CHAPTER IV.
MEETING OF PARLIAMENT--Queen's Speech--The Premier's speech on the Address--Goes into the whole question of Free Trade--The Protectionists--Lord Brougham's views (note)--The twelve night's debate on the Corn Laws--No connection between it and the Famine--Stafford O'Brien's speech--Sir James Graham's reply--Smith O'Brien's speech--His imprisonment (note B Appendix)--O'Connell's motion--His speech--Sir Robert Peel replies--Substantially agrees with O'Connell--Bill for the protection of life in Ireland--Its first reading opposed by the Irish members--O'Connell leads the Opposition in a speech of two hours--Mr. D'Israeli mistaken in calling it his last speech--His account of it--He misrepresents it--The opinions expressed in it were those O'Connell always held. Break up of the Tory party--Lord George Bentinck becomes leader of the Protectionists--Their difficulty in opposing the Coercion Bill--Ingenious plan of Lord George--Strange combination against the Government--Close of Debate on Coercion Bill--Government defeated by a majority of 73--Measures to meet the Famine--Delay--Accounts from various parts of the country--Great distress--"Are the landlords making any efforts?"--Notice for rent--The bailiff's reply--Number of workhouses open--Number of persons in them--Sir Robert Peel's speech on his resignation--Accident to him--His death--The Peels--Sir Robert's qualities and character--His manner of dealing with the Famine--His real object the repeal of the Corn Laws.
Sir Robert Peel, thus reinstated as Prime Minister of England for the third time, met Parliament on the 22nd of January with a Queen's speech, in which her Majesty's first allusion to Ireland was one of deep regret at the deliberate assassinations so frequent in that country. The speech then goes on to deplore the failure of the potato in the United Kingdom—the failure being greatest in Ireland—assuring Parliament that "all precautions that could be adopted were adopted for the purpose of alleviating the calamity." An eulogium is next passed on previous legislation in the direction of Free Trade, and upon the benefits conferred by it, with a recommendation that Parliament should take into early consideration the principles which guided that legislation, with a view of having them more extensively applied.
And her Majesty is finally made to say, that she thinks further reductions in the existing duties "upon many articles, the produce of other countries, will tend to ensure the continuance of these great benefits." The wily Premier did not allow the word "Corn" or "Corn Laws" to have a place in the speech of his Royal Mistress.
Anxious to explain, at the very earliest moment, the causes which led to the dissolution of his Ministry and their return to office, he spoke upon the Address, and went into the whole question. He put the potato blight in the foreground; for, with the instinct of the caddice worm, he felt that this was the piece of bulrush by which he could best float his Free Trade policy, his Government and himself. And, indeed, from the first night of the session until the resolutions on the Corn Laws were carried, the members of the Government showed the greatest anxiety to keep the terrible consequences of the potato failure before Parliament. They did not exaggerate the failure, nor its then probable effects; they gave to both that importance which they really demanded, but which, only the admission helped the repeal of the Corn Laws, they would hardly be so ready to concede. The Protectionists, on the contrary, took up the cry of "exaggeration," against the most undoubted evidence, supplied from every part of the country, by persons in every rank of life, and of every shade of political opinion. "We have," said one of them,[88] "famine in the newspapers, we have famine in the speeches of Cabinet Ministers, but we find abundance in the markets; the cry of famine is a pretext, but it is not the reason for the changes." There is some truth in the latter part of this sentence—famine was not all a pretext, but it was certainly used by ministers as a cry to strengthen their Corn Law policy. "It was," said Sir Robert Peel, "that great and mysterious calamity, the potato failure, that was the immediate and proximate cause which led to the dissolution of the Government on the 6th of December, 1845." Two most important points, he said, they had now before them; (1) the measures to be immediately adopted in consequence of the potato blight; (2) and the ultimate course to be pursued in relation to the importation of grain. His opinions, he goes on to say, on the subject of Protection had undergone a change, and chiefly because the prophecies of the protectionists, when the tariff was altered in '42, were falsified by experience. Now, if the Free Traders had a watchword which they used more frequently than any other, it was the cry of "cheap bread;" and yet in the face of this, the Premier said:—"I want, at the same time, to show that concurrently with the increase of importation, there has been an increase in the prices of the articles." He then quotes several of the Government contracts to prove this assertion, which was quite correct.[89] Once again, he puts prominently forward the advice he gave his Government in the beginning of November, 1845, which was, either to open the ports by an Order in Council, or to call Parliament together as soon as possible, to meet the "great and pressing danger of the potato failure;" but what he does not put forward is, that he grounded both these proposals on the condition that the Corn Laws should be repealed. To be sure he stated this condition mildly, when he told his colleagues that once the ports were opened, he would not undertake to close them—yet what was this but saying to a protectionist Cabinet,—there is great danger of a famine in Ireland—we ought to open the ports or assemble Parliament, but I will not agree to one or the other unless you all become Free-traders; thus making the feeding or the starving of the Irish people depend on the condition, that the members of his Government were to change their views, and preach Free Trade from those benches, to which they had been triumphantly carried on the shoulders of Protection. In truth, Sir Robert, more than most politicians, was in the habit of suppressing those portions of a question which he found inconvenient; limiting his statement to such parts of it, as suited his present purpose. In his communications with his colleagues, he was very fond of such phrases as, "to lay aside all reserve," "to speak in the most unreserved manner," etc.; thus forcibly impressing one with his habitual love of reserve, even with his greatest intimates. And in his speech of the 22nd of January, on the Address, he said, with suspicious indignation, that "nothing could be more base or dishonest" than to use the potato blight as a means of repealing the Corn Laws.
The great twelve nights' debate on the repeal of these laws, commenced five days after the speech above referred to, was made. The Premier, at great length and very ably, repeated the arguments he had been putting forward since the previous November, in favour of taking the duty off everything that could be called human food; he even proposed to repeal the duty on the importation of potatoes, by which, he said, he hoped to obtain sound seed from abroad. Sir Robert, in this speech, may be said to have been in his best vein,—- full, explanatory, clear, assumptive, persuasive,—often appealing to the kindness and forbearance of his hearers,—always calculating a good deal on his power of bending people to his views by a plausible, diplomatic treatment of the whole question. Addressing Mr. Greene, the chairman of the Committee, he said, with solemn gravity: "Sir, I wish it were possible to take advantage of this calamity, for introducing among the people of Ireland the taste for a better and more certain provision for their support than that which they have heretofore cultivated." Surely, the Indian meal, which he so often boasted of having ordered on his own responsibility, was not a step in that direction. To have purchased and stored for their use the wheat and oats of their own soil, would have been, one should suppose, the direct way of achieving this philanthropic desire.
