The soundness of the views put forward by Sir Richard Griffith and Mr. Featherstone is proved by the reclamation of similar wastes in England. With regard to Chat-moss, on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, Mr. Baines writes from Barton Grange, in Lancashire, which he calls "a house standing in the midst of a tract of 2,000 acres of peat moss, within a few years past as wet and barren as any morass in Ireland, but now covered with luxuriant crops." He averages the sum expended in reclaiming the Lancashire mosses at £10 an acre, all spent in manual labour.[259] One thousand acres of Rawcliffe-moss in Lancashire was reclaimed for £9,000, although high wages were paid to the labourers. It pays, says Mr. Scrope, ten per cent. on the outlay, and now gives constant employment to seventy labourers. In Ireland, he adds, private enterprise cannot do such work. There is no capital. With regard to reclamations made on the estate of Sir Charles Styles, in the county Donegal, Captain Kennedy, the manager, testified before the Devon Commission that the original cost of reclamation was refunded in three years. And he further expressed his conviction that an outlay of £5 an acre would pay ten per cent. on those lands.
What grave mysterious reasons of State, then, have prevented the Irish wastes from being reclaimed? In the Famine, our roads were torn up and made impassable to apply a labour test to destitution; food was next served out without any such test; M Soyer was sent over to make cheap soup for the million; the bone and sinew of the country were shipped off to spend themselves in trying to subdue the wildernesses of another hemisphere, or die in transitu, or on Grosse Isle and such charnel-houses, whilst nearly five millions of reclaimable acres in their own fertile load were still left as nature had left them.
The second report of the Relief Commissioners bears date the 15th of May. For practical purposes it may be looked upon as the first report, the one called the first being merely preliminary. We learn from it that only 1,248 electoral divisions had come under the operation of the Act up to that date, a state of things with which the Commissioners expressed themselves dissatisfied, for they say the Act should have been, at the time of their report, in full operation over the whole country. They found a difficulty in establishing soup kitchens, because dry meal was universally preferred; and they further say that relief by food instead of by public works was extremely unpopular with every class. All works, they announce, had been stopped on the first of May. To this general stoppage, some exceptions, it would seem, were permitted. Memorandum No. 12 of the Relief Department (marked "confidential") vests certain relief officers with a discretionary power to continue the works in those baronies where it would be dangerous to stop them, either because the new measures of relief had not come into operation, or on account of the absence of employment, either public or private, in such baronies. From the general outcry at the stoppage of the works, it would appear that this memorandum was very little, if at all, acted upon.
The second report of the Relief Commissioners, embracing a most trying period of over two months, is very curt and unsatisfactory. The dismissal, within six weeks, of nearly three quarters of a million of workmen, representing more than three millions of people, could scarcely be effected without the infliction of considerable suffering. The Government were right in compelling labour to apply itself to the production of food by the cultivation of the land, and they began this movement in the Spring, the proper time for it, but they began too late. The 20th of March was far too late for the fast dismissal of twenty per cent., for much of the Spring work ought to have been done then. They should have begun a month earlier at least, which arrangement would have had the further advantage of enabling them, to make the dismissals more gradually, and therefore with less inconvenience to the people.[260]
It was either great negligence or a very grave error on the part of the Government, that they began to close the public works against the people before any other means of getting food was open to them. The Relief Act, 10 Vic. c. 7, was intended to take the place of the public works, and that immediately on their cessation; but this was far from being the case,—a point upon which this second report is not at all satisfactory. In it the Commissioners express their regret that on the 15th of May there were only 1,248 electoral divisions under the operation of the Act, whilst all relief works had ceased on the first of May. That was bad enough; but what the report makes no mention of is that the Act was not in operation in any part of Ireland on the 20th of March, the day on which twenty per cent—146,000 individuals—of those who were employed on the public works were dismissed. On introducing that Act in Parliament, both the Prime Minister and the Irish Secretary promised that employment on the public works should be continued until the new system of relief would be in full operation, whilst this report tells us that on the 15th of May, a full fortnight after all public works had been stopped, out of 2,049 electoral divisions only 1,248 were under the operation of the Act. Besides, "under the operation of the Act" is itself a doubtful phrase: How long were they under it? How far was their machinery complete and efficient? Did the Act, to the full extent, supply the place of the public works, where it had come into operation? These are questions to which we have no answers from the Commissioners. On the 23rd of March, three days after the twenty per cent were dismissed, a Dublin newspaper said, with regard to the new Relief Act:—"It is not in operation in any district of Ireland. Even in Dublin—the head quarters of the Relief Commissioners—the residence of the official printer—the requisite forms for arranging the preliminaries could not be supplied to the relief committees yesterday, they not having been as yet printed."[261]
On the 25th of March, some of the Irish members appealed, in the House of Commons, to the Irish Secretary not to allow the labourers on the public works to be dismissed until provision could be made for their support under the new Act. It was understood by both sides of the House, Mr. Smith O'Brien said, that the Government had given instructions against any dismissals taking place until other means had been provided to enable the people to procure subsistence. Unless this were done, he said, the greatest confusion must follow the putting in force of the order for dismissing persons from the public works, which was to come into operation on the 20th inst. Seven weeks had elapsed since the temporary relief bill had become law, and he could not conceive why relief committees had not been constituted. Mr. Labouchere said in reply that the greatest caution was necessary in removing the labourers from the works, and that although twenty per cent. of them were ordered to be struck off on the 20th instant, that did not mean that twenty per cent. of the people employed in every district on public works should be dismissed, but that in the aggregate twenty per cent. of those employed should be put off, leaving to the Irish Government to decide upon the proportion to be removed from each district. It would be necessary and proper to make a general reduction, but the Irish Government was left to the exercise of its discretion in making the several reductions by districts, as the executive in Ireland could best decide where it might be dangerous or improper to make any change, and where a change might be made with propriety and safety.
