The woful state of the railway interests throughout the country, and the steady and alarming decrease of the mileage profits, on an average of all the lines, is another internal symptom of the dreadful effects of the new system which, within the last three years, has been introduced. Railway property, within the last three years, has almost everywhere declined to a half, in many great lines to a third of its former value. In one of the greatest lines in the kingdom, the £50 shares, all paid up, are now selling at £14, and were even lately down as low as £10. The following is taken from the Times of October 21:—
"The subjoined table exhibits the number of miles opened at Michaelmas in seven consecutive years, and the average traffic per mile during the first nine months in each year:—
Years. Miles opened. Traffic per mile. 1843 1,586 £2,330 1844 1,770 2,500 1845 2,033 2,640 1846 2,498 2,560 1847 3,375 2,200 1848 4,178 1,965 1849 4,980 1,780 The decline in the last column, from 1845 to the present year, is sufficiently alarming, and looks like a sinking to zero."
| Years. | Miles opened. | Traffic per mile. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1843 | 1,586 | £2,330 | |
| 1844 | 1,770 | 2,500 | |
| 1845 | 2,033 | 2,640 | |
| 1846 | 2,498 | 2,560 | |
| 1847 | 3,375 | 2,200 | |
| 1848 | 4,178 | 1,965 | |
| 1849 | 4,980 | 1,780 | |
To what is this lamentable sinking of property, in so important a branch of public investment, to be ascribed? We are aware that much of it is owing to unproductive branch lines; but what is the main cause of these branch lines having, contrary to general expectation, proved so unproductive? It is in vain to ascribe it to the cholera: that only temporarily affected parts of the kingdom; and, at any rate, it is now over, and government have very properly appointed a public thanksgiving for its termination. It is equally in vain to ascribe it to the monetary crisis of 1847; that is long since past: capital is overflowing, and interest in London is again down to 3 and 2-1/2 per cent. It is evidently owing to one cause, worse than plague, pestilence, and famine put together—viz. the wasting away of the internal resources of the country, under the combined operation of free trade and a restricted currency: free trade deluging us with foreign goods in every department of industry, and a restricted currency paralysing every attempt at competition in our own. We are very complacent: we not only present our shoulders bare to the blows of the enemy, but we tie up our own hands, lest, under the smart of the injury, we should be tempted to return them.
But by far the most deplorable effect of free trade and a fettered currency is to be seen in Ireland, where, for the last three years, misery unexampled and unutterable has existed. We shall mention only three facts of a general nature, descriptive of the state of that unhappy country since the simoom of the new principles blew over it, and leave our readers to judge of the state of things to which they point.
In the first place it appears, from a parliamentary return, that the holders of farms who, in 1845, were 310,000 over the Emerald Isle, had sunk in 1848 to 108,000. Two hundred and two thousand cultivators of land have disappeared in three years, and with them at least half of the capital by means of which the land was made to produce anything.
In the second place, as we noticed in our last Number, the bank returns corroborate, in the most fearful manner, this alarming decrease in the agricultural capital and industry of the country. Ireland, it is well known, is almost entirely an agricultural country. Now, from the returns of the bank-notes in circulation in Ireland, as made to government in terms of the act of 1845, it appears that, while in August 1846, there were £7,500,000, they had sunk, in August 1849, to £3,833,000! Othello's occupation is gone! The bank-notes can find no employment: the bankers no customers. Free trade and the bank restrictions have in three years reduced the circulation which the country could take off to half of its former amount.
In the third place, if we cast our eyes across the Atlantic, we shall see where the cultivators and agricultural capital of Ireland have gone. During the years 1847 and 1848, out of the 250,000 emigrants who annually left the British Isles, about 180,000 were from Ireland. But this year 1849, when the duties on grain became nominal in February, outdid all its predecessors in the magnitude of the stream of human beings which it caused the Emerald Isle to send across the Atlantic. It has been already mentioned that, up to October 10, 1849, 189,800 Irish emigrants had landed at New York, besides 10,000 at Boston. If to these we add the probable number to Canada, perhaps 30,000, we shall have at least 230,000 Irish who have emigrated in one year to America—and that a year of general peace, a fine harvest, reopened Continental markets, and revived manufacturing industry in the empire. And the Irish county members formed a large part of Sir R. Peel's majority which carried free trade in 1846. Truly they have smote their constituents hip and thigh.