On the fifth night of the debate, Sir Robert rose again, and, in his speech, applied himself almost exclusively to the famine part of the question. He read many letters from persons in high position in Ireland, to prove to the House what was unfortunately but too well known in that country for many months, that the greater portion of the only food of four millions of the people was destroyed. Reading from an official report, substantially embracing the whole kingdom, he said: "In four electoral divisions, nearly nine-tenths of the potato crop are gone; in ninety three, between seven-tenths and eight-tenths; and in one hundred and twenty-five, the loss approaches to seven-tenths of the whole crop; in sixteen divisions, to six-tenths; in five hundred and ninety-six divisions, nearly one-half; and in five hundred and eighty-two, nearly four-tenths are destroyed." Appealing to the House, he says it has but two courses,—"to maintain the existing law, or make some proposal for increasing the facilities of procuring foreign articles of food." "Will you not, then," he concludes, in an elaborate peroration, "will you not then cherish with delight the reflection, that, in this, the present hour of comparative prosperity, yielding to no clamour—impelled by no fear—except, indeed, that provident fear which is the mother of safety—you had anticipated the evil day, and, long before its advent, had trampled on every impediment to the free circulation of the Creator's bounty."
The old Tory party had, in the beginning, admitted, to a great extent, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland; but seeing the use the Peel Government were making of it, they seem to have agreed to maintain that the reports—Government as well as others—were greatly exaggerated,—and for a purpose. Lord George Bentinck, the coming leader of the Protectionists, said, that "in his opinion, which every day's experience confirmed, the potato famine in Ireland was a gross delusion—a more gross delusion had never been practised upon the country by any Government." Mr. Shaw, the member for the University of Dublin, maintained that "great exaggeration existed." "The case," he said, "was not extraordinary—fever, dysentery, and death being a kind of normal state" in Ireland!
Members on both sides of the House soon began to see, that there was no necessary connection between the potato failure in Ireland, and the repeal of the Corn Laws, although, in all his speeches on the subject, Sir Robert Peel assumed it as a matter of course. The only member of the Government who attempted to prove this connection, was Sir James Graham. Mr. Stafford O'Brien, the member for North Northamptonshire, but connected by marriage with the county Clare, and one of the ablest men in the Tory ranks, said he had just returned from Ireland; that there was no exaggeration about the failure of the potato crop there, but that it had nothing to do with the question of the Corn Laws. He accused the Government of introducing a new principle for a disaster which he hoped would be casual, and of announcing that new principle without, in the least, tracing out how the Corn Laws had contributed to the famine in Ireland; or how the total abrogation of those laws was likely to alleviate that country's distress. The Irish members, he said, all asked for employment; they wished the railways to be made; they expressed their fears about the want of seed for the ground;—but they said, "if you wish to complete our ruin destroy our agriculture." Whilst he expressed the opinion, that there never was a country which called for more urgent attention on the part of the Government than Ireland did at the moment, he did not believe, he said, that if they passed the Government Bill to-morrow, that one more quarter of corn, or one more hundred weight of meal, would be placed within the reach of the poor of Ireland, unless it was accompanied by other measures. Sir James Graham replied, that "it did appear to him, that this matter of the coming scarcity, if not of famine, in Ireland, had an immediate and indissoluble connection with the question of the Corn Laws; and that he, for one, would not propose to the people of Great Britain, to take out of the taxes of Great Britain public money, to aid in the sustenance of their fellow-countrymen in Ireland, while, artificially, by the laws, the price of the food of the people of Great Britain is enhanced." With regard to this logic of Sir James, it may be remarked, (1) that the immediate effect produced, and sought to be produced, by a repeal of the Corn Laws, was to cheapen in the market the only thing Ireland had to sell—corn; (2) that the Irish members did not ask any portion of the taxes of Great Britain, to feed their countrymen,—they proclaimed and proved, that the resources of their own country were sufficient for this purpose; and this view was frequently put forward by O'Connell, and other leading Irish representatives.
