[135] Ibid. The italics are Mr. Kennedy's.
[136] Now Lord Emly.
[137] "The works under the 9th and 10th Vict., cap. 107, (the Labour-rate Act,) were to be sanctioned for sake of this relief, and not for sake of the works themselves."—Mr. Trevelyan's Letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, Board of Works' Series of Blue Books, vol. L., p. 97.
[138] See Proclamation, in Appendix, Note D. "The intended meeting in Dublin will be now abandoned, as the promoters of it must be satisfied with Lord Bessborough's Proclamation."—Mr. Pierce Mahony to the Earl of Clarendon, 6th October, Commissariat Series of Blue Books, vol. I., p. 123.
Mr. Pierce Mahony was a very well-known Dublin solicitor; a man of position, and evidently in the confidence of Lord Clarendon. He writes from the Stephen's-Green Club, the recognised representative body of the Whigs in Ireland. How anxious the Government must have been that a chief effect of their proclamation would be to prevent the intended demonstration in Dublin is patent from the hurry with which Mr. Mahony transmits the intelligence to the President of the Board of Trade.
CHAPTER VII.
The Measures of Relief for 1846-7--Difficulties--Shortcomings of the Government--Vigorous action of other countries--Commissary General Routh's Letter on the state of the depôts--Replies from the Treasury--Delay--Incredulity of Government--English Press--Attacks both on the Landlords and People of Ireland--Not the time for such attacks--View of the Morning Chronicle--Talk about exaggeration--Lieutenant-Colonel Jones--Changes his opinion--His reason for doing so--Mr. Secretary Redington's ideas--Extraordinary Baronial Presentments--Presentments for the County Mayo beyond the whole rental of the county!--The reason why--Unfinished Public Works--Lord Monteagle--Finds fault with the action of the Government, although a supporter of theirs--Expenses divided between landlord and tenant--Discontent at rate of wages on public works being 2d. per day under the average wages of the district--Founded on error--Taskwork--Great dissatisfaction at it--Combination--Attempt on the Life of Mr. W.M. Hennessy--True way to manage the people (Note)--Stoppage of Works--Captain Wynne--Dreadful destitution--Christmas eve--Opposition to Taskwork continues--Causes--Treasury Minute on the subject--Colonel Jones on Committees--Insulting his officers--Insult to Mr. Cornelius O'Brien, M.P.--Captain Wynne at Ennistymon--A real Irish Committee--Major McNamara--His version of the Ennistymon affair (Note)--Charges against the Gentry of Clare by Captain Wynne--Mr. Millet on Ennistymon--Selling Tickets for the Public Works--Feeling of the Officials founded often on ignorance and prejudice--The Increase of Deposits in the Savings Banks a Proof of Irish Prosperity--How explained by Mr. Twistleton, an official--Scarcity of silver--The Bank of Ireland authorized to issue it--The Public Works of 1845-6 brought to a close in August, 1846--The Labour-rate Act--Difficulty of getting good Officials--The Baronies--Issues to them--Loans--Grants--Total--Sudden and enormous Increase of Labourers on the Works under the Labour-rate Act--How distributed over the Provinces--Number of Officials superintending the Public Works--Correspondence--Number of Letters received at Central Office--Progress of the Famine--Number employed--Number seeking employment who could not get it--The Death-roll.
To have met the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery could be modelled. Great allowance must be therefore made for the shortcomings of the Government, in a crisis so new and so terrible; but after making the most liberal concessions on this head, it must be admitted that Lord John Russell and his colleagues were painfully unequal to the situation. They either could not or would not use all the appliances within their reach, to save the Irish people. Besides the mistakes they made as to the nature of the employment which ought to be given, a chief fault of their's was that they did not take time by the forelock—that they did not act with promptness and decision. Other nations, where famine was far less imminent, were in the markets, and had to a great extent made their purchases before our Government, causing food to be scarcer and dearer for us than it needed to be. Thus writes Commissary-General Routh to the Treasury on the 19th of September:—"I now revert to the most important of our considerations, the state of our depôts. We have no arrivals yet announced, either at Westport or Sligo, and the remains there must be nothing, or next to nothing. The bills of lading from Mr. Erichsen are all for small quantities, which will be distributed, and perhaps eaten, in twelve or twenty-four hours after their arrival. It would require a thousand tons to make an impression, and that only a temporary one. Our salvation of the depôt system is in the importation of a large supply. These small shipments are only drops in the ocean." The Treasury replies in this fashion, on the 22nd, to Sir R. Routh's strong appeal:—"With reference to the remarks in your letter of the 19th instant, as to the insufficiency of the supplies for your depôts, the fact is that we have already bought up and sent to Ireland all the Indian corn which is immediately available; and the London and Liverpool markets are at present so completely bare of this article, that we have been obliged to have recourse to the plan of purchasing supplies of Indian corn which had been already exported from London to neighbouring Continental ports."[139] And again, on the 29th of the same month, Mr. Trevelyan thus explains the difficulties the Treasury laboured under in endeavouring to purchase the supplies for which the Commissary-General had been so emphatically calling:—"It is little known what a formidable competition we are suffering from our Continental neighbours. Very large orders are believed to have been sent out to the United States, not only by the merchants, but by the Governments of France and Belgium, and in the Mediterranean markets they have secured more than their share; all which will appear perfectly credible, when it is remembered that they are buying our new English wheat in our own market."[140]
Here at home, the fatal error of awaiting events, instead of anticipating them, and by forethought endeavouring to control and guide them, was equally pernicious. The most considerable persons in the kingdom—peers, members of Parliament, deputy lieutenants, magistrates without number—pronounced the potato crop of 1846 to be hopelessly gone early in August. But although several members of the Government expressed their belief in this, and spoke about it with great alarm, they seem not to have given it full credence, until it was too late to take anticipatory measures; in short, they regarded it, like everything Irish, as greatly exaggerated. The most influential portion of the English newspaper press supported and encouraged this view, making, at the same time, fierce attacks on Irish landlords for not meeting the calamity as they ought, and as they were bound in duty and conscience to do. Equally bitter and insolent was their tone towards the Irish people, accusing them of many inherent vices—denouncing their ignorance, their laziness, their want of self-reliance. Whatever of truth or falsehood may have been in those charges, it was not the time to put them forward. Famine was at the door of the Irish nation, and its progress was not to be stayed by invectives against our failings, or by moral lectures upon the improvement of our habits. Food, food was the single and essential requisite; let us have it at once, or we die; lecture us afterwards as much as you please. But there was something to be said on the other side about our habits and failings; and a liberal English journalist, taking up the subject, turned their own artillery upon his countrymen, telling them that those vices, of which they accused the Irish people, were not an essential part of Celtic nature. Has not the Irish Celt, he asks, achieved distinguished success in every country of Europe but his own? The state in which he is to be found in Ireland to-day must be, therefore, accounted for on some other theory than the inherent good-for-nothingness of his nature. "The sluggish, well-meaning mind of the English nation," he continues, "so willing to do its duty, so slow to discover that it has any duty to do, is now perforce rousing to ask itself the question, after five centuries of English domination over Ireland, how many millions it is inclined to pay, not in order to save the social system which has grown up under its fostering care, but to help that precious child of its parental nurture to die easy? Any further prolongation of existence for that system no one now seems to predict, and hardly any one longer ventures to insinuate that it deserves."