Four days later, on the question that the Irish Poor Relief Bill should be re-committed, Mr. O'Brien again adverted to the discharge of the labourers from the public works. He repeated, that the House and others had been led to believe, that the dismissal would not take place until new measures for temporary relief should come into operation; that, nevertheless, in various parts of Ireland labourers had been dismissed before any other relief had been provided; and he had, he said, received from a part of the county he represented a letter from a Protestant clergyman, stating that not only twenty per cent., but many more labourers had been dismissed, and were, therefore, on the verge of starvation. No one, he admitted, could justly object to the general proposition of the gradual withdrawal of the people from the public works; but it appeared to him that such withdrawal, until some other mode of subsistence was ready for them, was nothing short of sentencing the people to death from starvation.
To Smith O'Brien's remarks, Mr. Labouchere gave the following reply, a more formal and elaborate one than the above. He said:—"Her Majesty's Government were satisfied, after the best inquiry they were able to make upon the subject, that it was expedient and proper that on a certain day the number of persons employed on the public works throughout Ireland should be reduced by twenty per cent. They thought that was a step which, upon their responsibility, they were bound to adopt, and in that respect they left no discretion whatever with any one connected with the Irish Government; but the rule laid down was this—they required that twenty per cent. should be reduced on the aggregate number of the persons employed throughout the whole of Ireland, leaving to the Board of Works in Ireland a discretion as to whether, in each particular instance, that precise number should be the proportion to be reduced or not. The Board of Works in Ireland thought they should best meet the views of the Government, by striking off twenty per cent. from the number of persons employed in each district, but it was not the case that the rule had been applied strictly and invariably on every public work in Ireland; and as a proof that such was the case, he read the following extract from a report which had been received from Captain O'Brien, the inspecting officer for Clare, and which was dated the 20th of March, inst.:—'As in some districts the numbers hitherto employed are much less than in others, it would be unjust to strike off the same percentage from all. I have, therefore, directed that the number in each district shall be reduced to a certain proportion of the population, so that at least twenty per cent, of the population will be reduced on the whole.' With regard to the alleged promise of the Government that there should be no dismissals from the public works until the new Relief Act was in operation, Mr. Labouchere said 'he believed if the Government had made any such statement, they would have acted very improperly. They could not disguise from themselves the fact, that in most parts of Ireland a great preference was shown for the public works over the new relief system, and if her Majesty's Government had made such an announcement as that attributed to them by the honourable gentleman, the greatest delay would assuredly have taken place in bringing the new Act into operation.' He also read a letter that had been received that day, addressed from Colonel Jones, the chairman of the Board of Works, to Mr. Trevelyan:—'Upon reading the Dublin journals,' writes Colonel Jones, 'it would be supposed that the men discharged from the works had been deprived in an instant of their daily food; the fact is, that they were not entitled to be paid until the Tuesday or Wednesday following, and the payments so made were to be the means of procuring subsistence for another week, so that with the time between the publishing of the order and the moment when the money would be expended, ample time was afforded for procuring other employment, or for the electoral division committees to have made the necessary preparations for supplying the destitute with food.' He (Mr. Labouchere) trusted the House would be satisfied that as much consideration had been shown for the people as it was in their power to bestow, and he had the satisfaction to think that on the whole this great reduction had been carried into effect with as little temporary suffering and embarrassment as possible."
The first thing that strikes one with regard to the above reply is, that the Board of Works used the discretion given to them with reference to the dismissals, in opposition to what Mr. Labouchere says was the intention of the Government. Government wished the dismissals to be twenty per cent, in the aggregate, which means ten or fifteen per cent. of a reduction in one district, and twenty-five or thirty per cent. in another, according to circumstances. But the Secretary naively adds, that the Board of Works thought they should best meet the views of the Government by striking off twenty per cent, of those employed in each district. Probably the Government and the Board of Works understood each other well enough on this point. Even assuming the extract from Captain O'Brien's report to have the meaning attached to it by Mr. Labouchere, as it is the only case of the kind he brings forward, we must receive it as the exception which proves the rule. The Secretary next tells us that employment on the public works was far more popular with the people than the new system of relief. This he asserted in the House of Commons on the 29th of March. We know the official printed forms for putting the new Relief Act into operation were not ready for delivery, even in Dublin, on the 22nd of March, just one week before. How, in that one week they were got ready, and sent by tons and hundreds weight to all parts of the country; how the new committees were organized; how the boilers were set up, the fires lighted, and the soup made and distributed to three quarters of a million of people; how those people discussed its flavour and qualities, and how they had had time to give expression to their views, and how those views reached the Irish Secretary in London before the 29th of March, are things which could be only explained by the Irish Secretary himself. This fact, however, was known to the general public, that on the 23rd of March there was not a quart of the new relief-system soup yet made in Ireland; and that on the 29th, at the moment the Secretary was answering Smith O'Brien, it is more than probable that the fact was still the same.
The promise which Mr. O'Brien said the Government was understood to have made, and which Mr. Labouchere treats so cavalierly in his reply, was contained in the following words, spoken by the First Minister on bringing forward the new Relief Bill:—"We must take care—and the Lord Lieutenant is prepared to take care—that the substitution of this system for public works shall be made as easy in the transition as possible. There will be no rude dismissal of the people at once, who otherwise might find great difficulty in obtaining subsistence; but when the arrangements are made for carrying the scheme I have described into effect, it will be provided that no further presentments shall be made, and no new public works undertaken."[262] These are strong words, and were certainly meant to convey that there was to be no interregnum in which the people would be left to starve between the cessation of the public works and the establishment of the new system of relief.