1. That instead of the money being taken from the farmers, and wasted in useless and unproductive works, each person liable to pay this rate should have the option of expending it upon his own land, in additional labour, upon works tending, as far as possible, to promote the increased production of food; and that the most suitable and profitable works in each locality would be best ascertained by inviting proposals from the ratepayers—each for his own land. 2. That in the event of landlord and tenant not agreeing in the works to be undertaken, each should be entitled to expend the portion of rate paid by himself. These suggestions were certainly calculated to avert the most threatening danger of the moment—the danger of not having sufficient attention paid to the cultivation of the land, in order to produce food for the coming year. 3. Those ratepayers next express their opinion, that landlords and others, having sufficient interest in lands, should be encouraged by the offer of loans to undertake extensive and permanent profitable improvements, such as the draining and reclaiming of land—the making of roads to come under the designation of profitable improvements, only so far as they would be the means of facilitating cultivation. All the works undertaken to be under the superintendence of the Board of Works. 4. The ruling and controlling power in the case to be a local committee of landlords and ratepayers, which committee, on the completion of each work within the time agreed upon, should have notice to that effect; and who should have power to order an inspection of such works, if they thought it necessary. Upon being satisfied that the outlay was fairly and honestly made, according to the terms of agreement, a certificate to be given to that effect, which should be taken in payment of the rate. The Kells and Fore Committee add, with truth, that this labour, being carried on under the ordinary relations of employer and employed, would be free from the difficulties of superintendence, and the demoralizing effects which "charity works" are apt to produce in the labourer.

After expressing these views and making these suggestions they prepared a formal address to the Lord Lieutenant to impress upon him the urgent necessity that existed for employing the labour of the country in the raising of food. The duties which devolve on those in power this year, they tell him, are very different from those of last year. Last year, when it was found that a great portion of the food of the people had perished, the evident duty of the Government and the country was to provide a sufficient supply, until the harvest would come in. This was done by securing additional wages for the people, with which to buy food; wages paid for the public works then undertaken being the readiest means to meet a transient emergency; but the Committee are convinced, they assure his Excellency, that the calamity of the current year is not transient but permanent. Not one of them, they say, entertains the expectation that the next year's potato crop will put an end to the difficulties of the country, by supplying sufficient food for the population: "the question is not now of the distribution but of the production of food. We have not to relieve a temporary distress, but to make provision for the food of a people." To buy food in foreign markets with money paid for unproductive labour at home, they of course, designate as it deserved. The true and permanent remedy is only to be found in the employment of additional capital and labour on the land. "To anticipate the available resources of the country," they urge, "and to compel or induce the outlay of them on public works not productive of food, or of any commodity which could be exchanged for food, must fearfully aggravate the dangers of our position." Finally, they tell the Lord Lieutenant frankly, that they feel it to be their duty to deprecate the continuance of a system which tends to discourage the exertions of landlord and farmer, and to misapply the labour of the people—closing their admirably reasoned address by repeating the principle with which they had set out: "That the labour for which the land is compelled to pay should be applied in developing the productive powers of the land."

O'Connell, as was to be expected, took the greatest interest in the perilous state of his countrymen at this critical period; and he expressed his views in public on several occasions. His great anxiety was for united action. In a letter written from Darrynane, dated 17th of September, and addressed to the Secretary of the National Repeal Association, he says, the system of public works is, in its nature, sufficiently comprehensive, if carried actively and energetically into effect, to afford employment to the great bulk of the adult population; but he feels convinced, that to be satisfactory it requires the most active co-operation of landowners and farmers. The great difficulty, he thinks, is not in want of employment, but in the want of food, and to leave to commercial speculators the supply of food for the people will keep it at a famine price. In his opinion, therefore, the intervention of the Government was absolutely necessary. Such intervention, he admits to be surrounded with great difficulties, and calculated to impose an enormous additional burthen upon them; it must, however, he holds, be done, or the people will starve. In reply to those who called for loans, at a low rate of interest, to be expended on the improvement of the land, he says, it is to be remarked that there are already a million of pounds sterling in the hands of the Board of Works, to be lent for the drainage of Irish estates, and but few had availed themselves of that fund.[133]

