CHAPTER VII.
The Measures of Relief for 1846-7--Difficulties--Shortcomings of the Government--Vigorous action of other countries--Commissary General Routh's Letter on the state of the depôts--Replies from the Treasury--Delay--Incredulity of Government--English Press--Attacks both on the Landlords and People of Ireland--Not the time for such attacks--View of the Morning Chronicle--Talk about exaggeration--Lieutenant-Colonel Jones--Changes his opinion--His reason for doing so--Mr. Secretary Redington's ideas--Extraordinary Baronial Presentments--Presentments for the County Mayo beyond the whole rental of the county!--The reason why--Unfinished Public Works--Lord Monteagle--Finds fault with the action of the Government, although a supporter of theirs--Expenses divided between landlord and tenant--Discontent at rate of wages on public works being 2d. per day under the average wages of the district--Founded on error--Taskwork--Great dissatisfaction at it--Combination--Attempt on the Life of Mr. W.M. Hennessy--True way to manage the people (Note)--Stoppage of Works--Captain Wynne--Dreadful destitution--Christmas eve--Opposition to Taskwork continues--Causes--Treasury Minute on the subject--Colonel Jones on Committees--Insulting his officers--Insult to Mr. Cornelius O'Brien, M.P.--Captain Wynne at Ennistymon--A real Irish Committee--Major McNamara--His version of the Ennistymon affair (Note)--Charges against the Gentry of Clare by Captain Wynne--Mr. Millet on Ennistymon--Selling Tickets for the Public Works--Feeling of the Officials founded often on ignorance and prejudice--The Increase of Deposits in the Savings Banks a Proof of Irish Prosperity--How explained by Mr. Twistleton, an official--Scarcity of silver--The Bank of Ireland authorized to issue it--The Public Works of 1845-6 brought to a close in August, 1846--The Labour-rate Act--Difficulty of getting good Officials--The Baronies--Issues to them--Loans--Grants--Total--Sudden and enormous Increase of Labourers on the Works under the Labour-rate Act--How distributed over the Provinces--Number of Officials superintending the Public Works--Correspondence--Number of Letters received at Central Office--Progress of the Famine--Number employed--Number seeking employment who could not get it--The Death-roll.
To have met the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery could be modelled. Great allowance must be therefore made for the shortcomings of the Government, in a crisis so new and so terrible; but after making the most liberal concessions on this head, it must be admitted that Lord John Russell and his colleagues were painfully unequal to the situation. They either could not or would not use all the appliances within their reach, to save the Irish people. Besides the mistakes they made as to the nature of the employment which ought to be given, a chief fault of their's was that they did not take time by the forelock—that they did not act with promptness and decision. Other nations, where famine was far less imminent, were in the markets, and had to a great extent made their purchases before our Government, causing food to be scarcer and dearer for us than it needed to be. Thus writes Commissary-General Routh to the Treasury on the 19th of September:—"I now revert to the most important of our considerations, the state of our depôts. We have no arrivals yet announced, either at Westport or Sligo, and the remains there must be nothing, or next to nothing. The bills of lading from Mr. Erichsen are all for small quantities, which will be distributed, and perhaps eaten, in twelve or twenty-four hours after their arrival. It would require a thousand tons to make an impression, and that only a temporary one. Our salvation of the depôt system is in the importation of a large supply. These small shipments are only drops in the ocean." The Treasury replies in this fashion, on the 22nd, to Sir R. Routh's strong appeal:—"With reference to the remarks in your letter of the 19th instant, as to the insufficiency of the supplies for your depôts, the fact is that we have already bought up and sent to Ireland all the Indian corn which is immediately available; and the London and Liverpool markets are at present so completely bare of this article, that we have been obliged to have recourse to the plan of purchasing supplies of Indian corn which had been already exported from London to neighbouring Continental ports."[139] And again, on the 29th of the same month, Mr. Trevelyan thus explains the difficulties the Treasury laboured under in endeavouring to purchase the supplies for which the Commissary-General had been so emphatically calling:—"It is little known what a formidable competition we are suffering from our Continental neighbours. Very large orders are believed to have been sent out to the United States, not only by the merchants, but by the Governments of France and Belgium, and in the Mediterranean markets they have secured more than their share; all which will appear perfectly credible, when it is remembered that they are buying our new English wheat in our own market."[140]
