"I have also to direct your earnest attention to the permanent consideration of Ireland. You will perceive, by the absence of political excitement, an opportunity for taking a dispassionate survey of the social evils which afflict that part of the United Kingdom. Various measures will be laid before you, which, if adopted by Parliament, may tend to raise the great mass of the people in comfort, to promote agriculture, and to lessen the pressure of that competition for the occupation of land, which has been the fruitful source of crime and misery."
In the House of Lords, the debate on the address in reply to the Queen's speech was not very remarkable. All the speakers admitted that which it was impossible to deny, the terrible reality of the famine, unequalled, as Lord Hatherton said he believed it to be, in past history, and certainly not to be paralleled in the history of modern times. Lord Brougham made a joke and raised a laugh at the expense of the Irish landlords. He inclined, he said, to the opinion that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner, but it was objected that such a course would have the effect of bringing the Irish proprietors to England at a time when their presence at home was much needed. "God forbid," exclaimed his lordship, "that I should be instrumental in bringing the Irish proprietors over to this country."[192] He further said, in one of those involved sentences of his, "that he held it to be impossible that, when the cry of hunger prevailed over the land—when there was a melancholy substance as well as the cry—when the country was distracted from day to day by accounts of the most heartrending spectacles he had ever seen, heard, or read of—that at a time when there was deep misery and distress prevailing, and proved in Ireland—rendered only the more heartrending, because the more touching, by the patience—the admirable and almost inimitable patience—with which it seemed to be borne—that at a time when that great calamity existed—when there were scenes enacted all over those districts, which they could find nothing existing in the page of disease and death and pestilence, ever following in the train of famine—to which nothing existing was to be found in the page of Josephus, or on the canvas of Poussin, or in the dismal chant of Dante ... that they should be in circumstances like these, and yet be able calmly and temperately to take up questions of permanent policy, he held to be absolutely and necessarily impossible."
More to the point were some of the remarks made by Lord Stanley, then in opposition. With regard to the awful visitation which afflicted the sister island from one end to the other, he said he believed that no exaggeration could, in many instances, exceed the dreadful reality. He was quite content, that for the prevention and palliation of the evil, for the purpose of rescuing the country from the guilt of permitting a large portion of its people knowingly to STARVE, there is no sacrifice, no efforts which her Majesty's Government can call upon the people of this country to make, which will not be cheerfully responded to by the members of your Lordships' house, and by the representatives of the people, who will, in this case, represent the deliberate and cordial sense of the whole country. The Labour-rate Act he pronounced "a great blunder." With regard to the non-establishment of food depôts, he said that if he could accuse the Government of an error on that head, they were led into it by too rigid an adherence to the principles of political economy—to the abstract principles of political economy, that were meant for the permanent improvement of the people; but the question might arise as to the propriety of acting against such principles, in order to meet an extraordinary emergency.
In the House of Commons, one of the earliest speakers on the address was Smith O'Brien. He said, he thought he would be wanting in his duty to his country if he did not, on that occasion, make an appeal to the House on behalf of those whose sufferings could not be exaggerated—could not be described. He was asked, by assenting to the address, if he was prepared to say that the Government had been altogether guiltless of having produced that frightful state of things; and if he were called upon to affirm, that everything had been done by the Government, which might have been done by them, he would answer, that he believed it was in their power, to prevent one single individual from dying of starvation in Ireland. He did not impute to them the wilful intention of bringing about a state of things so disastrous, but it was his opinion, and the opinion of others in Ireland, that they had not introduced those measures which were suitable to the condition in which Ireland was placed, and had thus brought about the state of things which was now witnessed. "To the declaration of the Prime Minister, last session, that there was to be no legislative interference with the price of food, he believed they owed many of the disasters which had taken place in Ireland." This sentiment was received with cheers. Mr. O'Brien then made a point in favour of the Irish landlords. Was this, he asked, to be considered as a local calamity, or was it to be considered as a national calamity? If the Irish members were legislating in an Irish parliament, it would be considered by them as a national calamity, and all classes—the fund holder, the office holder, the mortgagee, the annuitant, would be called on to contribute to the general exertion to alleviate distress. He wished to learn whether the House considered this as an Imperial calamity or not; and whilst he, for his own part, refrained from any supplication to the Imperial treasury, he could assure the House, that there were millions in Ireland, who did not consider the Union a union in which all the advantages ought to be on the part of England. England had the advantage of the Irish absentee rents, and the advantage of applying all the resources of Ireland; and the Irish people did not consider that it ought to be looked upon as a union for the advantage of England alone, and no union when it was for the interests of Ireland. Nothing, he thought, could be more outrageous than that one class, who suffered most from the disasters which had taken place—namely, the landlords of Ireland—should be called upon to bear the whole burthen of this calamity.
Smith O'Brien was quite right in saying it was most unreasonable that the Irish landlords should be called upon to bear the whole expense of the Famine, but it is equally true, that, as a body, they made no effort worth the name to stay or mitigate the Famine, until it had knocked at their own hall doors in the shape of rates, present and prospective, that threatened them with the confiscation of their properties.