But this is no complete answer to the call made for reclaiming Irish lands, because the money held by the Board of Works was only lent when applied for. The advocates for reclaiming waste lands in order to give employment to the starving people wanted a Special Bill empowering the Government to call upon the owners of estates either to reclaim their waste land themselves, or to permit the Government to do so on equitable terms. To some this seemed an interference with the rights of property; but even if it were, the occasion was sufficient to justify it; for when a whole nation is in the throes of famine—threatened with annihilation, as Ireland then was—salus populi suprema lex should become the guiding principle of a government. Extraordinary evils call for extraordinary remedies. Nor would such a law be one whit more of an interference with the rights of property than the law which enables a railway company to make their line through a man's estate whether he likes it or not, giving him such compensation as may be awarded by an impartial tribunal. And this is just, for no private individual ought to have the power of preventing what is for the general prosperity. But important as the construction of a railway may be, there is no comparison between its importance and that of saving the lives of a whole people, for whose benefit railways are constructed, and all material improvements projected and carried out.

That some compulsory clauses were necessary in the Drainage Bill is clear from the statement of O'Connell, that but few availed themselves of its provisions. Speaking of this Bill, a gentleman whose opinion must carry much weight with it, says, that all acquainted with the subject admit the whole cost of thorough draining would be returned by the first crop, or the first two, or at least by the first three crops.[134] "Under such circumstances," he asks, "how can the country be exposed to danger or suffering from an infliction such as now threatens? It is impossible, unless we assume all the parties interested—whether the government, the landed proprietors, the farmers, or the labourers—to be inert, and forgetful of their respective interests to an extent of which the world has not yet seen a parallel ... Is it possible to imagine that such a cooperation can be withheld: can the alienation and errors infused among classes be so great, that they will perish rather than follow their concurrent interests!!!" "The Drainage Act of 1846 made the expense of drainage works a first charge upon the land, and that Act could be easily expanded and adjusted to the present emergency of the country. This principle, alike equitable, comprehensive, and applicable to our case, is the law; and it only requires that it should be judiciously and extensively used in order to effect the most rapid and beneficial change that ever occurred in any country."[135] That want of co-operation amongst men for their respective interests of which this well-informed writer asserts the world had seen no parallel, occurred in Ireland. Millions of acres were in a wretched half barren condition for want of being drained; the money for the purpose, already granted by Parliament, was in the coffers of the Board of Works, and more would have been supplied; the return for the outlay would have been quick and remunerative; but the money remained unused and sterile; the land was not drained, and the people in myriads died of hunger.

We must not, however, be unjust to the parties named in the quotation given above. The farmers and labourers were powerless for good, unaided by the landlords and the Government. The last-named gave the landlords the power of draining their estates on terms not merely just, but really easy, generous, and remunerative; they refused to avail themselves of that power; on them, therefore, first and above all others, rests the weighty responsibility of neglecting the most solemn duty that could devolve upon them, as accountable beings—that of saving the lives of their fellow-countrymen; a duty not only within their reach, but one that could be discharged with the greatest advantage to their own interests. The next party that failed in its duty was the Government, who should have compelled the owners of land to that, which, of their own motion, they had so culpably neglected. Had the Government done this, the farmers and labourers would have been but too happy to unite with it and the landlords, in an undertaking so evidently for their own advantage, as well as for the general weal.

O'Connell, knowing well that if he could secure united action for practical good amongst the landed interests, everything necessary to save the people would be comparatively easy, laboured to effect this in the letter above referred to. He threatened them, too, with the danger of losing their properties, unless they so acted. "The Government plan of succour," he says, "is calculated to produce throughout Ireland a more extended Poor Law, necessarily calculated to extend outdoor relief to all adult labourers and their families, in a state of destitution, as well as to all other destitute poor. The English statute of Elizabeth is being extended to Ireland, and the poverty of the country is about to be placed for support upon the property—especially upon the landed property." And again: "The English plan of out-door relief, in its worst form, will be almost insensibly communicated to Ireland, and their [the proprietors,] estates not only burthened but actually confiscated." The remedy for this, he says, is combination amongst the owners of land. The baronial sessions proved the possibility of such a combination, but they lasted only a part of a day—there should be a great central permanent committee in Dublin, appointed by the landowners, and communicating between them and the Government. Such a body would be most influential, and could organize the best plans for obtaining Government and local relief.