After these facts, and the woful one, that about 2,000,000 paupers are kept alive in Ireland by a poor-rate of £1,900,000 a-year, which is crushing the little that remains of industry and cultivation in the country, it is superfluous to go into details. But the following extracts from that powerful free-trade journal, The Times, are so graphic and characteristic of the effect of its own favourite measures, that we cannot forego the satisfaction of presenting them:—
"The landed gentry and farmholders in this county, [Limerick,] impelled by a national calamity, now at a crisis without example in Ireland, have in contemplation a meeting to represent to his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant the utterly prostrate condition of all agricultural property, and the universal failure of every expedient in the best rural economy to sustain the Irish farmer—destitute of capital, bereft of legitimate protection, and overwhelmed by poor-rates and taxes—against the free-trade imports of the whole world. The ministerial policy of Great Britain, under sanction of a law which thousands of her loyal subjects deprecated, invites the foreign trader from all ports known to the compass to import at a nominal duty, and then suffers him to export in specie only, for his own country! What other ballast have the fleets of foreign vessels conveyed from our shore for the last three years but metallic and bank currency? With such immeasurably unequal competition at his very door, the native grower finds no market for the produce of his honest industry, unless at a price wholly incompatible with the position of a solvent man. He sells, alas! only to lose, and the selfish foreigner is sure of profit on every cheap venture; while his speculation renders no equivalent whatever to the revenue or taxation of that state which encourages his importations at the expense of our own independence; for the permanent independence of those kingdoms implies the prosperity of Irish produce, and its preference in the English market. Ireland, unfortunately, has no trade or manufacture to employ her people, and wherefore is best known to England; but her only staple, agriculture, which all nations, ancient and modern, loved to cultivate, will soon be little more than a name. The causes and effects of this disastrous revolution the philosopher and historian will hereafter do justice to. A preparatory meeting, relative to the above, is now being held, with closed doors, in the county court, Lord Monteagle in the chair. Poor-rate was the monster grievance of discussion. The meeting broke up at 3 o'clock, it having been decided to collect facts from every district of the country in connexion with taxation and valuation of property."—Limerick Chronicle, of Saturday, Oct. 26.
"The Land Question.—A letter from Kilrush, dated the 27th inst., and published in the Clare Journal, says:—'So eager are the country farmers to make sale of their grain, that every day is a market. Two causes seem to influence them; first, their present and urgent necessities press upon them, and, secondly, an opinion prevails, which appears not to be confined to the west, that it is more secure to have the money in their pockets than to leave the crop to become a prey to agent or poor-rate collector; and also that, in the event of no reduction being made in the annual rent, they may have no difficulty in walking off. Such are the feelings operating on the minds of the majority of the farmers in this locality. It is now too plain and obvious, that should a reduction in the rents take place here, it will come two years too late, as the greater number of the farmers (formerly comfortable) have not as much as would support their families for half the coming year. This is a sad but true state of things, in a district where, some few years since, the rents were paid, perhaps, more regularly than in any other part of the south of Ireland. A few have left their holdings, after selling every article, leaving the naked walls of a house to the landlord, and gone to a neighbouring townland, where the quality and cheapness of the land presented a greater encouragement; but such cases of flying tenants have become so common of late, that every paper teems with similar statements. If we are to have the land cultivated here, the rents must not only be reduced to half the former price, but the tenant must be assisted to set the crop, and encouraged to introduce a proper method of cultivation, otherwise the land will be left idle, and the majority of the present occupiers will become inmates of the workhouse.'"—Times, Oct. 31, 1849.
"There must also be taken into account the dire domestic privations endured for the last three years of famine, the general flight of tenants with the landlords' rent, the desertion of the land, impoverished to the last degree by the runaways, yet for whose dishonesty and abuse of solemn contract the unfortunate proprietor is held responsible—the abandoned farms being still subject to accumulation of poor-rate and taxes. Then come the distraint, the impounding, the sale and sacrifice of property; while the home market, swamped by free trade with foreigners, has left landlord and farmer no help or resource whatever to bear up against the intolerable oppression of financial burdens, sanctioned by law, under the free constitution of Great Britain! One case of grievous suffering by a respectable family in this county was communicated to the preparatory meeting on Saturday last, by one of the gentlemen present. The possessor of a rent-roll of £1500 a-year landed estate, which netted £1200 annually four years ago, was absolutely compelled to subsist with his wife and seven children for three months of the past twelve, without the ordinary comfort of a meat dinner; a cup of weak tea or coffee, and the vegetables of the kitchen-garden, commonly furnishing the table of this most wretched household! Incredible and appalling as this may appear, we have been assured it is not a solitary instance of the excessive want and privation known to exist."—Times, Nov. 4, 1849.