The White Slaves of England

by John C. Cobden

"The great grievance of Ireland—the Monster Grievance—is just England itself. The curse of Ireland is bad government, and nothing more. And who is the cause of this? Nobody but England. Who made Ireland a conquered country? England. Who introduced all the elements of wrangling, discontent, and injustice? England. Who set two hostile churches, and two hostile races, Celts and Saxons, together by the ears in that country? England, of course. Her massacres, her military plantations, her violent seizure of ancient estates, her favouritism, her monstrous laws and modes of government, were the modern emptying of Pandora's box—the shaking out of a bag-full of Kilkenny cats on the soil of that devoted country. The consequences are exactly those that we have before us. Wretched Saxon landlords, who have left one-fourth of the country uncultivated, and squeezed the population to death by extortion on the rest. A great useless church maintained on the property of the ejected Catholics—who do as men are sure to do, kick at robbery, and feel it daily making their gall doubly bitter. And then we shake our heads and sagely talk about race. If the race be bad, why have we not taken pains to improve it? Why, for scores of years, did we forbid them even to be educated? Why do we complain of their being idle and improvident, and helpless, when we have done every thing we could to make them so? Are our ministers and Parliaments any better? Are they not just as idle, and improvident, and helpless, as it regards Ireland? Has not this evil been growing these three hundred years? Have any remedies been applied but those of Elizabeth, and the Stuarts and Straffords, the Cromwells, and Dutch William's? Arms and extermination? We have built barracks instead of schools; we have sown gunpowder instead of corn—and now we wonder at the people and the crops. The wisest and best of men have for ages been crying out for reform and improvement in Ireland, and all that we have done has been to augment the army and the police."

The condition of the Irish peasantry has long been most miserable. Untiring toil for the lords of the soil gives the labourers only such a living as an American slave would despise. Hovels fit for pig-styes—rags for clothing—potatoes for food—are the fruits of the labour of these poor wretches. A vast majority of them are attached to the Roman Catholic Church, yet they are compelled to pay a heavy tax for the support of the Established Church. This, and other exactions, eat up their little substance, and prevent them from acquiring any considerable property. Their poor homes are merely held by the sufferance of grasping agents for landlords, and they are compelled to submit to any terms he may prescribe or become wandering beggars, which alternative is more terrible to many of them than the whip would be.

O'Connell, the indomitable advocate of his oppressed countrymen, used the following language in his repeal declaration of July 27, 1841:—

"It ought to sink deep into the minds of the English aristocracy, that no people on the face of the earth pay to another such a tribute for permission to live, as Ireland pays to England in absentee rents and surplus revenues. There is no such instance; there is nothing like it in ancient or modern history. There is not, and there never was, such an exhausting process applied to any country as is thus applied to Ireland. It is a solecism in political economy, inflicted upon Ireland alone, of all the nations that are or ever were."

Surely it is slavery to pay such a price for a miserable existence. We cannot so abuse terms as to call a people situated as the Irish are, free. They are compelled to labour constantly without receiving an approach to adequate compensation, and they have no means of escape except by sundering the ties of home, kindred, and country.

The various repulsive features of the Irish system can be illustrated much more fully than our limits will permit. But we will proceed to a certain extent, as it is in Ireland that the results of British tyranny have been most frightfully manifested.

The population of Ireland is chiefly agricultural, yet there are no agricultural labourers in the sense in which that term is employed in Great Britain. A peasant living entirely by hire, without land, is wholly unknown.

The persons who till the ground may be divided into three classes, which are sometimes distinguished by the names of small farmers, cottiers, and casual labourers; or, as the last are sometimes called, "con-acre" men.

The class of small farmers includes those who hold from five to twelve Irish acres. The cottiers are those who hold about two acres, in return for which they labour for the farmer of twenty acres or more, or for the gentry.

Con-acre is ground hired, not by the year, but for a single crop, usually of potatoes. The tenant of con-acre receives the land in time to plant potatoes, and surrenders it so soon as the crop has been secured. The farmer from whom he receives it usually ploughs and manures the land, and sometimes carts the crop. Con-acre is taken by tradesmen, small farmers, and cottiers, but chiefly by labourers, who are, in addition, always ready to work for hire when there is employment for them. It is usually let in roods, and other small quantities, rarely exceeding half an acre. These three classes, not very distinct from each other, form the mass of the Irish population.