Here at home, the fatal error of awaiting events, instead of anticipating them, and by forethought endeavouring to control and guide them, was equally pernicious. The most considerable persons in the kingdom—peers, members of Parliament, deputy lieutenants, magistrates without number—pronounced the potato crop of 1846 to be hopelessly gone early in August. But although several members of the Government expressed their belief in this, and spoke about it with great alarm, they seem not to have given it full credence, until it was too late to take anticipatory measures; in short, they regarded it, like everything Irish, as greatly exaggerated. The most influential portion of the English newspaper press supported and encouraged this view, making, at the same time, fierce attacks on Irish landlords for not meeting the calamity as they ought, and as they were bound in duty and conscience to do. Equally bitter and insolent was their tone towards the Irish people, accusing them of many inherent vices—denouncing their ignorance, their laziness, their want of self-reliance. Whatever of truth or falsehood may have been in those charges, it was not the time to put them forward. Famine was at the door of the Irish nation, and its progress was not to be stayed by invectives against our failings, or by moral lectures upon the improvement of our habits. Food, food was the single and essential requisite; let us have it at once, or we die; lecture us afterwards as much as you please. But there was something to be said on the other side about our habits and failings; and a liberal English journalist, taking up the subject, turned their own artillery upon his countrymen, telling them that those vices, of which they accused the Irish people, were not an essential part of Celtic nature. Has not the Irish Celt, he asks, achieved distinguished success in every country of Europe but his own? The state in which he is to be found in Ireland to-day must be, therefore, accounted for on some other theory than the inherent good-for-nothingness of his nature. "The sluggish, well-meaning mind of the English nation," he continues, "so willing to do its duty, so slow to discover that it has any duty to do, is now perforce rousing to ask itself the question, after five centuries of English domination over Ireland, how many millions it is inclined to pay, not in order to save the social system which has grown up under its fostering care, but to help that precious child of its parental nurture to die easy? Any further prolongation of existence for that system no one now seems to predict, and hardly any one longer ventures to insinuate that it deserves."
"This is something gained. The state of Ireland—not the present state merely, but the habitual state—is hitherto the most unqualified instance of signal failure which the practical genius of the English people has exhibited. We have had the Irish all to ourselves for five hundred years. No one has shared with us the privilege of governing them, nor the responsibilities consequent on that privilege. No one has exercised the smallest authority over them save by our permission. They have been as completely delivered into our hands as children into those of their parents and instructors. No one has ever had the power to thwart our wise and benevolent purposes; and now, at the expiration of nearly one-third of the time which has elapsed since the Christian era, the country contains eight millions, on their own showing, of persecuted innocents, whom it is the sole occupation of every English mind to injure and disparage; on ours (if some of our loudest spokesmen are to be taken as our representatives) of lazy, lawless savages, whose want of industry and energy keeps them ever on the verge of starvation; whose want of respect for life and property makes it unsafe for civilized beings to dwell among them. England unanimously repudiates the first theory; but is the other much less disgraceful to us? An independent nation is, in all essentials, what it has made itself by its own efforts; but a nation conquered, and held in subjugation ever since it had a history, is what its conquerors have made it, or have caused it to become. Yet this reflection does not seem to inspire Englishmen generally with any feeling of shame. The evils of Ireland sit as lightly on the English conscience as if England had done all which the most enlightened and disinterested benevolence could suggest for governing the Irish well, and for civilizing and improving them. What has ever yet been done, or seriously attempted, for either purpose, except latterly, by taking off some of the loads which we ourselves have laid on, history will be at a loss to determine."[141]
Some of the officers connected with the relief works expressed their opinion, that the failure of the potato crop and the deficiency of food in the country were both exaggerated. They threw doubts on the veracity of those with whom they conversed, and warned the Government to be cautious about believing, to the full, the statements made by individuals, committees, or newspapers. Sir Randolph Routh, the head of the Commissariat Department, in a letter to Mr. Trevelyan, the Assistant-Secretary to the Treasury, says: "In the midst of much real, there is more fictitious distress; and so much abuse prevails, that if you check it in one channel, it presents itself in another."[142] Again, Assistant Commissary-General Milliken, writing to Sir R. Routh from Galway, informs him that he met a considerable number of carts loaded with meal and other supplies; and there did not, he said, appear that extreme want and destitution that he had expected.