William Smith O'Brien, the member for Limerick county, spoke but little during the session. He, and that advanced party in the Repeal Association which acknowledged him as leader, had made up their minds, that Irish Parliamentary business should be transacted in Ireland; and that St. Stephen's was not the place, where patriotic Irish members could best serve their country. Agreeably to this view, he remained in Ireland for nearly two months after the meeting of Parliament, in regular attendance at the Repeal Association, throwing out suggestions for the formation of an Irish party, on a basis wide enough to admit Liberals, Conservatives, and all others with national aspirations. He also paid much attention to the measures brought forward by the Government for the relief of his famishing countrymen; he prepared and brought up reports in the Association on those measures, and reviewed and criticised them in his speeches. At length, he entered an appearance in the House of Commons on the 13th of March. There was a motion before the House, brought forward by the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, that provision should be made to meet the impending fever and famine in Ireland. Sir James, in his speech, boasted of the sums of money already advanced, with such liberality, for the relief of Ireland. Smith O'Brien made a brief reply, in which he said that the moneys advanced were badly expended, having found their way into other channels than those intended. "He would," he further observed, "tell them frankly—and it was a feeling participated in by the majority of Irishmen—that he was not disposed to appeal to their generosity. There was no generosity in the matter. They had taken, and they had tied the purse-strings of the Irish purse." "They should compel the landlords," he again urged, "to do their duty to the people, and if they did, there would be neither disturbance nor starvation." In making these observations he must have spoken with unwonted energy, and with a boldness unusual in Parliament, as he apologised for his tone and manner, which, he said, he knew could not be acceptable to the House. When he sat down, Lord Claud Hamilton rose and replied to him, by one of those fierce invectives which, after the lapse of a quarter of a century he still, on occasion, can summon up vigour enough to deliver. He taunted the hon. member for Limerick with having then, for the first time during the Session, made his appearance in the House. He told him that, having neglected his own duties both as a representative and a landlord, an attack upon the landlords of Ireland came from him with a bad grace. He further accused him with lending himself to a baneful system of agitation, by which Ireland was convulsed, and prosperity rendered unattainable in that country. Lord Claud having resumed his seat, Smith O'Brien again rose, and said he would not take up their time in replying to him, but he wished to tell the House, that the tone, not so much of the House as of the English press, "about those miserable grants had exasperated him, and a large number of his fellow-countrymen." "If Parliament met in November," be continued, "to enact good laws, instead of now coming forward with a Coercion Bill, they would not be under the necessity of making those painful appeals to Parliament." On the 18th of March he spoke again, calling for a tax of ten per cent, on absentees, which would at once, he said, produce £400,000. But it was on the 17th of April he made his longest and most effective speech. On that occasion, he began by reading extracts from the provincial press of Ireland, giving accounts of "Fearful destitution," "Deaths from Famine," and so forth. He then said, "the circumstance which appeared most aggravating was, that the people were starving in the midst of plenty, and that every tide carried from the Irish ports corn sufficient for the maintenance of thousands of the Irish people." He put forward the sound, but then unpopular view of the repeal of the Corn Laws, which was, that its immediate effect would be injurious to Ireland. "He could not," he told the House, "refrain from expressing his regret, that Government should think it necessary to couple the question of Ireland with the question of the Corn Laws. These laws did not affect the description of food available for the people of Ireland ... he was one of those who differed from the great majority of the hon. members at his side of the House—he meant with respect to measures to alter the Corn Law, which he had no doubt would be of service to this country, but would for some time be injurious to Ireland." He closed his speech by the declaration, that "he felt it his duty to throw the responsibility upon Government; and in his conscience he believed that, for whatever loss of life might arise from want of food, or from outbreaks, the result of want, ministers would be answerable."[90]
Meantime, the Irish liberal members grew heart-sick of the endless debate upon the Corn Laws, out of which they expected nothing would come to relieve their starving countrymen. During its progress, O'Connell made a motion that the House would resolve itself into a committee, to take into consideration the state of Ireland, with a view to devise means to relieve the distress of the Irish people. He called attention to the vast exports of food from Ireland; showed that while Poor Laws might mitigate distress in ordinary seasons, they were not capable of meeting a famine; and, speaking from the depths of his conviction, he declared that, in his conscience he believed, the result of neglect on the part of the House, in the present instance, would be deaths to an enormous amount. "It may be said," the Liberator continued, with a dignity worthy of him, "that I am here to ask money to succour Ireland in her distress: No such thing, I scorn the thought; I am here to say, Ireland has resources of her own." The Home Secretary replied; admitted O'Connell's facts, but begged of him "to leave the matter in the hands of the responsible advisers of the Crown." Lord John Russell counselled the withdrawal of the motion, as he considered the measures of the Government judicious. It was accordingly withdrawn, and so the matter ended for that time. But again, on the 9th of March, O'Connell asked the First Lord of the Treasury if he were prepared to lay before the House a statement of the measures taken by the Government, to obviate the impending famine and disease in Ireland. Delay, he said, would be fatal, and the sums of money already voted would not be of the least avail. He repeated, that the Irish people were not suing in forma pauperis; there were resources in the country, and some further measures should be adopted, to meet the exigencies of their case. Sir Robert Peel replied, that "the statement did not fall much short of the impression first formed in his mind in October and November last," and concluded thus: "I again assure the honorable and learned member that every precaution that can be taken by Government has been taken, not within the last week, or fortnight, but long ago."
In the Speech from the throne, her Majesty was made to say, that she observed with deep regret the very frequent instances, in which the crime of deliberate assassination had been, of late, committed in Ireland; and that it would be the duty of Parliament to consider, whether any measure could be devised, to give increased protection to life in that country. In accordance with this striking passage in the Royal Message, Lord St. Germans, Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced in the House of Lords, on the 23rd of February, a bill for the protection of life in Ireland, better known by the title of Coercion Bill, given to it by the liberal Irish members, and by the Irish people. Of course it passed without difficulty, Lord Bingham, as became one of his name and blood, making a furious speech in its favour.
Strong as the Peel Cabinet had been for years, the Premier's newly announced policy on the Corn Law question led to such a disruption of party ties, that the progress of the Coercion Bill through the Commons could not be regarded by the Government without apprehension. When it went down from the Lords, the unusual, though not unprecedented proceeding of opposing its first reading, was had recourse to by O'Connell and his supporters. O'Connell led the opposition in a speech of two hours, which Mr. D'Israeli calls his last speech in the House of Commons; but this is a mistake. He spoke on the 8th of February, 1847, nearly a year after, on the famine. It is quite possible, that Mr. D'Israeli confounds the two occasions, for the account he gives of O'Connell on the 3rd of April, 1846, was far more applicable to him in February, 1847. Of the speech delivered on the former occasion, against the first reading of the Coercion Bill, Mr D'Israeli says: "It was understood that the House would adjourn for the Easter recess on the 8th instant. There were, therefore, only two nights remaining for Government business, before the holidays. On the first of these, (Friday, April the 3rd), Mr. O'Connell had announced, that he should state his views at length on the condition of Ireland, and the causes of these agrarian outrages. Accordingly, when the order of the day for resuming the adjourned debate was read, he rose at once, to propose an amendment to the motion. He sate in an unusual place—in that generally occupied by the leader of the opposition, and spoke from the red box, convenient to him, from the number of documents to which he had to refer. His appearance was of great debility, and the tones of his voice were very still. His words, indeed, only reached those who were immediately around him, and the ministers sitting on the other side of the green table, and listening with that interest, and respectful attention which became the occasion. It was a strange and touching spectacle, to those who remembered the form of colossal energy, and the clear and thrilling tones, that had once startled, disturbed, and controlled senates. Mr. O'Connell was on his legs for nearly two hours, assisted occasionally, in the management of his documents, by some devoted aide-de-camp. To the house generally, it was a performance of dumb show, a feeble old man muttering before a table; but respect for the great parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as if the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric; and though not an accent reached the gallery, means were taken that, next morning, the country should not lose the last, and not the least interesting of the speeches of one, who had so long occupied and agitated the mind of nations. This remarkable address was an abnegation of the whole policy of Mr. O'Connell's career. It proved, by a mass of authentic evidence, ranging over a long term of years, that Irish outrage was the consequence of physical misery, and that the social evils of that country, could not be successfully encountered by political remedies. To complete the picture, it concluded with a panegyric of Ulster and a patriotic quotation from Lord Clare."[91]
That the rich and splendid voice, which had so often sounded in the ears of his countrymen, like the varied and touching music of their native land, and led them where he would, had lost its finest tones, was true enough; but it had not so utterly failed as Mr. D'Israeli asserts. I heard O'Connell speak in public after this time, and although the marks of age and feebleness were in his whole manner, he managed his voice so as to be heard and understood at a considerable distance. "Respect for the great parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as if the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric," Mr. D'Israeli says. He ought to have recollected, that the fortunes of a party did really hang upon his rhetoric on this very occasion; for, to the uncompromising opposition of O'Connell and his friends, may be fairly attributed the ultimate defeat of this Coercion Bill, which defeat drove Sir Robert Peel from power, and brought in Lord John Russell. As to some means or other having been taken to publish a speech that had not been heard, there can be little doubt but the reporters took it down substantially, with the exception of the documents read. It was not O'Connell's habit to write his speeches; where then could the means of publishing this one come from, except from the reporters? He made several short speeches during the progress of the bill, which were printed in the newspapers in the usual way, surely they must have been reported in the usual way.
