No one better knew the state of Ireland than the chairman of this committee, the substance of whose Report is here given. We may therefore rely upon the correctness of the statement, that there was then, twenty years after the Union, a redundant, an increasing, and unemployed population in Ireland, subsisting on food obtained with peculiar facility, (the potato) and consequently “leading to the boundless multiplication of human beings satisfied with the lowest condition of existence.” Yet the land was fertile, the sea-coasts abounded in fish, and the bogs and mountain districts solicited improvement. It will probably be said that there must be something wrong in the character, habits, or social position of a people, where such circumstances existed. The Report points to want of capital, and the non-residence of proprietors, as being the cause or causes of what was wrong; and no doubt both circumstances may have been influential in the matter. But capital we are told is the accumulation of savings, which are the fruits of industry, which again is nourished and supported by its own progeny; so that a want of industry may have lain at the root of the evil as regards the mass of the population, whilst the proprietors through absence, or want of sympathy with the other classes, probably failed in their duty of originating and urging forward improvement. With the proprietor class indeed, as with the others, the capital arising from savings and applicable to objects of improvement, was of slender amount; and the committee appear to rely more upon “the generous consideration of parliament,” than upon native energy or resource, for supplying the deficiencies and remedying the evils of which they complain.
1823.
Report on the condition of the labouring poor.
In 1823 another select committee[[37]] was appointed “to inquire into the condition of the labouring poor in Ireland, with a view to facilitate the application of the funds of private individuals and associations for their employment in useful and productive labour.” The committee made their Report on the 16th of July, and after adverting to the course pursued in the former inquiry of 1819, they state that during the last year “a pressure of distress wholly unexampled was felt in Ireland, which directed the attention of government, of parliament, and of the British public, to the condition of the Irish peasantry, and led to the appropriation of large sums voted by the legislature, and subscriptions by individuals for the purpose of mitigating if not of averting, that famine and disease which had extended to so alarming a degree in many districts in Ireland.”[[38]]
It appears that early in May of the preceding year, a public meeting was held in the city of London to raise subscriptions for the relief of the distress in Ireland, and a committee of gentlemen was appointed to superintend the distribution of the money subscribed. Considerable grants of public money were also made by parliament for the same purpose. The committee state that the distressed districts comprised one-half of the surface of Ireland, and there were grounds for believing that considerably more than one-half of the entire population of these districts depended upon charitable assistance for support. The sums distributed through the city of London committee amounted to nearly 300,000l., which with the amount advanced by government furnished means for continuing the relief until the month of August, when the necessity for its further continuance seems to have ceased; and it is satisfactory, the committee observe, to find that the most lively feelings of gratitude have been excited by this benevolent interposition, “which it is to be hoped will tend to unite the two parts of the empire in the strong ties of sympathy and obligation.”
In the districts where the distress chiefly prevailed, the potato constituted the principal food of the peasantry, and the potato crop had failed; but there was no deficiency in the other crops, and the prices of corn and oatmeal were moderate. Indeed the exports of grain from ports within the distressed districts, was considerable during the entire period of the distress: so that those districts, the committee observe, “presented the remarkable example of possessing a surplus of food, whilst the inhabitants were suffering from actual want.” The calamity of 1822 may therefore be said to have proceeded less from want of food in the country, than from the people’s want of the means to purchase it, “or in other words, from their want of profitable employment.” In some districts where the potato failed, but where the population were engaged in the linen-trade, no individual so employed is said to have had occasion for relief; and the committee come to the conclusion that the late distress had chiefly arisen from the circumstance that the peasantry depended for subsistence upon the food raised by themselves. When the potato fails, they have not the means to purchase other food, and the potato is not only uncertain as a crop but it soon decays, so that the surplus of one year cannot be preserved to supply the deficiency in another.
The agents of government, and of the London contributors, as well as the local associations which had been formed, made a point on all occasions as far as possible, of affording the necessary assistance in return for labour; and the committee express their entire approbation of this principle. “Relief purely gratuitous (they observe) can seldom in any case be given without considerable risk and inconvenience; but in Ireland, where it is more peculiarly important to discourage habits of pauperism and indolence, and where it is the obvious policy to excite an independent spirit of industry, and to induce the peasantry to rely upon themselves and their own exertions for support, gratuitous relief can never be given without leading to most mischievous consequences.” Any system of relief, it is remarked, which leads the peasantry to depend upon the interposition of others, rather than upon their own labour, however benevolently it may be intended, cannot fail to repress the spirit of independent exertion which is essentially necessary to the improvement of the condition of the labouring classes.
The condition of the people in the districts to which the evidence obtained by the committee chiefly applied, appears “to be wretched and calamitous to the greatest degree.” A large portion of the peasantry in those districts, are described as living in a state of the utmost misery. Their cabins scarcely contain an article that can be called furniture. In some families there are no such things as bedclothes, the place of which is supplied by a little fern, and a quantity of straw thrown over it, upon which they sleep in their working clothes. The witnesses agreed in this description with regard to a large portion of the peasantry, and they agreed also in attributing the existence of this state of things to the want of employment. Yet the people are represented as being willing to labour, and we are told that they quit their homes at particular seasons in search of employment elsewhere, whilst the inhabitants of the coasts bordering on the Atlantic, carry on their backs the sand and seaweed many miles inland for the purpose of manure.
The committee are of opinion that the rapid increase of the population[[39]] is one immediate cause of the want of employment. The demand for labour, they say, has not kept pace with the continually increasing number of persons seeking employment. Another cause of the want of employment, they consider, arises from the effect produced on the gentry of the country by the fall of prices. The fixed payments to which many of the landlords are subjected, whether in the shape of head-rents or interest on incumbrances, bear a greater proportion to the whole income than they did during the war, and consequently the balance remaining in the hands of the resident gentry is diminished, a reduced employment follows, labourers are discharged, and the distress of the higher class is thus visited upon the lower.
The want of capital was however in most instances assigned as the principal cause of the want of employment. This want was manifested in the wretched description of implements commonly in use. The ploughs, carts, harrows, were of the very rudest kind, and there appeared to be a deficiency even of these. The same want of capital has, it is said, led to the payment of wages, not in money, but by allowances in account, or as a set-off against the landlord’s claims for rent, or presentments, or some other object, which is not only a hardship to the labourer, but tends to an increase of local burdens; and as it was “generally admitted that if the wages of labour were paid in money, the labour would be more cheaply purchased and more cheerfully and efficiently given,” the committee express a hope “that a system of ready money payment may be introduced, so far at least as the public works of the country are concerned.”
The encouragement of the fisheries, the erection of piers, the formation of harbours, and the opening of mountain roads, are all recommended, as is also the instruction of the peasantry in agriculture, by combining instruction in this branch, with the other instruction imparted in the various educational establishments throughout the country. In conclusion, the committee admit that danger attends all interferences with industrial pursuits, which prosper best when left to their own natural development; but they consider that the state of Ireland constitutes it an exception to the general rule, and that the aid of government in support of local effort is there absolutely necessary.