Several Relief Committees assembled in Dublin, but not one of them was constituted after the plan suggested by O'Connell, although many influential persons expressed their warm approval of it, one landlord, whilst he did so, offensively applying to its originator the vile quotation:—fas est ab hoste doceri.

Towards the end of September Mr. Monsell, of Tervoe,[136] addressed a letter to the Irish Chief Secretary, in which he reminds him that the Labour-rate Act was framed and passed into law at a time when the Government did not foresee that the potato rot would be making fearful ravages in every electoral division in Ireland by the first of September;—that in a number of those there would not be a potato fit to eat on the first of October, and that, in all probability there would not remain in the country any considerable quantity of potatoes suitable for human food by November. In view of this terrific state of things, he thinks it is no exaggeration to say, that for ten months to come labour must be found for five hundred thousand men, the cost of which could not be under five millions of pounds; and as destitution in the South and West was greater than in the other parts of the country, a great portion of this sum should be raised in Munster and Connaught. The people were starving, and be the law good or bad they must be employed under it, as it was the only way the poor could, for the time, be relieved. He reviews the provisions of the Labour-rate Act, and like so many other enlightened men of the period—whose opinions he may be fairly taken to represent, he is alarmed at the principle of unproductive labour upon which it was based. The money necessary for the support of the people must, for the most part, be raised from the land, and as this vast sum, so raised, does not "revolve back again upon the land," it would be impossible, he thought, for the nation to recover from such a shock. It was universally acknowledged that the want of sufficient capital was one of the great evils—if not the great evil of Ireland. There was abundant scope for the profitable expenditure of capital, "in every corner of Ireland—in every barony—almost in every townland; the money expended upon its improvement would return a large interest of at least ten per cent., [the usual estimate made by practised men was higher, but he, being anxious to avoid exaggeration, leaves it at ten], and the capital of the country would, of course, be largely increased by such expenditure ...an increasing capital would give more labour, a decreasing capital less."

1. The first important point, in Mr. Monsell's opinion, was to consider how they were to spend the large sum necessary to sustain the people. Is it, he asks, to be spent on productive or unproductive labour? If on the former, the capital of the country would be vastly increased, and the means of giving future employment increased in proportion; if on the latter, every pound so spent would be taken away from that capital, and the means of employing labour proportionably reduced. It seemed, therefore, to follow very evidently that, as the leading feature of the Labour-rate Act was to employ the people on unproductive labour, its direct tendency was not only to pauperize the country, but to run it into complete ruin. 2. Another fault in the Act, but one of inferior magnitude, was that it necessitated the congregating together of large masses of the people upon public works, which tends to demoralize the labouring classes; and inflicts, besides, a great hardship upon them, by compelling them to walk great distances to and from those works, making it almost impossible for them to have their mid-day meal carried to them. 3. The experience of the last year proved that fully one-fourth of the money granted to support the labouring poor was expended on the purchase of land, on horse labour, and on blasting rocks. Hence, according to his estimate of the money required for the coming year, there would be a million and a-quarter of it diverted from its intended purpose—the relief of the destitute. "The Government cannot," he says, "by act of Parliament compel drainage or fencing; but they can compel the owner of land to employ the poor, and make those who refuse to employ them on productive labour pay for their employment on public works." Appeals to public spirit, social duties, and so forth, have no effect; nothing will avail but an appeal to self-interest. Make it, then, the interest of landowners who neglect their duties to employ the destitute poor upon profitable labour, by taxing them to pay those poor for public works—unprofitable labour. As the Labour-rate Act did nothing of this kind, it inflicted a positive injustice on the good improving landlord, by taxing him equally with the landlord who never made an improvement; who, in many instances, was an absentee, forgetful and culpably ignorant of the state of his property, his sole aim being to get as much as possible out of it, without expending anything. The tenants of such a man would be sure to be more destitute than those of an improving landlord, who is thus taxed unfairly to support them,—taxed in another way too,—taxed by giving employment, whilst the other gives none. Indiscriminate taxation was, therefore, a positive injustice to the improving landlord, and an actual bar to improvement; for, of course, he would be rated higher on account of his improvements. Such, however, was taxation under the Labour-rate Act.