But this is a trifle: the most unkind and groundless assertion the author of the letters of Runnymede makes, with regard to the man who called him the lineal descendant of the impenitent thief, is, when he says, that "this remarkable address was an abnegation of the whole policy of Mr. O'Connell's career." This is strangely inexact: nay more, if Mr. D'Israeli heard the speech, as is to be inferred, or if he read it, it is disingenuous. The speech was a bold denunciation of the system of evictions, carried out by Irish landlords, to which O'Connell attributed the murders the Government relied on, to justify them in bringing forward the Coercion Bill. Speaking of the murder of Mr. Carrick, he said: "here again let me solemnly protest—I am sure I need not—that I do not consider any of these acts as an excuse, or a reason, or even as the slightest palliation of his murder (hear, hear); no, they are not, it was a horrible murder; it was an atrocious murder; it was a crime that was deserving of the severest punishment which man can inflict, and which causes the red arm of God's vengeance to be suspended over the murderer (hear, hear)." But he adds: "I want the House to prevent the recurrence of such murders. You are going to enact a Coercion Bill against the peasantry and the tenantry, and my object is, that you should turn to the landlords, and enact a Coercion Bill against them." Who but Mr. D'Israeli can perceive any abnegation of O'Connell's principles in these sentiments? He quoted Parliamentary reports to prove what tyrannical use had been made of the powers conferred by Coercion Acts, and he enumerated those passed since 1801, under some of which trial by jury was abolished. He cited blue books to show the misery and destitution to which ejected tenants were sometimes reduced, closing his proofs with this sentence: "such is the effect of the ejectment of tenantry in Ireland." He next dwelt on the physical wretchedness of the people in general, relying chiefly for his facts on the Devon Commission. He reminded Sir James Graham of a statement of his, that the murders in Ireland were a blot upon Christianity. "Is not," said O'Connell, "the state of things I have described a blot upon Christianity? (hear, hear). This, be it recollected," he continued, "is forty-five years after the Union, during which time Ireland has been under the government of this country, which has reduced the population of that country to a worse condition than that of any other country in Europe" (hear, hear).
His great object was to prove that the state of the Land Laws was the cause of agrarian murders, and that Coercion Acts were not a remedy. In the County Tipperary, where there were most ejectments, there were also most murders, and he called the particular attention of the house to this fact. He referred to the Land Commission report with regard to ejectments, and showed from it, that in the year 1843 there were issued from the Civil Bill Courts 5,244 ejectments, comprising 14,816 defendants, and from the Superior Courts 1,784 ejectments, comprising 16,503 defendants, making a total of 7,028 ejectments, and 31,319 defendants; or within the period of five years—1839 to 1843—comprised in the return, upwards of 150,000 persons had been subjected to ejectment process in Ireland.
He complained of the administration of justice in that country. The government had, he said, appointed partizan judges (he named several of them) and partizan magistrates, in whom the people had no confidence, whilst they took away the commission of the peace from seventy-four gentlemen, simply because they advocated a repeal of the Legislative Union.
He came to remedies. His opinion was that the great cause of the existing state of Ireland was the land question. The fact is, he said, the House has done too much for the landlord and too little for the tenant. He enumerated the principal laws conferring power on the landlords, adding that he did not believe there was a more fertile source of murder and outrage than those powers. "Thus," said he, "the source of crime is directly traceable to the legislation of this House." The repeal of those Land Laws was one of the remedies which he called for, but not the only one. He wanted the House to determine at once to do justice to Ireland politically as well as in relation to the law of landlord and tenant. In the first place, he said Ireland had not an adequate number of members to represent her in the House, next she wanted an extension of the franchise, thirdly, corporate reform, and, lastly, a satisfactory arrangement of the temporalities of the church. These four general remedies he demanded from the House, as a mode of coercing the people of Ireland, by their affections and their interests, into a desire to continue the Union with England. "I want," he said, "the House to determine at once to do justice to Ireland politically as well as in relation to the law of landlord and tenant."
