An Industrial School, especially for girls, in every town, village and parish of Ireland, is one of the crying needs of the time. I am confident there are in Galway alone five thousand women and girls who would hail with gratitude and thoroughly improve an opportunity to earn six-pence per day. If they could be taught needle-work, plain dressmaking, straw-braiding, and a few of the simplest branches of manufactures, such as are carried on in households, they might and would at once emerge from the destitution and social degradation which now enshroud them into independence, comfort and consideration. Knowing how to work and to earn a decent subsistence, they would very soon seek and acquire a knowledge of letters if previously ignorant of them. In short, the Industrial Education of the Irish Peasantry is the noblest and the most hopeful idea yet broached for their intellectual and social elevation, and I have great hope of its speedy triumph. It is now being agitated in Dublin and many other localities, a central and many auxiliary schools having already been established. But I will speak further on this point in another letter.
Galway has an immense and steady water-power within half a mile of its harbor, on the outlet of Lakes Corrib and Mash, by means of which it enjoys an admirable internal navigation extending some sixty miles northward. Here Manufactures might be established with a certainty of commanding the cheapest power, cheapest labor and cheapest fuel to be had in the world. I never saw a spot where so much water power yet unused could be obtained at so trifling a cost as here directly on the west line of the town and within half a mile of its center. A beautiful Marble is found on the line of the Railroad only a few miles from the town, and all along the line to Dublin the abundance and excellence of the building-stone are remarkable. Timber and Brick come down the Lake outlet as fast as they are wanted, while Provisions are here cheap as in any part of the British Isles. Nature has plainly designed Galway for a great and prosperous city, the site of extensive manufactures, the emporium of an important trade, and the gateway of Europe toward America; but whether all this is or is not to be dashed by the fatality which has hitherto attended Irish prospects, remains to be seen. I trust that it is not, but that a new Liverpool is destined soon to arise here; and that, should I ever again visit Europe, I shall first land on the quay of Galway.
XLII.
IRELAND—SOUTH.
Dublin, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 1851.
I had hoped to see all of Ireland that is accessible by Railroad from this city, but Time will not permit. Having remained here over Sunday, I had only Monday left for a trip Southward, and that would just suffice for reaching Limerick and returning without attempting Cork. So at 7 yesterday morning I took the "Great Southern and Western Railroad," and was set down in Limerick (130 miles) at a quarter before 1, passing Kildare, with its "Curragh" or spacious race-ground, Maryborough and Thurles on the way. Portarlington, Mount Melick, Mountrath and Templemore—all considerable towns—lie a few miles from the Railroad, on the right or west, as Naas, Cashel and Tipperary are not far from it on the left; while another Railroad, the "Irish South-Eastern," diverges at Kildare to Carlow, Bagnalstown and Kilkenny (146 miles from Dublin) on the South; while from Kilkenny the "Kilkenny and Waterford" has already been constructed to Thomastown (some 20 miles), and is to reach Waterford, at the head of ship navigation on the common estuary at the mouth of the Suir and Barrow, when completed.
I left the Great Southern and Western at Limerick Junction, 107 miles S. S. W. of Dublin, and took the crossroad from Tipperary to Limerick (30 miles), but the main road proceeds south-westerly to Charleville, 22½ miles further, and thence leads due south to Mallow, on the Blackwater, and then south by east to Cork, 164½ miles from Dublin, while another railroad has just been opened from Cork to Bandon, 18¾ miles still further south-west, making a completed line from Dublin to Bandon, 183½ miles, with branches to Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny, the latter to be continued to Waterford. In a country so easily traversed by Railroads, and so swarming with population as Ireland, these roads should be not only most useful but most productive to their stockholders, but they are very far from it. Few of the peasantry can afford to travel by them, except when leaving the country for ever, and their scanty patches of ground produce little surplus food for exportation, while they can afford to buy little that the Railroads bring in. Were the population of Ireland as well fed and as enterprising as that of New-England, with an industry as well diversified, her Railroads would pay ten per cent, on their cost; as things now are, they do not pay two per cent. Thus the rapacity of Capital defeats itself, and actually impoverishes its owners when it deprives Labor of a fair reward. If all the property-holders of Ireland would to-day combine in a firm resolve to pay at least half a dollar per day for men's labor, and to employ all that should present themselves, introducing new arts and manufactures and improving their estates in order to furnish such employment, they would not only speedily banish destitution and ignorance from the land but they would double the value of their own possessions. This is one of the truths which sloth, rapacity and extravagance are slow to learn, yet which they cannot safely ignore. The decay and ruin of nearly all the "old families" in Ireland are among the penalties of disregarding it.