Thus circumstanced, the commissioners observe, “it is impossible for the able-bodied, in general, to provide against sickness or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the destitution of their widows and children in the contingent event of their own premature decease.” A great portion of them are, it is said, insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. “Their habitations are wretched hovels, several of a family sleep together upon straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes even without so much to cover them; their food commonly consists of dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so scantily supplied, as to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day. There are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek sustenance in wild herbs. They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide.[[63]] Some go in search of employment to Great Britain during the harvest, others wander through Ireland with the same view. The wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg, but they do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from home that they may not be known. Mendicity too is the sole resource of the aged and impotent of the poorer classes in general, when children or relatives are unable to support them. To it therefore crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture and general crime.”
Such is described as being the condition of the great body of the labouring classes in Ireland, and “with these facts before us (the commissioners say) we cannot hesitate to state, that we consider remedial measures requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor—What those measures should be is a question complicated, and involving considerations of the deepest importance to the whole body of the people, both in Ireland and Great Britain. Society is so constructed, its various parts are so connected, the interests of all who compose it are so interwoven, the rich are so dependent on the labour of the poor, and the poor upon the wealth of the rich, that any attempt to legislate partially, or with a view to the good of a portion only, without a due regard to the whole of the community, must prove in the end fallacious, fatal to its object, and injurious in general to a ruinous degree.”
None will deny the truth of these propositions, which doubtless ought to be kept in view in legislating for the relief of the poor, or for any other matter of general interest or importance. Their enunciation does not however materially assist in discovering a remedy for the fearful amount of destitution and suffering shown to prevail in Ireland, the descriptions of which as given in the Report, are here brought together in one point of view, in order that the reader may have the extent of the evil laid open before him.
It has, the commissioners say, “been suggested to us to recommend a Poor Law for Ireland similar to that of England, but we are of opinion that the provision to be made for the poor in Ireland must vary essentially from that made in England.” The English law, it is said, requires that work and support should be found for all able-bodied persons who may be out of employment, and such work and support will now be provided for them only in a workhouse; so that if workhouses were to be established in Ireland as a means of relief, they must be sufficiently capacious for setting vast numbers of unemployed persons to work within them. The commissioners state that they “cannot estimate the number of persons in Ireland out of work and in distress during thirty weeks of the year, at less than 585,000, nor the number of persons dependent upon them at less than 1,800,000, making in the whole 2,385,000—This therefore (it is added) is about the number for which it would be necessary to provide accommodation in workhouses, if all who require relief were there to be relieved;” and they consider it impossible to provide for such a multitude, or even to attempt it with safety. The expense of erecting and fitting up the necessary buildings would, they say, “come to about 4,000,000l., and allowing for the maintenance of each person 2½d. only a day (that being the expense at the mendicity establishment of Dublin) the cost of supporting the whole 2,385,000 for thirty weeks would be something more than 5,000,000l. a year; whereas the gross rental of Ireland (exclusive of towns) is estimated at less than 10,000,000l. a year, the net income of the landlords at less than 6,000,000l., and the public revenue is only about 4,000,000l.”
The commissioners do not however think that such an expense would actually be incurred. On the contrary they are convinced that the able-bodied and their families would endure any misery rather than make a workhouse their domicile; and they add—“now if we thought that employment could be had provided due efforts were made to procure it, the general repugnance to a workhouse would be a reason for recommending that mode of relief, for assistance could be afforded through it to the few that might from time to time fall into distress, and yet no temptation be afforded to idleness and improvidence; but we see that the labouring class are eager for work, that work there is not for them, and that they are therefore, and not from any fault of their own, in permanent want.” This, it is said, is just the state to which, on the authority of a passage quoted from the English Poor Law Commissioners,[[64]] the workhouse system is held not to be applicable; and if it were established in Ireland, would, the commissioners are persuaded, “be regarded by the bulk of the population as a stratagem for debarring them of that right to employment and support with which the law professed to invest them.” It is unnecessary, the commissioners add, to point out the feelings which must thus be created, or the consequences to which they might lead; and they conclude this section of their Report by saying—“We cannot therefore recommend the present workhouse system of England as at all suited to Ireland.”
Having thus rejected the workhouse, the commissioners next consider how far the objections applicable to a provision for enforcing in-door work, would be applicable to one for enforcing out-door employment; and they come to the conclusion, that having regard to the number of persons for whom work must be found, and the experience of the consequences to which out-door compulsory employment led in England, any attempt to introduce it into Ireland would be attended with most pernicious results. “If (it is said) the farmers were compelled to take more men than they chose or thought they wanted, they would of course reduce the wages of all to a minimum. If, on the other hand, magistrates or other local authorities were empowered to frame a scale of wages or allowances, so as to secure to each labourer a certain sum by the week, we do not think they could, with safety to their persons and property, fix a less sum than would be equal to the highest rate of wages pre-existing in the district for which they were required to act; nor would anything less enable the labourer to support himself and his family upon such food, with such clothing, and in such a dwelling, as any person undertaking to provide permanently for human beings in a civilized country could say they ought to be satisfied with. It would therefore (the commissioners think) be necessary to fix different scales of wages or allowances, which would average for the whole of Ireland about 4s. 6d. a week. This would be to double the present earnings of the body of labourers, and these appear to amount to about 6,800,000l. a year. The additional charge would therefore come to about that sum.”
The tenantry, the commissioners say, cannot be expected to bear this burden. They have not capital for it, and the charge must therefore fall upon the landlords. Rents would diminish, commerce would decay, and the demand for agricultural produce and all commodities save potatoes and coarse clothing would contract, while the number of persons out of employment and in need of support would increase, and general ruin ensue. The well-known case of “Cholesbury” is then cited, and held up as an example of what would follow in Ireland, “at the end of a year from the commencement of any system for charging the land indefinitely with the support of the whole labouring part of the community.”
“With such feelings,” the commissioners observe, “and considering the redundancy of labour which now exists in Ireland, how earnings are kept down by it, what misery is thus produced, and what insecurity of liberty property and life ensues, we are satisfied that enactments calculated to promote the improvement of the country, and so to extend the demand for free and profitable labour, should make essential parts of any law for ameliorating the condition of the poor. And for the same reasons, while we feel that relief should be provided for the impotent, we consider it due to the whole community, and to the labouring class in particular, that such of the able-bodied as may still be unable to find free and profitable employment in Ireland, should be secured support only through emigration, or as preliminary to it—those who desire to emigrate should be furnished with the means of doing so in safety, and with intermediate support when they stand in need of it at emigrant depôts. It is thus, and thus only, that the market of labour in Ireland can be relieved from the weight that is now upon it, or the labourer be raised from his present prostrate state.” Long quotations are then given from the several Reports of the assistant-commissioners, showing that, “the feelings of the suffering labourers in Ireland are also decidedly in favour of emigration.” They do not desire workhouses, it is said, but they do desire a free passage to a colony where they may have the means of living by their own industry.
The commissioners conclude this section of their Report by saying, that they do not look to emigration as an object to be permanently pursued upon an extensive scale, nor as the chief means of relief for the evils of Ireland, but “as an auxiliary essential to a commencing course of amelioration.” They then “proceed to submit a series of provisions for the improvement of Ireland, and the relief of the poor therein, including in the latter means of emigration.”
The recommendations extend from section 5 to 15 inclusive, and are all more or less connected with agriculture, which is said to be the only pursuit for which the body of the people of Ireland are qualified by habit, and that it is chiefly through it that any general improvement in their condition can be effected. It is recommended—