He maintained that the Land Laws passed since the Union should be repealed, and above all he called for full compensation for every improvement made by the tenant. "Labour," he said, "is the property of the tenant, and if the tenant by his labour and skill improved the land, and made it more valuable, let him have the benefit of those improvements, before the landlord turns him out of possession." In Lord Devon's report he found the superior tranquillity of Ulster was traced to the security given to the tenant by tenant right, in proof of which he quoted the evidence of Mr. Handcock, Lord Lurgan's agent, and other Northern witnesses who were examined before the Devon Commission. "This then," he continued, "is the evidence of the North of Ireland as to the value of tenant right. How often have I heard all the boast of the superior tranquillity of the North? It was because they were better treated by their landlords, and, generally speaking, there was a better feeling there towards the landlords, and because the tenants were allowed to sell their tenant right. In the County Tipperary there is an agrarian law, which is the law of ejectment; in the province of Ulster there is a general law giving the tenants valuable rights. He (Mr. O'Connell) called upon the House to make their choice between the two. Now was the time for the choice. The country had arrived at a state when something must be done."
This is what Mr. D'Israeli calls "a panegyric of Ulster."
"Are you," he concluded, "desirous of putting an end to these murders? Then it must be by removing the cause of the murder. You could not destroy the effect without taking away the cause. I repeat, the tranquillity of Ulster is owing to the enjoyment of tenant right; when that right was taken away, the people were trodden under foot, and, in the words of Lord Clare, 'ground to powder.'"
This is what Mr. D'Israeli calls "a patriotic quotation from Lord Clare."
It would seem to me that any impartial reader of the Liberator's speech on this occasion would regard it as an iteration of the whole policy of his career, rather than an abnegation of it; but smooth and kind as Mr. D'Israeli's words appear, it is manifest he did not forget their ancient feud, and he therefore adroitly tries to give a parting stab, ungenerous as it was false, to the expiring lion.
That portion of the Tory party which remained faithful to Protection, being deserted by their leaders, rallied round Lord George Bentinck, and in some sense forced him to become their champion against their late chief, the Premier, and his policy. Thus was formed the Protectionist party, strictly so called. This party being of opinion that there was sufficient necessity for the Government Coercion Bill were in "great difficulty to find a plausible pretext for opposing it." Lord George himself hit upon one. The party held a meeting at the house of Mr. Bankes, and after anxious discussion on the part of many members present, Lord George at last spoke. He said "he was for giving the Government a hearty support, provided they proved they were in earnest in their determination to put down murder and outrage in Ireland, by giving priority in the conduct of public business to the measure in question,"—the Coercion Bill.[92] This was ingenious. The party supported what was called public order in Ireland, but with a proviso that might eventually defeat free trade by postponement. After some finessing, the Government showed a determination to go on with both bills. Lord John Russell and the Whigs saw their opportunity, and to the dismay of the First Lord, he found the strange, incongruous, unprecedented combination of Irish Repealers, Tory Protectionists, Whigs, and Manchester League-men prepared to vote against him on his Irish Coercion Act. The debate on it occupied six nights. It was closed on the 25th of June by Mr. Cobden; the division was taken, and the Government was left in a minority of SEVENTY THREE. It was a memorable night in the life of Sir Robert Peel. Although a night of defeat, it was also a night of triumph for him; for, two hours before the division, and whilst the debate was going on, Commissioners from the House of Lords announced to the Commons that their lordships had finally passed the bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws. It was the law of the land! Writing to Lord Harding, Governor-General of India, ten days afterwards, Sir Robert says: "You will see that we are out—defeated by a combination of Whigs and Protectionists. A much less emphatic hint would have sufficed for me. I would not have held office by sufferance for a week.... There are no secrets. We have fallen in the face of day, and with our front to to our enemies. There is nothing I would not have done to ensure the carrying of the measure I had proposed this session. I pique myself on never having proposed anything which I have not carried. But the moment their success was ensured, and I had the satisfaction of seeing two drowsy Masters in Chancery mumble out, at the table of the House of Commons that the Lords had passed the Corn and Customs Bills, I was satisfied."[93] Sir Robert expresses himself satisfied, but the coincidence which caused this satisfaction was not, in the slightest degree influenced either by himself or any member of his Government. Neither was it the result of chance or good fortune; it was solely brought about by the nice calculation of the anti-Corn Law party, who had resolved to prolong the debate on the Coercion Act until the Corn Bill would be passed. And as soon as they heard the aforesaid drowsy Masters in Chancery make the welcome announcement, they were satisfied, and the division took place.
During the session, the Peel Government proposed and carried several measures for the employment of the people of Ireland, the principal of which were:—1. An Act for the further amendment of the 1st Victoria, cap. 21; 2. An Act empowering Grand Juries at the Assizes of 1846 to appoint extraordinary presentment sessions for county works; 3. An Act to consolidate the powers hitherto exercised by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland; and, 4. An Act to facilitate the employment of the labouring poor for a limited period in the distressed districts. Up to the 15th of August, 1846, there was expended for the relief of Irish distress the sum of £733,372; of which £368,000 was in loans, and £365,372 in grants. The sum raised in voluntary subscriptions, through the Relief Committees was £98,000. The largest number of persons employed at any one time in this first season of relief was 97,000; which was in August, 1846.[94]
There was very considerable delay in affording relief to the people under the above acts. New Boards—new Commissioners—new Forms—new everything had to be got up, and all were commenced too late; it was, therefore, long, provokingly and unnecessarily long, before anything was done. The Rev. Mr. Moore, Rector of Cong, in one of his letters, complains that he was superciliously treated at the relief office in Dublin Castle, and finally told relief was only to be had in the workhouse. He then wrote to the Lord Lieutenant asking for a consignment of meal to be sold in his neighbourhood, undertaking to be responsible to the Government for the amount. A promise was given to him that this would be done, but I cannot discover that it was ever fulfilled.
