In the short statement I am about to give, I follow Sir Charles Trevelyan's figures; being Secretary to the Treasury, he must have known the sums actually advanced by the Treasury, and the sums returned to it in payment of the loans granted.
| Amount advanced from the Treasury. | Amount finally charged under the Consolidated Annuities Act. | |||||
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | |
| Under 9th Vict., cap. 1, | 476,000 | 0 | 0 | 238,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Under 9th and 10th Vict., cap. 107,"The Labour-rate Act," | 4,766,789 | 0 | 0 | 2,231,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Under 10th Vict., cap. 7, "The Temporary Relief Act," | 1,724,631 | 0 | 0 | 953,355 | 0 | 0 |
| Loans for building Workhouses, | 1,420,780 | 0 | 0 | 122,707 | 0 | 0 |
| Loans to pay debts of distressed Unions, | 300,000 | 0 | 0 | 300,000 | 0 | 0 |
| Grants by Parliament at various times: 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, and 1849, | 844,521 | 0 | 0 | --- | ||
| --------- | -- | -- | ------------ | -- | -- | |
| Total, | £9,532,721 | 0 | 0 | 4,845,062 | 0 | 0 |
| During the years 1846, 1847, and 1848, the following sums were also expended by the Board of Works: | ||||||
| For arterial drainage, | 470,617 | 10 | 3 | |||
| Works under the Labouchere letter, | 199,870 | 9 | 2 | |||
| For land improvement. | 520,700 | 0 | 0 | |||
| --------- | -- | -- | ||||
| Total, | £10,723,908 | 19 | 5 | |||
In the above ten millions seven hundred thousand pounds, it may be fairly assumed, we have all the monies advanced by Government to mitigate the effects of the potato failure. Our next duty is to inquire how much of this sum was paid back by Ireland, and how much of it was a free gift from the Treasury.
The money advanced under the Labouchere letter for land improvement, and for arterial drainage cannot, of course, be regarded as a free gift towards staying the Famine; arterial drainage and land improvement go on still, through money advanced by Government. The works under the Labouchere letter were, no doubt, intended to give reproductive employment during the Famine, but the cost of them was a charge upon the land and not a free gift.
The money spent on arterial drainage and land improvement, under the Labouchere letter and various drainage Acts, during the years 1846, 1847 and 1848, was, as given above, £1,191,187 19s. 5d., which being deducted from £10,723,908 19s. 5d. leaves the sum of £9,532,721, of which there was finally charged to this country £4,845,062. Deducting this from the £9,532,721 we have £4,687,659 as the amount of money given by Government as a free gift to Ireland to sustain the people through the Great Famine. To this, however, there is to be added a sum of about £70,000 paid for freights. The American people, when they had collected those generous contributions of theirs, and when they had resolved to send them in the form of food to Ireland, began to make arrangements for paying the freights of their vessels, but all trouble and anxiety on this head was removed by the action of the English Government, which undertook to pay the freights of all vessels carrying to Ireland, food purchased by charitable contributions. Those freights finally reached about £70,000. The addition of this sum brings the whole of the Government free gift towards the Irish Famine to £4,757,659.
The amount collected and disbursed by charitable Associations can be only approximated to. There is a list of those subscriptions, as far as they could be ascertained, given in the Report of the Society of Friends. They amount to £1,107,466 13s., but the compiler of the Report was of opinion that the sums so collected and distributed could not have fallen far short of a million and a-half.
No effective means were taken to ascertain the moneys sent to Ireland by emigrants until the year 1848; however, Mr. Jacob Harvey, a member of the Society of Friends, from inquiries made by him in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, computed the remittances from emigrants in 1847 at £200,000, but it is highly probable that the actual amount was far in excess of that; for we find in the next year, 1848, there came to Ireland through the banks and commercial houses alone, £460,180; which sum may also be regarded as a contribution towards the Irish Famine. I think we are justified in naming £300,000 for 1847, instead of £200,000, Mr. Harvey's estimate, these two sums make £760,180, which being added to the acknowledged amount of public subscriptions, we have a total of £1,867,646, 13s. as the amount voluntarily and charitably contributed to our Famine-stricken people. But if we take one million and a-half to represent the actual charitable subscriptions, as assumed by the Report of the Society of Friends, and add to it the money sent by emigrants in 1847 and 1848, we will have the enormous sum of £2,260,180.
The most important of all the Associations called into existence by the Famine was "The British Association for the Relief of extreme distress in Ireland and Scotland." There are about 5,550 distinct subscriptions printed in the Appendix to its report, but the number of individual subscriptions was far beyond this, for, many of the sums set down are the result of local subscriptions sent to the Association from various parts. This Association established about forty food depôts in various districts. They were, of course, most numerous in the South and West—most numerous of all in Cork, the wild and difficult coast of which county was marked by a line of them, from Kinsale Head to Dingle Bay.
Noblemen and gentlemen of high position volunteered their services to the Association, and laboured earnestly among the starving people. Amongst them may be named the Count Strezelecki, Lord R. Clinton, Lord James Butler, and Mr. M.J. Higgins, so well known on the London press by his nom de plume of "Jacob Omnium."
Besides the sums contributed directly to the Association, the Government gave it the distribution of the proceeds of two Queen's letters, amounting in the aggregate to £200,738 15s. 2d.[303] In August, 1847, when the Association was about to enter upon what it calls the second relief period, it found itself in possession of a clear cash balance of £160,000. It had to consider how this sum could be most beneficially applied during the ensuing winter. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Trevelyan, in that month wrote to the chairman, recommending the Association to select, through the Poorlaw Commissioners, a certain number of Unions, in which there was reason to believe the ratepayers would not be able to meet their liabilities, and that the Association should appropriate, from time to time, such sums as the Poorlaw Commissioners might recommend, for the purpose of assisting to give outdoor relief in certain districts of such Unions. After much deliberation the Association accepted this advice, and asked for the names of the most distressed Unions. A list of twenty-two was supplied to it in September. Some others were added later on. The grants of the Association were issued in food, and the Assistant Poorlaw Commissioners aided in the distribution of it. Under this arrangement the advances made by the Association from October to July amounted to £150,000.