The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) / With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines

by Canon John O'Rourke

3. A schedule of the works presented for, was to be signed by the Chairman of the Sessions, and forwarded to the Lord Lieutenant for his sanction; it should also receive the approval of the Treasury.

4. On its being approved, the Treasury was to make advances for such works to the Board of Public Works in Ireland, and authorize them to be executed.

5. County surveyors were to assist in the execution of those public works.

6. The advances from the Treasury were to be repaid in half-yearly instalments; such instalments not to be less than four, or more than twenty; the tax by which they were to be repaid to be levied under grand jury presentments, according to the Poor Law valuation, and in the manner of the poor rate; the occupier paying the whole, but deducting from his landlord one-half the poundage rate of the rent to which he was liable—in short, as under the Poor Law, the occupier was to pay one-half, and the landlord the other. Thus, by this law, the whole expense of supplying food to the people during the remainder of the year 1846, and the entire year of 1847, was made a local charge, the Treasury lending the money at five per cent, per annum, which money was to be repaid at furthest in ten years. The repayments required by the previous act, under which operations ceased on the 15th of August, had to be made on the principle of the grand jury cess, which laid the whole burthen upon the occupier. The Labour-rate Act got rid of that evident hardship, and charged the landlord with half the rate for tenements or holdings over £4 a-year, and with the whole rate for holdings under that annual rent.

The Lords of the Treasury published, on the 31st of August, a Minute explaining how the provisions of this law were to be carried out, which Minute was published to the Irish people in a letter from the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

1. This Minute directs the Board of Works to be prepared with plans and estimates of those works in each district where relief is as likely to be required, on which the people might be employed with the greatest public advantage; an officer from the Board to be present at the presentment sessions, in order to give such explanations as might be called for. 2. It being apprehended by the Government that the public works would be calculated to withdraw from the husbandry of the country a portion of the labour necessary for the cultivation of the soil, the three following rules were laid down in the Minute, which, "in their lordships' opinion, ought to be strictly observed":—"No person should be employed on any relief works who could obtain employment on other public works, or in farming, or other private operations, in the neighbourhood. The wages given to persons employed on relief works should, in every case, be at least, twopence a day less than the average rate of wages in the district.[122] And the persons employed on the relief works should, to the utmost possible extent, he paid in proportion to the work actually done by them." 3. Under the former Act, the members of Relief Committees had authority to issue tickets, which entitled persons to obtain employment on the Public Works; a system which, it was found, led to abuses, numbers having obtained employment on such tickets who did not require relief. The Treasury Minute, therefore, confines the powers of Relief Committees to the preparation of lists of persons in need of relief by employment on the works, noting them in the order in which they are considered to be entitled to priority, either on account of their large families, or from any other cause; these lists to be supplied to the officers in charge of the works, who are to revise them from time to time. 4. With regard to donations from Government, in aid of private subscriptions, "their lordships consider that they may be made as heretofore, where necessary, from public funds placed at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant for that purpose, and in the proportion of from one-third to one-half of the amount of the private subscriptions, according to the extent of the destitution, and the means of the subscribers; but in consequence of such assistance, their lordships are of opinion, that the proceedings of such Relief Committees should be open to the inspection of Government officers, appointed for the purpose." 5. The Relief Committees are to exercise great care in the sale of meal or other food provided by them; such sale not to be made except in small quantities, and to persons who are known to have no other means of procuring food. 6. As to the Government depôts of food, their lordships "desire that it may be fully understood that even at those places at which Government depôts will be established for the sale of food, the depots will not be opened while food can be obtained by the people from private dealers, at reasonable prices; and that even when the depôts are opened, the meal will, if possible, be sold at such prices as will allow of the private trader selling at the same price, with a reasonable profit."[123] The rule to allow private dealers to sell at a reasonable profit, excellent in itself, required an amount of supervision which it did not receive, and in consequence, the starving poor were often obliged to pay unjustly exorbitant prices for their food supplies. Commissary-General Hewetson, writing from Limerick on 30th December, 1846, says: "Last quotations from Cork: Indian corn, £17 5s. per ton, ex ship; Limerick: corn not in the market; Indian meal, £18 10s. to £19 per ton. Demand excessive. Looking to the quotations in the United States markets, these are really famine prices, the corn (direct consignment from the States) not standing the consignee more than £9 or £10 per ton. The commander of an American ship, the 'Isabella,' lately with a direct consignment from New York to a house in this city, makes no scruple, in his trips in the public steamers up and down the river, to speak of the enormous profits the English and Irish houses are making by their dealings with the States. One house in Cork alone, it is affirmed, will clear £40,000 by corn speculation; and the leading firm here will, I should say, go near to £80,000, as they are now weekly turning out from 700 to 900 tons of different sorts of meal.... I sometimes am inclined to think houses give large prices for cargoes imported for a market, to keep them up; it is an uncharitable thought, but really there is so much cupidity abroad, and the wretched people suffering so intensely from the high prices of food, augmented by every party through whose hands it passes before it reaches them, it is quite disheartening to look upon."[124]