[143] More than any other did Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, Chairman of the Board of Works, keep the idea of exaggerated and fictitious distress before the mind of the Treasury, although he began his communications in a far different spirit. Writing on the 1st of September to Mr. Trevelyan, he says: "The prospects for the ensuing season are melancholy to reflect upon; the potato crop may now be fairly considered as past; either from disease, or from the circumstance of the produce being small, it has been consumed; many families are now living upon food scarcely fit for hogs." And again: "I am very much afraid that Government will not find free trade, with all the employment we can give, a succedaneum for the loss of the potato." Doubtless Colonel Jones soon discovered such views as these to be distasteful to his superiors; so, like a prudent servant, he puts them aside, and in his after communications adopts the very opposite tone. He writes to Mr. Under-Secretary Redington[144] on the 13th of October, from Athlone, this piece of information, intended, he says, for his Excellency: "On the 11th instant I posted from Dublin to Banagher. Along the entire line of road I observed the farmyards well stocked with corn, the crop of the past harvest, unthreshed"—thus assuming that the four millions of people who lived almost exclusively on potatoes had such things as farmyards and corn to put in them. In the same month he writes again to Mr. Trevelyan, that he hears from more quarters than one that the early potatoes, which were left in the ground, now prove to be sound. Although small in size, he says, still from one-third to one-half may be considered available for food. "On my way here from Athlone," he again writes, "I went into a field where a man was digging potatoes. The crop looked good, and he told me that it was an early crop, and that he considered that about half were sound; and I therefore hope that there is much more food of that description than the general outcry about famine would lead strangers to suppose." At the end of December he reports to the Treasury a conversation he had had with an assistant-engineer from Roscommon, who told him his belief was, that there were much more provisions in the country than was generally supposed. He had every day, he said, good potatoes at eight shillings a cwt. When the disease appeared, the people who held conacres threw them up, and the potatoes remained undug. Those that were sound continued so up to the late frost; and the people had, by degrees, been taking them up. This engineer expected a considerable quantity, serviceable for food, would be found during the ploughing of the land in spring.
But the wail of starving millions reached the Lord Lieutenant from every side, and, in compliance with it, he authorized the "Extraordinary Baronial Presentment Sessions" to be held. At those sessions the tone of the speakers was, on the whole, kind and liberal; acknowledging the universality of the failure of the potato crop, and the necessity of making immediate provision against its consequences. Sometimes the presentments for the public works were very large—far beyond the entire rental of the barony; yet they may not have been too great to meet the starvation which the assembled ratepayers saw everywhere around them. At Berehaven, in the County Cork, a place certainly fearfully tried by the Famine, the presentments at the sessions—at the very first sessions held in the barony—were said to be quadruple the rental of the entire barony! This, however, was only one district of the largest Irish county; but the presentments for the whole County of Mayo, the most famine-stricken, to be sure, of all the counties, are worth remembering; and so is their explanation. They were forwarded to the Board of Works by the County Surveyor. The number of square miles in the county are given at 2,132, the rent value being £385,100. The County Surveyor recommended to the Sessions presentments amounting in the aggregate to £228,000, nearly two-thirds of the entire rental. The Baronial Sessions, however, were far from resting contented with this. The ratepayers and magistrates assembled in their various baronies, presented for works to the amount of £388,000, nearly £3,000 in excess of the entire rental of the county; but which was finally cut down by the Board of Works to £128,456 8s. 4d. Prudent people and political economists will at once be inclined to exclaim, "Very right; it was most fortunate to have an authority to check such recklessness." But, softly; let there be no hasty conclusions. Hear the end. The County Surveyor gives the population of Mayo at 56,209 families, of whom 46,316 families, he says, were to be employed on the relief works! Taking those families at the common average of five and a-half individuals to each, the total number would be 254,738 persons. The presentments allowed would thus give about ten shillings' worth, of employment for each individual, with nine or ten foodless months before them. The conclusion is inevitable; the presentments allowed were utterly inadequate to meet the Famine in Mayo, the fearful consequences of which we shall learn as we proceed.[145]