Mr. Labouchere, the Irish Chief Secretary, as was to be expected, was put up to defend the Government, and to foreshadow the future measures of relief. His line of defence was a strange one for an English minister to adopt. It was, that the agricultural population of Ireland, vast in its numbers, were always on the brink of starvation; so that when the potato blight swept the country from sea to sea, it was impossible for the Government to meet the disaster fully. An English journal of high repute,[193] whose words have been already quoted in these pages, truly said, that for five hundred years Ireland had been completely in the hands of England, to mould and fashion her as she pleased; and now at the end of those five centuries, a British statesman does not blush to urge, as an argument in favour of the Government of which he is a member, that the normal state of Ireland was—to be on the brink of starvation. This defence, weak and inconclusive from every point of view, served his colleagues and himself, of course, but little, while it was calculated to cover his nation with shame and confusion. He goes on to prove the fact, alas! too easily proved; he goes to Lord Devon's Commission, and tells us from it, that it is no exaggeration to say, that the people of Ireland are the worst housed, the worst clothed, and the worst fed of any people in Europe. It is a country, proceeds the Secretary, of which I find an account given from a most unexceptionable source, the Commission of Poor Law Enquiry in 1835. From this Report it appeared, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers, whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two shillings and six pence a week; and that of these one-half were destitute during thirty weeks of every year. "This," said he, "is the ordinary condition of Ireland, and it is upon such a country as this that the calamity has fallen—a calamity which I believe to be without a parallel in modern times."
Such was the defence of the Irish Chief Secretary. And here it is worth while remarking, that in the earlier stages of the Famine it was the practice of the government organs to throw doubt on the extent of its ravages which were published, and the Government, apparently acting on these views, most culpably delayed the measures by which the visitation could be successfully combated. Now, their part was to admit to the fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for their want of energy and success in overcoming it. On the same principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith, goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight. The money value of the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at £11,250,000: the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be £4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes £15,916,000. Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered the money value of the crop which had failed, or the stock of human food which had been supplied.
The chronic poverty and misery of Ireland, as set forth in the Report which the Poor Law Commissioners published in 1835, seems to have been the favourite armoury whence Mr. Labouchere loved to draw his logical weapons, for the defence of the Government on this occasion. In that Report he finds it stated that "Mayo alone would furnish beggars to all England."[194] Be it remembered, that the Poor Law Commissioners had published their Report eleven years before Mr. Labouchere made this speech, but he does not inform us what measures the British Government had in the meantime adopted, or if they had adopted any, to raise the people out of such a state of misery and degradation; but he clearly thinks he has brought forward a clever argument in his own and his colleagues' defence, when he states that one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, had such abundant and redundant pauperism. Yet this was in the "sister country"—the sister of that great and wealthy and enlightened England of which, no doubt, the Irish Secretary felt proud to be a native.
After offering some defence for the free-trade policy of his chief, and having indicated the measures the Government had prepared for Ireland, he resumed his seat, and was followed by Lord George Bentinck.
Lord George had, within a short time, attained to great importance in the House of Commons. After the protectionist party was deserted ("betrayed" was their own word), by Sir Robert Peel, that large-hearted and high-minded nobleman was installed in his place, as their leader. On the present occasion, without being severe or unkind towards the Government, he pointed out their shortcomings and mistakes with regard to the Irish crisis. Speaking for himself and the party with whom he acted, he said: "We shall be prepared to give our calmest and best attention to any measures her Majesty's ministers may be prepared to bring forward as remedies for that destitution which unhappily exists. But, sir, at the same time, we must be expected to deal frankly with the conduct of ministers, and whilst we are not disposed to say that ministers acted wrongly in declining to call Parliament together, not disposed to censure them for having overridden the law, and suspended the duties of the legislature itself, we are disposed to say, that the measures to which they have had recourse are not those to which we can altogether agree. It is impossible to view the operation of their poor-employment Act, and say that it has answered any good purpose." He held strongly the opinion, that the Government should have supplied food to the people, at least in remote districts, where it could not be otherwise procured. On this point he thus expressed his sentiments: "With respect to the supply of food to the people he, for one, cannot agree altogether in those principles of political economy which had been advanced by the Right Hon. gentleman, the Irish Secretary. This political economy of non-interference with the import and retail trade may be good in ordinary times, but in times such as the present, when a calamity unexampled in the history of the world has suddenly fallen upon Ireland—when there are no merchants or retailers in the whole of the West—when a country of which the population has been accustomed to live upon potatoes of their own growth, produced within a few yards of their own doors, is suddenly deprived of this, the only food of the people, it was not reasonable to suppose that, suddenly merchants and retailers would spring up to supply the extraordinary demands of the people for food. Therefore, I should say that this was a time when her Majesty's Ministers should have broken through these, the severe rules of political economy, and should, themselves, have found the means of providing the people of Ireland with food. The Right Hon. gentleman has said, that ministers have done wisely in adhering to this decision, but I think differently from them. When, every day, we hear of persons being starved to death, and when the Right Hon. gentleman himself admits that in many parts of the country the population has been decimated, I cannot say, that I think ministers have done all they might have done to avert the fatal consequences of this famine."[195] Lord George then read a letter from the Rev. Mr. Townsend, of Skibbereen, in which it was stated that in one month from the 1st of December to the 1st of January, there were one hundred and forty deaths in the workhouse of that town; the people having entered the workhouse, as they said, "that they might be able to die decently under a roof and be sure of a coffin." The Rev. Mr. Townsend also mentioned that in the churchyard of his parish there were, at one time, fourteen funerals waiting, whilst the burial of a fifteenth corpse was being completed. In the next parish to his, there were nine funerals at once in the churchyard, and in two other adjoining ones, there were six together in each. To prove his assertion that the Government should have done more in supplying food to the people, his lordship said: "At this moment, we know that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 quarters of corn in stock on hand in the different ports of London, Liverpool and Glasgow. I want to know, then, what was to have prevented ministers from sending any part, or all of this food to the West of Ireland, to feed the starving people there?... It would have kept the retailers and forestallers in order, and prevented them from availing themselves of the Famine to obtain undue prices. What do we see with regard to Indian meal? Why Indian corn is, at this moment, selling in New York at three shillings, and at Liverpool and in Ireland at nine shillings per bushel."[196]