Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

by Various

Far be it from us to impute improper motives to any man, much less to a person of Mr Sidney Herbert's private character; but we would calmly ask that gentleman, whether such admissions, coming from a minister of the crown, are not likely to have the most pernicious effects upon the Irish people? No man who understands the system pursued in Ireland, can doubt but that they will be applied to the worst of purposes; the agitators will tell their dupes that the reason government took no precautions to protect life by day was, "because the only persons then murdered were the gentry;" and it will be said, "let the poor alone, and you may shoot as many landlords as you please—the opportunity is afforded you." A hint on the subject will be found perfectly sufficient for such intelligent persons.

"See," cries Mr Sidney Herbert, "the few, the very few, landlords murdered—only five, and a few others!" If the honourable gentleman's memory was not very fallacious, he might have greatly enlarged the list; and if those persecuted men do survive, they certainly do not owe their preservation to any extraordinary sympathy in their behalf, or any exertions made to protect them, by the administration of which he is a member. The very system of self-defence which they are compelled to practise seems to be perfectly well known to the government, without appearing to produce the slightest uneasiness in their minds; and a measure which its advocates propose for the suppression of crime is defended, not because the gentry are insecure under the operation of the existing laws, "but because the peasantry, not being able to have recourse to the same means of defence, are more easy victims to their assailants;" as if the executive were only bound to protect the poor, and had no responsibility imposed upon them as regards the rich. It appears the old system, said to have so long prevailed in Ireland, is still to be persevered in—with this difference only, that now the law is to be exclusively for the benefit of the poor, while the rich are left to shift for themselves. "Turn about" is, no doubt, considered as "fair play."

When we couple the delicacy of the Home Secretary with the admissions of Mr Sidney Herbert; and, further, take into consideration the statement of the O'Connor Don, that on his return from the Roscommon Assizes, in July last, Sir Thomas Freemantle, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, told him he was right in opposing a petition got up by the Grand Jury of his county, praying government to cause the enactment of some coercive law, "as ministers had no intention of introducing any such measure;" yet, at that very moment, we find, according to Lord George Bentinck's statement, that the crimes committed in the five disturbed counties greatly exceeded the number perpetrated now—when they find it convenient to do so. In the quarter ending 1st of August 1845, when we are thus told the Chief Secretary declared to O'Connor Don that the ministers would not interfere with the career of the assassins, the number of outrages perpetrated was 1180—in the last three months, when they profess an anxiety to do so, it amounted only to 806.

Sir Robert Peel affects to be embarrassed as to which of the two measures—the Corn Bill or Coercion Act—he should most immediately pass. On the one hand he says, "He wishes to prevent crime, but, perhaps, he should first relieve destitution." Now, as far as the present laws affect the introduction of food into Ireland, they are virtually repealed already; for the Indian corn is being and has been introduced duty free long since. We therefore humbly submit, that as no persons are said to be starving in this country, the preservation of the lives of our Irish fellow-subjects should first engross his attention.

But as if the open admission on the part of the government, that after witnessing for years the operation of a system of assassination with indifference, because the victims were of the upper order, they are now induced to apply a remedy, because latterly the peasantry were subjected to the same sanguinary code, would not be sufficient to mar the success of any measure they might introduce for the suppression of crime in Ireland, they accompany their Coercion Act with scraps of comfort to the discontented. On the one hand they hold out the terrors of a penal law, while on the other the people are led to hope that some of their wildest expectations may speedily be realized. Crime, they are told, (at least so far as regards its commission on their own class,) must be repressed; but they are left to infer that spoliation is to follow.

There never was a period of our history at which the state of Ireland formed a more important topic for the consideration of the British people than at the present moment. The hard-won earnings of their industry are applied to relieve her immediate wants, and to reduce her local burdens; while a change in their commercial policy, pregnant with the most momentous consequences, is sought to be effected, avowedly based upon the necessity of rescuing her impoverished people from the horrors of pestilence and famine. That there is much of what we should call misery and wretchedness in Ireland, there can be no doubt. The question is not, whether such is the case or not? for the fact is admitted; but the problem to be solved is, from what cause does this state of things arise? Is it from the misconduct of the landlords, or of the people themselves?—from the severity or mal-administration of the laws?—or from the absolute and total disregard of all social restraint whatever? And it is important, beyond measure, to ascertain the truth, not only because, upon the supposition that the people are blameless, the rights of private property are threatened with invasion, and a precedent established for legislative interference with personal privileges, which may at no distant period, in those days of uncertainty and change, be extended to ourselves; but because the disease being mistaken, and a wrong remedy applied, the state of that unhappy country must become worse, instead of better—her social condition more complicated and inexplicable, and demoralization and discontent be still further increased. In those days poverty and wretchedness appear to be the best recommendations to sympathy and support; to be poor and of the people, is sufficient to imply the possession of every virtue; to be rich, and of the aristocracy, is, in the estimation of the majority, proof "strong as holy writ" of hardness of heart and depravity of disposition. And hence it is that all compassion is reserved for the Irish people, because they are said to be poor, without duly inquiring whether or not their own misconduct is the principal cause of the misfortunes they suffer; and universal reprehension is heaped upon the Irish landlords, because, the people being impoverished, they are supposed to have neglected their duties;—and no inquiry is made as to whether they are enabled, if inclined, to perform their parts; or whether all their schemes to improve the condition of the people entrusted to their care, are not thwarted and counteracted by designing and unprincipled men, acting, from self-interested motives, on the passions and the prejudices of an excitable and ignorant population. We respect and would assist the poor man struggling with the difficulties which Providence has imposed upon his condition; but that is no reason why we should extend our kindly feelings to the degraded ruffian who reels in rags from the gin-shop.

