Mr. Monsell concluded his able letter in the following words:—"I am convinced that these evils cannot be avoided without a change in the law. No matter how the managing of the public works may be extended, you will still find that unless there is an absolute power given to the owners and occupiers of land, to have the money raised from the land expended upon it, you will have such a mass of jobbing and jealousy to contend with, that very few works of private benefit, very few productive works, will be executed. I am sure that if you agree with the views that have now been laid before you, you will announce it speedily in order to prevent the carrying out of the present ruinous system on any scale larger than that required to meet our immediate wants, and that you will not hesitate to recommend that Parliament should be called together at once. This course may be inconvenient, but such an emergency requires inconveniences to be encountered. History presents no parallel to our circumstances. There is no other instance on record of the whole food of a people becoming rotten before it was ripe. Of course the system of public works would go on more smoothly than any other that can be suggested. It would give far less trouble to the Government than the system which it is proposed to substitute for it; but what would the end of it be? Never since the connexion of Ireland with England has so awful a power been placed in the hands of any statesman as in yours. The whole country is, as it were, fused in your hands—on you depends the future shape which it will assume. If you use your opportunities well—if you develope its resources—if you increase its capital—if you improve its agriculture—if you distribute its wealth as it ought to be distributed, its progress in the next two or three years will be greater than the progress ever made by any country in the same time. If you take the easy course—if you throw away the opportunity placed by Providence in your hands—if you allow the vast sums of money which you have to direct the distribution of to be spent unprofitably, we shall retrograde as fast as under the other alternative we should have advanced; and those who have been year after year hoping against hope, and labouring against the tide, will fold their arms in despair."
A deputation from Cork waited on the Prime Minister to urge upon his attention the utility and necessity of employing the people in productive instead of non-productive works. He read to them a reply, in which he said he thought the measures that had passed through Parliament ought to be sufficient to meet the existing emergency; but whilst he expressed this view he, using the time-honored official style of replying to deputations, promised that the subject should receive the deepest consideration during the ensuing session of Parliament. There were, he said, subjects of great difficulty to be encountered in legislating for a country circumstanced as Ireland was. The lands held by Government might be at once improved, but the case was different with respect to those that were the property of individuals. Still, he would not shrink from the necessity or duty of Government interfering even in the latter case; neither did he deny that while property had its owners and its rights, that such ownership and rights should not be allowed to interfere with the operations intended to develop the resources of the soil, and improve the social condition of the people. The Premier here uses the far-famed sentiment, almost the very words, of Secretary Drummond, that property has its duties as well as its rights; but a sentiment, however just, is but an empty form of words, unless it receives a practical application at the proper time. The threadbare and almost insulting platitudes—insulting from the very frequency of their use—about developing resources and improving the social condition of the people, were strangely out of place at a moment when coroner's juries, in various parts of Ireland, were beginning to return verdicts of "Death from starvation." Lord John, now that he was Minister, talked of difficulties in legislating for Ireland, especially with regard to the reclamation of land; when he was only an expectant of office, his expressed sentiments were quite different. In his speech on the Coercion Bill, two or three months before, he said:—"There is another source of benefit, namely, the cultivation of the waste lands. On that subject I do not see the difficulties which beset the propositions in the regard of the Poor-laws." Now it is the very reverse. He sees difficulties in reclaiming the waste lands of Ireland, but finds none in putting into operation the most objectionable part of the Poor-Law system—- outdoor relief; for, his Labour-rate Act was, substantially, a gigantic system of outdoor relief.[137]
Meantime the following requisition was put in circulation and numerously signed, both by peers and gentry: "We, the undersigned, request a meeting of the landowners of Ireland to be held in Dublin on the __ day of ____ next, to press upon her Majesty's Government the importance of at once adopting the necessary measures to alter the provisions of the Act, entitled the 9th and 10th Vic., chap. 107, so as to allow the vast sums of money about to be raised by presentment under it, to be applied to the development of the resources of the land, rather than in public works of an unproductive nature."
The principle of the Labour-rate Act was doomed; no voice was raised in its defence, nor could there have been. The Government having turned a deaf ear to the call for an Autumn Session, the Repealers were anxious there should be a demonstration in Dublin that would, as far as possible, bear the similitude of an Irish Parliament. The above requisition, very probably without intending it, sustained and strengthened this idea; the Prime Minister and his colleagues became alarmed, and the Lord Lieutenant, on the 5th of October, suddenly and unexpectedly issued, through his Chief Secretary, the famous Proclamation known as "Labouchere's Letter," which, if it did not entirely repeal the Labour-rate Act, changed its whole nature. In that document the Irish public are told that the Lord Lieutenant has had under his consideration the various representations which had been made to him of the operation of the poor employment Act, and the difficulty of finding "public works" upon which it would be expedient or beneficial to expend money to the extent requisite for affording employment to the people during the existence of distress; and to obviate the bad effects of a great expenditure of money in the execution of works comparatively unproductive, he desires that the Commissioners of Public Works would direct their officers, in the respective counties, to consider and report upon such works of a reproductive character and permanent utility, as might be presented at any Sessions held under the above Act; and his Excellency would be prepared to sanction and approve of such of those works as might be recommended by the Board, and so presented, in the same manner as if they had been strictly "public works," and presented as such in the manner required by the Act.[138]
Never did any Government pronounce against itself a more complete verdict of ignorance and incapacity. The Government had framed the Act; every clause of it was its own handiwork; it was passed through Parliament without being modified, amended, or in the slightest degree opposed, and yet, before it was brought into practical operation—for a single work had not been commenced under it at the date of the Proclamation—that same Government virtually repeal it, well knowing that for such proceeding it must come before Parliament for an Act of Indemnity.
FOOTNOTES:
[122] This rule gave great dissatisfaction, the wages in many places being already far too low, in proportion to the price of provisions. When the Cork deputation waited on Lord John Russell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in reply to Rev. Mr. Gibson, that the Minute of the Lords of the Treasury requiring that wages should be twopence under the standard of the country was not the law, and if necessary could be modified.
[123] The italics are their lordships'.
[124] Letter to Mr. Trevelyan, Commissariat Series, Part I, p. 439, who did not like it all, and sent in reply, on the part of the Treasury, an elaborate defence of high prices and large profits; although the people in many districts could only purchase one meal a day with the wages they received on the public works, as is testified by Commissary-General Doree's letter (p. 444); and by numberless other letters from almost every part of the country; hence men in full employment on the Government works died of starvation, or of dysentery produced by it. And why should they not? They were earning 8-1/4d. a day at task work, whilst meal was 3s. a stone; and the next shop in which it was sold for that sum was often a great distance from them—in some cases twenty, and even five-and-twenty miles!
The following paragraph went the round of the newspapers at the close of December:—"A FACT JOB LORD JOHN RUSSELL.—Mr. Bianconi, ex-Mayor of Clonmel, had shipped to him on the 14th of December, at New York, a small lot of best Indian corn, at twenty-three shillings per quarter of 480 lbs.; and the same post which brought the invoice brought a letter stating the price at Liverpool was seventy-two shillings. What will Lord John Russell say to this?