Great numbers were in a starving condition in the southern and western counties, and in districts of Ulster also. A correspondent of the London Morning Chronicle, writing from Limerick under date of the 16th of April, says: "The whole of yesterday I spent in running from hut to hut on the right bank of the Shannon. The peasantry there were in an awful condition. In many cases they had not even a rotten potato left. They have consumed even the seed potatoes, unable any longer to resist the pangs of hunger." The Rev. Mr. Doyle, of Graig, in the county Kilkenny, writing on the 13th of April, says, he had made a visitation of his parish and found five hundred and eighty-three distressed families, comprising two thousand seven hundred and thirty individuals; of this number fifty-one had constant employment, two hundred and seventy none at all; the rest got occasional work; three-fourths of the whole had not three days' provisions. Sir Lucius O'Brien, (afterwards Lord Inchiquin), as Chairman of the Ennis Board of Guardians, took occasion to remark, "on the heartlessness of some of the Dublin papers, when speaking of the famine." "Everyone acquainted with the country, knew," he said, "that at this moment the people are in many places starving."[95]
The people assembled in considerable numbers in parts of the South calling for food or employment. A man died of starvation on the public works in Limerick. At a meeting in Newry for the purpose of taking measures against the scarcity, and whilst some were denying its existence in that locality, the Right Rev. Dr. Blake, the Catholic bishop, said, that since he had entered the meeting, a letter had been handed to him stating that a person had just died of starvation in High Street. In April and May potatoes had risen to a famine price in the provinces. They were quoted in Galway and Tuam at 6d. a stone, but in reality, as the local journals remarked, the price was double that, as not more than one-half of those bought could be used for food.
The humane and philanthropic, who went about endeavouring to save the lives of the people, often asked, as they travelled through the country, "Are the landlords making any efforts? "The common answer was, with very rare exceptions, "None whatever." The correspondent of a Dublin newspaper,[96] writing from Cashel, quotes a notice he had copied in Cahir, which was posted all about the town.
It ran thus:—
"The tenantry on the Earl of Glengall's estate, residing in the manor of Cahir, are requested to pay into my office on the 12th of May, all rent and arrears of rent due up to the 25th of March, otherwise the most summary steps will be taken to recover same.
"JOHN CHAYTOR,
"1st April, 1846."
The same correspondent, in a letter from Templemore, informs his readers that a certain noble proprietor was just after paying a visit to his estate in that locality, and he had no sooner taken his departure, than notices were served on his tenantry to pay the November rent. The tenants asked time, saying they had only a few black potatoes left. The bailiff's reply was characteristic, and no doubt truthful:—"What the d—— do we care about you or your black potatoes?—it was not us that made them black—you will get two days to pay the rent, and if you don't you know the consequence."[97]
When the relief depots, the local committees, and the public works got into gear, much was done during the summer months to alleviate the terrible distress; but as soon as the Government advances and subscriptions to the committees began to be exhausted, the cry for food was again heard from many parts of the country.[98]
At this time there were one hundred and twenty-three workhouses open, and great as the people's aversion was to them the inmates went on steadily increasing. In the month of December, 1845, the total number in those workhouses was 41,118; in March, 1846, 50,717; and on the 13th of June, the highest point attained during the year was arrived at, there being, on that day, 51,302 persons receiving in-door relief. On the 29th of August, owing, of course, to the harvest having come in, the number had fallen to 43,655. In ordinary years, when there was neither blight, nor fear of blight, it was deemed good husbandry to procure foreign seed potatoes, and if this could not be done, farmers at least tried to procure "strange" seed, grown at a distance from their own farms. A larger and in every way a better crop was the usual result of this practice. After the potato blight of 1845, the procuring of sound, and if possible of foreign seed, for planting in Ireland was of the utmost importance, and indeed Sir Robert Peel had included, in his new tariff, the admission of foreign potatoes free, in the hope of securing good seed for the planting of 1846; but as the Corn and Customs' Bill did not become law until the end of June, this provision could be of no avail for that year.
The Peel Government was defeated on the Irish Coercion Act on the 25th of June, and the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel announced their resignation on the 29th in the Upper and Lower Houses respectively. The Duke contented himself with the simple announcement; but Sir Robert made a speech, reviewing and defending his conduct whilst minister. Of Ireland he said little, except that he had the full intention of serving her in every way, by dealing with the land and other questions, telling us patronizingly, that she was entitled to a "complete equality of municipal and political rights." But this was only the old stereotyped liberality of a beaten minister—beaten on an Irish Coercion Act—speaking by anticipation from the Opposition benches, and endeavouring to plant thorns in the path of his successful rival. The sentiment, such as it was, was received with much cheers, and some murmurs. Strange enough the murmurs are not to be found in Hansard, although reported in the newspapers of the day.
The Liberal party being for a long time the free trade party, and Sir Robert Peel and his friends being only neophytes, he knew, even though they did carry free trade, that they could not claim the merit of doing so, only having taken it up, when it had attained such a position before the country as to make it all but irresistible. Neither did he wish the incoming Russell-Whig party to get credit for it; he therefore turned aside, in a rather unusual manner, and gave the merit of it to Mr. Cobden. "I said before, and I said truly," Sir Robert begins his eulogy on that distinguished man, "that in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them. I must say with reference to honorable gentlemen opposite, as I say with reference to ourselves, that neither of us is the party which is justly entitled to the credit of them. There has been a combination of parties generally opposed to each other, and that combination and the influence of Government, have led to their success. But the name which ought to be associated with the success of those measures is not the name of the noble lord, the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it mine. The name which ought to be, and will be associated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired, because it was unaffected and unadorned: it is the name of Richard Cobden." Sir Robert's peroration to this speech was an elaborate one, and consisted in praises of himself. Here are his closing words: "I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who from less honorable motives clamours for protection, because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be, that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will, in the abodes of those whose lot is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice."[99]
Although Sir Robert Peel lived four years after this defeat, he never returned to the treasury benches. In opposition, however, he was almost as powerful as when minister; giving to Lord John Russell's Government an independent and most valuable support, without which it could not have continued to exist. On the 28th of June, 1850, he spoke in the House on the celebrated Don Pacifico's claims against the Greek Government, and refused his support to Mr. Roebuck's motion approving of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy. He rode out next day—SS. Peter and Paul's day—his horse shied and became restive, whilst he was saluting a lady on Constitution Hill; he was thrown heavily; on being taken up, partly insensible, he was conveyed to his house, where, having suffered much pain, he died three days afterwards.