Many of the speakers at the Presentment Sessions charged the Government with a breach of faith, in not finishing the works which were prematurely closed on the 15th of August, 1846. Those works were commenced under the law passed by Sir Robert Peel's Government, whereby the baronies, or, in other words, the ratepayers, paid one-half the expense, and the Government the other; so that even if Lord John Russell's Government took them up anew, under the Labour-rate Act, the whole expense should, according to the terms of that Act, fall upon the baronies. This was looked upon as a grievance, and at the Glenquin Sessions, in the county Limerick, Lord Monteagle, a friend and supporter of the Administration, put the grievance in the shape of a resolution, which was unanimously adopted. In moving the resolution, his lordship said: "We claim that we have a right to ask from the Government one-half of the expenses incurred by the completion of these works, on the terms and conditions upon which we entered into the engagement. The Government are bound to do this in point of justice." The resolution was: "That whilst we express our full approval of these works, yet the magistrates and ratepayers feel that it is also their duty to express their strong and unanimous opinion, that the just construction of the arrangement between this barony and the Government for the completion of such works as have been commenced under the Act 9 Vic. c. 1, requires an adherence to the terms of that contract."
Some, whilst finding fault with the illiberality of the Government, still expressed their satisfaction at the expenses under the new Act being equally divided between landlord and tenant; a proper responsibility being thus placed upon landlords, which was not the case under the former Act. Very general discontent was manifested at the rule by which the rate of wages on the public works was to be twopence a day under the average wages of the district in which the works were being carried on. Wages ruled so excessively low at the time, it was felt that, with rapidly advancing markets, the labourer on the works could not get food sufficient for his family. The object of this rule, however, was obvious and well meant enough; it was framed to induce agricultural labourers to remain at their usual employments, in order that the crops might be sown. Had the Government been well informed of the relations subsisting between farmer and labourer in Ireland, they would have known that this arrangement could not have the desired effect, money-wages regularly paid being almost a thing unknown to our agricultural population at the time; whilst the Famine made money-wages, regularly paid, the first essential of existence.[146]
When the Government began to insist on task, or piecework, instead of day labour, the greatest amount of dissatisfaction that occurred during the entire Famine manifested itself. The engineers of the Board of Works reported over and over again, that an industrious man, willing to labour, could earn from fifteen to eighteen pence a-day under this arrangement, yet the people rose in combination—almost in rebellion—against it, whilst daily wages ranged from eight to tenpence only. They assaulted overseers; refused to work for them; threatened their lives, and in one instance at least, attempted the life of a Government functionary. At the village of Clare, in the county of that name, some short distance south of Ennis, the capital, this insubordination seems to have become rather formidable, as a murderous outrage was committed there on the head steward of the works, Mr. W. Hennessy, half-way between Clare and Ennis. He was fired upon by one of four men whom he observed inside the road ditch, as he passed along. The weapon used was a blunderbuss. It was charged with some of the blasting powder belonging to the works, and duck shot; so that although Mr. Hennessy received the contents in his right side, he was not mortally wounded, and recovered in a little time. Captain Wynne, the local inspector, giving an account of this outrage to his Board, says, the cause of the outrage was because Mr. Hennessy was trying to get the men into proper training. Quite likely. But it must be taken into account, that a duty of that kind might be done in such a way as neither to offend the men, nor lose their respect or esteem; and it might be done in an offensive insolent manner, calculated to exasperate them, especially as they were in a state of excitement at the period.[147] Captain Wynne further says, that the perpetrator of the outrage was known, but could not be brought to justice. The Board of Works, to mark its indignation at this murderous attack upon one of its servants, stopped the works in the locality, and the inhabitants, miserably off before, sank into a state of the most heartrending destitution, as is testified by Captain Wynne, writing from the same place a fortnight or three weeks after, to Colonel Jones.[148] "I must again," he says, "call your attention to the appalling state in which Clare Abbey is at present. I ventured through that parish this day, to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants, and although a man not easily moved, I confess myself unmanned by the extent and intensity of suffering I witnessed, more especially among the women and little children, crowds of whom were to be seen scattered over the turnip fields, like a flock of famishing crows, devouring the raw turnips, and mostly half naked, shivering in the snow and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, whilst their children were screaming with hunger. I am a match for anything else I may meet with here, but this I cannot stand. When may we expect to resume the works?" This letter does much credit to the feeling and manly heart of Captain Wynne. He says the wretched beings were devouring the raw turnips they found in the fields, but surely very little such was to be found among the snowdrifts in the last days of December, for, sad to say, his letter was written on Christmas Eve! Such a Christmas for the people of Clare Abbey, and of a thousand places besides!