The Irish people have been so trained by the agitators in the art of deception, that it is almost impossible for those who have not an accurate and perfect knowledge of their objects, and their practices, to fathom their intentions, or to detect their impositions. They are always ready, always prepared, with arrangements to support their statements. Perhaps a better instance to exemplify their disregard of truth, and the lengths they will go to attain their objects, cannot be adduced, than one which we select from a letter of the "Times commissioner," who visited the property of Mr O'Connell. After describing the general wretchedness of the population, this gentleman proceeds—"A little apart from these was the house of T. Sullivan, jun., who, with his twelve children, a sick cow, and two pigs suffering under some grievous malady, occupied the same room. In answer to our enquiries as to his condition, he replied that the food of himself and family all the year round was potatoes and buttermilk. 'Were the potatoes good?' 'Troth they were not—bad as could be,' (and he proved the assertion by cutting open a number of them taken at random from a heap, and showing us the extent of the disease.) 'Had he plenty of potatoes?' 'Indeed he had not.' 'Of milk?' 'Never—nor half enough—never had enough for either dinner or breakfast.' All his children were as badly off as himself—not half enough of potatoes, and often nothing to drink with them, as he could only afford the milk of one stripper for his family.' He had no fish, 'and very little of any thing.' This was the substance of his story, translated to us by an interpreter, Mr Connell; and yet he was a large holder, though his bed was of straw—his cabin falling to pieces—and the mud outside percolating to the interior, where it was trodden into a filthy, adhesive, earthy glue, by the feet and hooves of the semi-naked children, pigs, fowl, and cattle." Now, can there be a more perfect picture of desolation and misery than this man's case presents? Could any rational person raise a doubt as to the truth of the sufferer's representations?—his potatoes were rotten, "and he proved it by taking them indiscriminately from a heap." Nothing could be more conclusive—"here there could be no deception"—and the graphic sketch which the talented gentleman drew of this wretched wight, would no doubt have formed the groundwork of many leading articles in the influential journal for which he reported, had he not been undeceived before he had time to forward his dispatch, and undeceived, too, by no less an authority than Mr Sullivan himself. At the conclusion of the very letter which contains this harrowing picture, we find the commissioner writing—"Whilst sitting at the hotel at Cahirceveen, Mr Trant, a magistrate of the county, entering the room, informed me that Thomas Sullivan of Aaghenming, whose house I visited on the preceding day, and whose testimony I have already given, was outside, and wished to make evidence on oath that he had quite misinformed me as to his condition; in other words, that he was desirous of swearing that he had been telling me lies. Sullivan was called in, and it appeared that he was quite ready to take an affidavit. I took from Mr Trant, who acted as interpreter, the following explanation of Sullivan's previous statements—'He imagined that I and your commissioner were coming from government to enquire into the state of the potato crop, and he therefore exaggerated the badness of its condition and his own poverty, as much as possible.' He now wished to say, 'That he was not nearly so badly off as he had stated; that he had plenty of potatoes and milk—that he had a bed-tick which was in the loft when we inspected his cottage.'"[3]

Now, had Professors Playfair and Lyndley entered this man's house instead of the agents of the Times, no doubt his case would have been before this on the table of the House of Commons. Nor could we be much surprised that all should be taken as truth, when we consider his admirable state of preparation. The diseased potatoes selected and placed ready to be appealed to, as if they were the bulk of the crop. The bed-tick stowed away, "and all clear for action." We are indebted for the discovery of the cheat solely to the fact, that his statements would, if uncontradicted, have damaged Mr O'Connell. "Neither, unfortunately, can this be considered an isolated case; the bulk of the population are actuated by the same motives; and are, we lament to say, not only willing to deceive, but ready, no doubt, if need were, to substantiate their assertions by their oaths."

Hence arises the difficulty of ascertaining the true state of things in Ireland—hence the signal failures of the different commissions which have from time to time been appointed by the government of the day, when the truthfulness of their reports came to be tested by the working of the legislative measures founded upon them—"hence it comes, that out of 2,800,000 Irish persons reported to be in a state of utter destitution by the Poor-law Commissioners, not more than 68,000 could in any one year, since the establishment of the Poor-law, be induced to accept the relief which Parliament provided for them;" and for this reason it is, that the condition of the most idle and indolent people in Europe is compassionated, as if it resulted from the misconduct of others rather than their own; and that "the patient endurance" of the most turbulent and bloodstained peasantry on earth is pronounced, in Lord Devon's report, "as deserving of the highest commendation, and as entitling them to the best attention of the government."

It also most unfortunately happens, that in Ireland you can always find men—ay, and sometimes men in respectable stations in life too—who not only take the most opposite views of the same subjects, but who give a totally different explanation of the same facts—even when bound by the solemn obligations of an oath. Let any man look into Lord Devon's blue-book, and he will find ample evidence in support of our assertion; unhappily, the dicta of those least worthy of credit are generally adopted, because they pander to the popular feeling; and the country is called upon to decide a disputed point, and Parliament to legislate, on evidence[4] to which no private individual would pay the slightest attention, merely because it has been adopted and sanctioned by the report of a government commission.