A history of the Irish poor law, in connexion with the condition of the people

by Sir George Nicholls

The first, gives the general result of inquiries into the condition habits and feelings of the people, especially with regard to the introduction of a law for the relief of the poor.

In the second part, the question whether the workhouse system can with safety and advantage be established in Ireland is considered, and also whether the means for creating an efficient union machinery exists there.

Assuming these questions to be answered affirmatively, the chief points requiring attention in framing a poor-law for Ireland, are in the last part considered.

It is now proposed to insert, under the above divisions, so much of the Report as will be sufficient for showing its general import, and the nature of its recommendations; but omitting such portions as are not necessary for this purpose—

First Report.—Nov. 15, 1836.

Part the First.—“The investigations and inquiries in which I have been engaged, have led to a conviction that Ireland has, on the whole, during the last thirty or forty years, been progressively improving. It is impossible to pass through the country without being struck with the evidence of increasing wealth almost everywhere apparent, although it is of course more visible in towns than in the open country. Great as the improvement in England has been within the same period, that in Ireland, I believe, has been equal. There are towns and districts there, as there are towns and districts in England, in which little improvement is seen, or which may even have retrograded; but the general advance is certain, and the improvement in the condition and increase in the capital of the country, are still, I think, steadily progressive. If it be asked how this accords with the misery and destitution apparent among a large portion of the people, the answer is obvious—The capital of the country has increased, but the increase of the population has been still greater; and it therefore does not follow that there is an increase of capital or comfort in the possession of each individual, or even of the majority. The reverse is unhappily the fact—Towns, exhibiting every sign of increased wealth, are encircled by suburbs composed of miserable hovels, sheltering a wretched population of mendicants. In the country, evidence of the extreme subdivision of land everywhere appears, and as a consequence, the soil, fertile as it naturally is, becomes exhausted by continual cropping; for the cottier tenant, too often reduced to a level little above that of the mendicant, is unable to provide manure for his land, and has no other mode of restoring its vigour but by subjecting it to a long and profitless fallow. Farmers of three hundred acres, or even of two or one hundred, except in the grazing districts, have become almost extinct in Ireland. A variety of circumstances seem to have contributed to bring about this change. In some instances the proprietor has himself subdivided his land into small holdings of five, ten, or fifteen acres, with a view of increasing his rent-roll, or adding to his political influence. In other cases the land has been let on lease to a single tenant on lives, or for a term of years, or both conjointly; and he has sublet to others, who have again gone on dividing and subletting, until the original proprietor is almost lost sight of, and the original holding is parcelled out among a host of small occupiers.

“The occupation of a plot of land has now gotten to be considered, by a great portion of the Irish people, as conferring an almost interminable right of possession. This seems to have arisen in great measure out of the circumstances in which they have been placed; for there being no legal provision for the destitute, and the subdivision of the land into small holdings having destroyed the regular demand for labour, the only protection against actual want, the only means by which a man could procure food for his family, was by getting and retaining possession of a portion of land; for this he has struggled—for this the peasantry have combined and burst through the restraints of law and humanity. So long as this portion of land was kept together, it was possibly sufficient to supply his family with a tolerable degree of comfort; but after a time he would have sons to provide for, and daughters to portion off, and this must all be effected out of the land—until the holding of ten or fifteen acres became divided into holdings of two, three, or five acres. After a time, too, the same process of subdivision is again resorted to, until the minimum of subsistence is reached; and this is now the condition of a large portion of the Irish peasantry. Land is to them the great necessary of life. There is no hiring of servants. A man cannot obtain his living as a day-labourer. He must get possession of a plot of land to raise potatoes, or starve. It need scarcely be said that a man will not starve, so long as the means of sustaining life can be obtained by force or fraud; and hence the scenes of violence and murder which have so frequently occurred in Ireland.