Sir Robert Peel's father, a very wealthy cotton spinner, and also a Member of Parliament, had early made up his mind that his son should become a public man. As soon as he was of age he was returned by the borough of Cashel to the House of Commons, where he soon began to display those qualities for which his family was distinguished—prudence, industry, discreet reserve, with a remarkable ability for utilizing the brains of others. His father, who was made a baronet by Mr. Perceval, became a millionaire by cotton spinning, yet in a generation remarkable for invention, neither he nor one belonging to him originated any of the improvements for preparing or spinning cotton; when one was made, however, its utility soon became apparent to the practical good sense of the Peels; they secured it, and thus founded a house and built up a princely fortune to sustain it; while, too often, the man whose original genius discovered the improvement, lived and died in comparative poverty.[100] Sir Robert Peel carried this second-rate, but most valuable quality, into statesmanship. He was not the originator of any great political amelioration; he was invariably found, at first, in opposition to every measure of the kind; but he did not refuse to examine it; on the contrary, he studied it carefully, weighed the reasons put forward in support of it, watched with nervous anxiety the tide of public opinion, and when that could no longer be resisted with safety, he took the question up and sustained it by the arguments he had been combating before—remodelled, to be sure, occasionally, but still the same; threw the weight of his high character into the scale, and thus not only contributed to its success, but secured it. Such is the history of Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Hence a bitter political adversary of his, who has drawn his public character with much candour and ability, and not in an ungenerous spirit either, says of him, that "his life was one of perpetual education." Elsewhere he puts pretty much the same idea in a severer and more sarcastic form, when he asserts that Sir Robert Peel's mind "was one vast appropriating clause."[101]
Some of his eulogists assert that he had made up his mind on the great measures he carried through Parliament long before he had given them his support, but that he was awaiting a favourable opportunity to declare his views, whilst he was in the meantime educating his party. If this be intended as a compliment, as it seems to be, it is a very doubtful one. Assuming it to be true, he must for many years of his life have been a mere hypocrite. The opinion that he himself was gradually educated into these views would seem to be the truer as it is also the kinder one; besides his own declarations coincide with it. There was what is called a Bullion Committee in 1811, and another in 1819, Sir Robert (then Mr.) Peel being chairman of the latter. The former was called Mr. Hooner's Committee. In 1819, speaking of the inconvertible paper money, he recanted his views of 1811, as his opinions with regard to the question had undergone "a material change." "He had," he said, "voted against Mr. Hooner's resolutions in 1811, he would now vote for them if they were brought forward." In his Memoirs, speaking of the Corn Laws, "he had," he says, "adopted at an early period of his public life, without, he fears, much serious reflection, the opinions generally prevalent of the justice and necessity of protection to domestic agriculture, but the progress of discussion had made a material change in the opinions of many persons" [himself of course amongst the number] "with regard to the policy of protection to domestic agriculture." It is true, then, that this eminent statesman was at school all his life, a diligent student, willing and anxious to learn, but always conducting his studies from a Conservative standpoint. It is no discredit to him—far from it. And although the tide of progress carried him to the extent of breaking up his own party, in doing so he was acting, he considered, for the interests of England. Nothing can be more absurd and wicked in a statesman than to allow himself to be impounded within the narrow iron-bound circle of party, and to persevere in sustaining the views and principles of that party against justice, conscience and fact.
Great and varied as were the powers of Sir Robert Peel as a public speaker, he was not an orator in the strictest and highest sense of that word. True oratory is the offspring of genius, and he, gifted though he was, had not the sacred fire of genius in his soul. In the style which he adopted, and which was probably the best suited to his natural powers, he was all but perfect: lucid, argumentation, frank, at least in seeming, bland, persuasive; always singularly respectful not only to the House, but to the humblest member of it; his speeches partook more of the lecture and less of oratorical display than those of most other public men with anything like his reputation; but they were admirably suited to an educated and deliberative assembly like the House of Commons—and hence he influenced—almost ruled it, as no other man did before or since. Knowing this, he never felt so happy or so much at home as in that scene of his labours and his triumphs. His gesture was inferior: he used it but seldom, and when he did it added neither to the grace nor effectiveness of his delivery. He sometimes appeared to be at a loss to know what to do with his arms: at one time he would thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest; at another he would let his arms fall into a sort of swinging motion at his sides, where he allowed, rather than used them, to toss back his coatskirts in a confused, undignified manner.
He never spoke on important questions without careful preparation, as was always evident from the facts and arguments of which his speeches chiefly consisted, as well as from their careful arrangement. His voice was fine, and he had the skill, rare enough in public speakers, of modulating it with excellent effect.
The happiest portions of his speeches were those in which he endeavoured, by artful appeals to the good sense and patriotism of his hearers, to win them over to his views; and the frequent success that attended such efforts is their highest praise. He seldom attempted an ambitious flight, and when he did his best friends felt it was not his true line. He dealt but little in figurative language, except when argument failed him; still he has left some specimens of much beauty in this style. In his great speech introducing Catholic Emancipation in 1829, he told Parliament it had but two courses to follow—to advance or to recede; to advance by conceding the Catholic claims, or to recede by reimposing those portions of the penal laws already repealed. Dwelling on the impossibility and insanity of the latter course, he said: "We cannot replace the Roman Catholics in the position in which we found them, when the system of relaxation and indulgence began. We have given them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed; but it will not, like the genius in the fable, return within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to enable us to cast it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it." Here is another specimen from his speech on the Reform Bill of 1832. He opposed that Bill with all his energy, as is well known. Lord Durham, a very advanced reformer for his time, and son-in-law to Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, was known to have influenced that nobleman in retaining the most liberal clauses of the bill. For his years he was a very juvenile looking man, which gave point to Sir Robert Peel's words when he said so happily: "It would appear as if the reins of the State had been confided to some youthful and inexperienced hands; and who, left without any guiding principle, or any controlling sense of duty, were rushing on with headlong violence which wiser men could neither moderate nor restrain.... They should have said to any one of these persons, whose ambition made him press for an employment so fraught with danger to himself and injury to others,
They should have given him the salutary caution that the fiery steeds which he aspired to guide required the hand of restraint and not the voice of incitement—
If the caution had not been given, or if it had been disregarded, let them hope, at least, that the example of their suffering might be a warning to others, and that another lesson to the folly and rashness of mankind might be read by the light of their conflagration."