Beyond doubt, the Government, and those under them, had enormous difficulties to contend against. Every new scheme, or modification of a scheme, proposed by them had its inconveniences. Inspectors, engineers, and overseers appeared to regard the opposition to task work as the dislike of the lazy Celt to labour for his daily bread, and to his wish to get the "Queen's pay," as the wages on the works were termed, without doing anything for it. Hence they were of opinion almost from the outset, that the sooner the system of task work was enforced the better, as the people, they said, seemed to be generally under the impression that no work was really required from them. This was a very wrong and demoralizing notion, if it were entertained to any considerable extent. Very probably it had a percentage of truth in it, but no more. Worthless idlers, in no very urgent distress, must from the nature of things, have got employed upon works so extensive, but the officials were too fond of founding general conclusions on isolated, or at least on an insufficient number of cases. The opposition to task work arose from more than one cause. Lazy unprincipled people were opposed to it, because they were lazy and unprincipled; a far larger class were opposed to it, because it was no secret that the works were carried on not for sake of their utility, but to keep the people from being idle. Had this class been employed upon really useful works, such as reclaiming land, tilling the soil, draining, subsoiling, or railroad-making, they would, no doubt, have had more heart for their daily labour. There is a natural repugnance in the mind of a man to apply himself in earnest to what he has been told is useless,—to what he sees and feels to be useless. If a labourer were hired, and even given good wages, for casting chaff against the wind, I make bold to say, he would soon resign his employment, from sheer inability to work at anything so much opposed to his common sense. A third and a very large class of the labouring population were opposed to task work, because they were able to earn so very little at it. "Those who choose to labour may earn good wages," writes Colonel Jones to Mr. Trevelyan; but he forgot, or was ignorant of the fact, that great numbers of the working class had been already so weakened and debilitated by starvation, that they were unable to do what the overseers regarded as a day's work; and it is on record that task work frequently brought industrious willing workmen less money than they would have received under the day's-work system.[149]
At the end of October a Treasury Minute was published to the effect that such prices were to be allowed for Relief Works, executed by task, as would enable good labourers to earn from one shilling to one shilling and sixpence a day; the day's work system, at the wages fixed by the Treasury Minute of the 31st of August, was to be in future confined to those who were unable or unwilling to work by task. There was some concession in this. Under it the labourer could choose piece work or day's work as seemed more advantageous to himself. The spirit, at least, of the August Treasury Minute was, that all should work by task. "The persons employed on the Relief Works," says that Minute, "should, to the utmost possible extent, be paid in proportion to the work actually done by them." In a few instances task work was reported to have given satisfaction, but in the great majority of cases it was resisted by the labourers, and it sometimes resulted in serious disturbances, as we have seen. The local Committees, who had much to do with preparing the lists of those whose circumstances made them proper objects for the public works, were repeatedly complained of by the Government officials. Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, who appears to have been more severe and distrustful than his subordinates, accuses Committees of insulting his officers, producing improper lists, and even of balloting amongst themselves for the persons who were to be put upon the works.