The Government further determined not to send any orders for supplies of food to foreign countries, as was done by Sir Robert Peel, in the case of the cargo of India meal; and their depôts would be only established in those western and north-western districts, where, owing to the previous almost universal cultivation of the potato (or rather owing perhaps to its universal use), no trade in corn for local consumption existed.

The system of relief thus provided was extensive and expansive enough, as it laid the entire soil of Ireland under contribution. Whether or not the country would, in the long run, be able to pay for it all, the Government acted well in making the landlords understand and feel their responsibilities in such a terrible crisis. But they should not have stopped there. Those who had mortgages on Irish estates, and their name was legion, should have been compelled to contribute their due proportion; the commercial and monied interests of the country should have been taxed, as well as the land; no one able to bear any portion of the burthen should have been exempted from it, at such a moment of national calamity. Instead of taxing one species of property, namely land, to meet the Famine, the whole property of the country should have been taxed for that purpose; and this partiality was justly complained of by the landed interests.

But a much more formidable opposition than that of the landed interest, as such, rose up against the Labour-rate Act, and for a very sufficient reason. The employment to be provided under it could not, and was not intended to be reproductive; the public works which it sanctioned being, as Secretary Labouchere said, in his letter, only undertaken with a view of relieving the temporary distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop. On this account, the dissatisfaction with the measure was very general from every section of politicians; not that it was thought, except perhaps by some few, that the Government were unwilling to provide against the great Famine which all felt was already holding the Irish nation in its deadly grasp, but because it was felt and believed, that the mode chosen for that purpose was the very worst possible. Under the Labour-rate Act, not so much as one rood of ground could be reclaimed or improved. The whole bone and sinew of the nation, its best and truest capital, must be devoted to the cutting down of hills and the filling up of hollows, often on most unfrequented by-ways, where such work could not be possibly required; and in making roads, which, as the Prime Minister himself afterwards acknowledged, "were not wanted," but which Colonel Douglas, a Government Inspector, more accurately described "as works which would answer no other purpose than that of obstructing the public conveyances." This radical defect of the Act was well and happily put by Lord Devon, when he said it authorized "unproductive work to be executed by borrowed money."

The Act was criticised for other reasons too. It made no provision for the completion of the works taken in hand to relieve the people in 1846; and those works must be finished by the 15th of August of that year, or not at all, a full fortnight before the Labour-rate Act had become the law of the land. Of course many of them were unfinished at that date. Clearly, this was wrong; for on the supposition that they were works of at least some utility, and not mere child's-play to afford an excuse to the Government for giving the people the price of food, they should have been completed. They consisted chiefly in the making or altering or improving of roads—and everybody knows that unfinished road-work is worse than useless,—it is a positive injury. Parts of innumerable roads in Ireland were impassable for years after those works had closed; and many a poor man, whose horse and dray got locked in the adhesive mud of a cut-down but unshingled hill, vented his anger against the Board of Works in the most indignant terms.