest. 75. "Is the land with you termed waste, capable of being made productive?" Answ. "Yes; every acre of it."
On this same question of the reclamation of Irish waste lands and redundant population, Commissary-General Hewetson, one of the principal assistants of Sir Randal Routh, writes, in the height of the Famine: "The transition from potatoes to grain requires tillage in the proportion of three to one. It is useless, then, to talk of emigration, when so much extra labour is indispensable to supply the extra food. Let that labour be first applied, and it will be seen whether there is any surplus population. If the waste lands are taken into cultivation, and industrious habits established, it is very doubtful whether there will be any surplus population, or even whether it would be equal to the demand." "Providence," he adds, "has given everything needful, and nothing is wanting but industry to apply it." "Yes!" to use the words of Mr. Scrope, "there are two things more wanted—namely, that Irish industry should have leave to apply itself to the improvement of the Irish soil, and be assured of reaping the undivided fruits of such application."[257]
From causes which can be only guessed at, there seems to have been always a passive but most influential opposition to the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland. Its opponents never met the question in the field of logical argument, yet, somehow, they had power enough to prevent its being carried into effect. When Lord John Russell proposed the million grant to begin the work, Sir Robert Peel said he thought some more useful employment could be found for that sum, but he did not even hint at what it was. A writer, who published in 1847 a work on Ireland "Historical and Statistical," thus deals with the reclamation question: "The Irish waste lands being of considerable extent have long attracted the notice of speculators and improvers. They are about to receive the attention of her Majesty's Government, and a sum of one million is promised to the Irish landlords as an aid towards their reclamation. But there is much room to doubt the policy of such a proceeding at any time, and especially at the present time."[258] Here is a pretty decided opinion against reclamation, but there is no reason whatever vouchsafed for it.