“One of the circumstances that first arrests attention on visiting Ireland, is the prevalence of mendicancy. It is not perhaps the actual amount of misery existing amongst the mendicant class, great as that may be, which is most to be deprecated; but the falsehood and fraud which form a part of their profession, and spread by their example. Mendicancy appeals to our sympathies on behalf of vice, as well as want; and encouragement is often afforded to the one, by the relief intended for the other. To assume the semblance of misery is the business of the mendicant, and his success depends upon the skill with which he exercises deception. A mass of filth, nakedness, and squalor, is thus kept moving about the country, entering every house, addressing itself to every eye, and soliciting from every hand; and much of the filth and indolence observable in the cabins, clothing, and general conduct of the peasantry, may I think be traced to this source, and I doubt even if those above the class of labourers altogether escape the taint. Mendicancy and filth have become too common to be disgraceful.

“The Irish peasantry have generally an appearance of apathy and depression. This is seen in their mode of living, in their habitations, in their dress, in the dress of their children, and in their general economy and conduct. They seem to have no pride, no emulation; to be heedless of the present, and careless of the future. They do not strive to improve their appearance, or add to their comforts. Their cabins are slovenly, smoky, dirty, almost without furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. On entering a cottage, the woman and children are seen seated on the floor surrounded by pigs and poultry, the man is lounging at the door, which can only be approached through mud and filth. Yet he is too indolent to make a dry approach to his dwelling, although there are materials close at hand, and his wife is too slatternly to cleanse the place in which they live, or sweep the dirt and offal from the floor. If you point out these defects, and endeavour to show how easily they might improve their condition and increase their comforts, you are invariably met by excuses as to their poverty. Are a woman, and her children, and her cabin filthy, whilst a stream of water runs past the door—the answer invariably is, ‘Sure, how can we help it? we are so poor!’ With the man it is the same; you find him idly basking in the sun, or seated by the fire, whilst his cabin is scarcely approachable through the accumulation of mud—and he too will exclaim, ‘Sure, how can we help it? we are so poor!’ whilst at the very time he is smoking tobacco, and has probably not denied himself the enjoyment of whisky. Now poverty is not the cause, or at least not the sole cause, of this condition of the Irish peasantry. If they desired to live better, or to appear better, they might do so; but they seem to have no such ambition, and hence the depressed tone of which I have spoken. This may be partly owing to the remains of old habits; for bad as the circumstances of the peasantry now are, they were yet, I am persuaded, worse fifty or thirty years ago. A part also may be attributed to the want of education, and of a feeling of self-respect; and a part likewise to their poverty—to which last cause alone, everything that is wrong in Ireland is invariably attributed.

“The desultory habits of the peasantry are likewise remarkable. However urgent the demands for exertion—if, as in the present season, their crops are rotting in the fields from excessive wet, and every moment of sunshine should be taken advantage of—still, if there be a market to attend, a fair, or a funeral, a horse-race, a fight, or a wedding, all else is neglected or forgotten; they hurry off in search of the excitements which abound on such occasions, and with a recklessness hardly to be credited, at the moment that they are complaining of poverty, they take the most certain steps to increase it. Their fondness for ardent spirits is probably one cause of this, and another will be found in their position as occupiers of land. The work required upon their small holdings is easily performed, and may, as they say, ‘be done any day.’ Working for wages is rare and uncertain; and hence arises a disregard of the value of time, a desultory sauntering habit, without industry or steadiness of application. Such is too generally the character, and such the habits, of the Irish peasantry; and it may not be uninstructive to mark the resemblance which these bear to the character and habits of the English peasantry in the pauperised districts, under the abuses of the old Poor Law. Mendicancy and indiscriminate almsgiving have produced in Ireland, results similar to what indiscriminate relief produced in England—the like reckless disregard of the future, the like idle and disorderly conduct, and the same proneness to outrage having then characterised the English pauper labourer, which are now too generally the characteristics of the Irish peasant. An abuse of a good law caused the evil in the one case, and a removal of that abuse is now rapidly effecting a remedy. In the other case, the evil appears to have arisen rather from the want, than the abuse of a law; but the corrective for both will, I believe, be found to be essentially the same.