The manner in which he dealt with the potato blight, and consequent Irish Famine, is indefensible. His policy from first to last was a policy of delay—delay in a case in which delay was ruin. He went on by slow and almost imperceptible degrees preparing his colleagues for his altered views on the Corn duties; talking and writing all the time pathetically, about the deep apprehensions he entertained of an impending famine in Ireland, while his whole heart was set on quite another object. To aid this masked policy of his, there was Commission after Commission—the Scientific Commission, the Castle Commission, the Police inquiry; and these went on analyzing, printing, and distributing hundreds weight of query sheets, and making reports, long after it was proved, beyond all doubt, that half the food of the Irish people had been irretrievably lost, the money value of which was estimated at from eight to ten millions of pounds sterling. So early as the end of October, 1845, Dr. Playfair, his own scientific investigator, expressed to him his opinion that fully one half of the potatoes in Ireland were perfectly unfit for human food; he said he had made a careful tour of the potato shops of Dublin, and had found that those potatoes picked as sound had nineteen bad for fourteen good! Sir Robert Peel knew this in October, 1845; admitted its truth more than once during the session of Parliament that followed, and yet the bill which he persisted in regarding as the only panacea for such a national calamity, did not become law until the 25th of June, 1846, eight months afterwards; but of course four millions of foodless Irish must battle with starvation until the Premier had matured and carried his measure for securing cheap bread for the artizans of England; and further, those same famishing millions had, day after day, to submit to be insulted by his false and hollow assertion, that all this was done for them. Nor can it be urged in his favour, that the delay in repealing the Corn Laws was the fault of his opponents, not his own; for no one knew better than he, a shrewd experienced party leader, that every available weapon of Parliamentary warfare would be used, as they were used, against his bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws, in order to strike it down by sheer defeat if possible, but if not, at least to maim and lop it of its best provisions.
FOOTNOTES:
[88] Mr. Culhoun.
[89] During the debate in the House of Lords on the Address, in January, 1846, Lord Brougham stated his views about the repeal of the Corn Laws; the reasons why they should be repealed, and the effects of that repeal. These views must have seemed to many at the time strange enough, if not eccentric, but they have turned out to be singularly correct. He said:—"It was my opinion that an alteration in the commercial policy of this country with respect to corn, as well as to other commodities, was highly expedient; I will not say solely, but principally, and beyond all comparison most chiefly wanted, not for the purpose of lowering the price of corn and food (which I never expected it could do, which I urged it could not do, which I endeavoured to show it had no tendency to do, any more than the Corn Laws had a tendency to keep up the prices of food); but because I thought it would tend to remodel the whole of our commercial system, and cause it to assume such a shape and position with respect to Foreign Powers, as to prevent them from excluding our manufactures, by opening our ports to their corn, and such as would give us a reasonable prospect that their restrictions would be removed, and our manufactures allowed to penetrate into these foreign markets." And further on in the same speech, "I shortly restate," he said, "the ground on which I rested for the repeal or the modification of the Corn Law system. I did not, because I could not, hold to the people of this country—I could not honestly hold out to them, that it would make bread cheap.... I did not argue that the Corn Law was the cause of famine, that it was the cause of disease, that it was the cause of crime, that it was the cause of mortality, in this country."—(Hansard).
[90] Smith O'Brien occupied far more of the time and attention of the House of Commons, during the Session, by his refusal to serve on a railway Committee than by his speeches. This refusal gave rise to some delicate questions of constitutional law, and consigned the hon. gentleman to prison for twenty-five days. See note B, APPENDIX.
[91] Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, 5th edition, revised, p. 158.
[92] Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli.
[93] Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs, part 3, page 310. Any one can see how little poor famine-stricken Ireland was before Sir Robert's mind, when he penned the above lines.
[94] The Irish Crisis, by Sir Charles E. Trevelyan.
[95] This observation was, in all probability, levelled at the Dublin Evening Mail; a newspaper which Sir Lucius would be sure to read, being one of the organs of his party, and which had, sometime before, with a heartless attempt at humour, called the blight "the potato mirage."
[96] The Freeman's Journal.
[97] Ibid. This correspondent tells an anecdote of a peasant whose heroic generosity contrasts strongly with the conduct of the above noble proprietors. He (the correspondent) stood by a pit of potatoes whilst the owner, a small farmer, was turning them for the purpose of picking out and rejecting the bad ones. The man informed him it was the fourth picking within a fortnight. At the first picking, he said the pit contained about sixty barrels, but they were now reduced to about ten. Whilst this conversation was going on, a beggar came up and asked an alms for God's sake. The farmer told his wife to give the poor woman some of the potatoes, adding—"Mary, give her no bad ones, God is good, and I may get work to support us."
"I am warranted in saying," he concludes, "that by the 10th of May there will not be a single potato for twenty miles around Clonmel."
[98] There were twenty principal Government Food Depots established in various parts of Ireland in 1846, at which the following quantities were issued:—
| Tons. | cwts. | qrs. | lbs. | |
| Indian Corn | 30 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| Indian Corn Meal | 11,593 | 11 | 00 | 19 |
| Oat Meal | 528 | 00 | 3 | 24 |
| Biscuit | 6 | 3 | 00 | 7 |
| ----- | -- | -- | -- | |
| Total | 12,157 | 15 | 0 | 22 |
R.J. ROUTH, Commissary General.
—Famine Reports. Commissariat Series. Vol. 1, p. 2.
The number of Relief Committees in this, the first year of famine, was 600. In 1847, they numbered nearly 2,000.
[99] "On Monday at five o'clock, the public notification of the resignation of the Ministry was made by Sir Robert Peel to a crowded house, and in a remarkable speech.... It included an unparliamentary eulogium on Mr. Cobden, whom it mentioned, to the surprise of the House, by name, and it terminated with a panegyric of himself, elaborate, but rather clumsily expressed."—Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli.
"On the conclusion of this speech cheers burst forth on all sides ... The House adjourned to the 3rd of July. Sir Robert Peel went out resting on the arm of his friend, Sir George Clerk, the member for Stamford. A great crowd thronged the approaches, on seeing him all took off their hats, opened their ranks to let him pass, and accompanied him in silence to the door of his house."—Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, by M. Guizot
[100] See Baines' History of the Cotton Manufacture.
[101] Benjamin D'Israeli.