With regard to the first accusation there was generally a counter-charge from the Committees, accusing the Board's officers of being insulting and overbearing to them. One of the most noteworthy cases of this kind occurred at Ennistymon. Captain Wynne, the Board of Works' inspector, writes a long complaint about the treatment he had received from the members of the Committee there; it being, amongst other things, he says, proposed that he should be kicked out of the Court-house, where the Committee was assembled. The well-disposed few, he writes, advised him to stay at Ennistymon for the night, or to take an escort of police with him, should he persevere in his intention of returning to Ennis; "but," he continues, "with my double gun, a rifle, and three cases of pistols, Mr. Gamble, myself, and Mr. Russell returned home. Mr. Russell was very anxious to see a Clare Relief Committee. He was indeed astonished. He said he would not have supposed matters were so bad."[150] There is a fine dash of the sensational in this. Mr. Russell's anxiety was very laudable, being evidently akin to that thirst for information which excites travellers like Captain Cook or Dr. Livingstone to seek an assembly or encampment of "natives" in some previously unexplored region; but there happened to be members of the Ennistymon Relief Committee in every respect the equals, and in some the superiors of Captain Wynne and Mr. Russell. Major M'Namara, one of the members for the county, thus gives his version of the affair to the Chief Secretary, Mr. Labouchere: "I feel it to be my duty towards myself and the constituency of this county, to state to you, as the organ of the Government, that I was present on Thursday at Ennistymon, when Mr. Wynne, an inspecting officer of the Board of Works, gave my colleague, Mr. O'Brien, in the presence of several magistrates and gentlemen assembled at the Ennistymon Relief Committee, the most unprovoked insult, by stating that he treated what Mr. O'Brien said with utter contempt, although Mr. O'Brien merely observed that certain letters containing what we all believed to be unfounded charges against the Liscannor Committee, afforded evidence of a vile conspiracy." Captain Wynne being called on by the authorities for an explanation, charged the gentry of Clare with putting their servants and dependants on the lists for public works without being proper objects for them, and that they were indignant with him because he took such persons off in great numbers. He did not, however, deny the insult Major M'Namara had charged him with giving his brother representative for the county, Mr. Cornelius O'Brien.[151]
As to the complaint made by Colonel Jones about the preparation of the lists, there does not seem to be much in it. Men of influence would naturally try to get their own people on the works in preference to others, but the efforts of such parties would be calculated to neutralize each other. The balloting for the lists is explainable on very legitimate grounds. Great as the extent of the Relief Works undoubtedly was, these works were lamentably short of the wants of the time. Let us suppose that five hundred men in a district were, every one, urgent cases for the Relief Works, and let us suppose employment could not be given to them all, a very common occurrence indeed, what more natural—what more just than to select by ballot those who were to be recommended? It is hard to see what else could be done, unless the system of influence and favoritism against which Colonel Jones complained, were adopted. The ballot, in short, would seem in many instances the only means of defeating that system. It might be said that five hundred equally pressing cases could not be found in the same district. Very true. But what was unfortunately found in many districts was, twice—thrice as many cases as there was employment for, the least urgent of which might be well pronounced very urgent. Such, for instance, was the fact in the whole county of Mayo.
After Skibbereen, Bantry, and Skull, there was scarcely any place in the South so famine-stricken as Ennistymon. The gentry of the place knew the real wants of the population, and pressed them on the Government officials; while they, on the other hand, in obedience to orders, felt bound to keep the labour lists as low as possible. To have reduced those lists always served an inspector at head-quarters. In such cases it is no wonder that unpleasant differences sometimes arose between Committees and inspectors. That Ennistymon was sorely tried appears from many communications to the Board of Works. A very short time after Captain Wynne's unpleasant quarrel with the Committee there, I find Mr. Millet, the officer, I suppose, who succeeded him, writing to the Board from that town, that he was besieged in his house by men trying to compel him to put them on the works, on which account he could not get out until half-past four o'clock in the evening. "Some of the men make a list," he writes, "and get it sent by the Committee whether men are wanting or not. The people think this is sufficient authority."[152] From this it seems clear that the works at Ennistymon were quite insufficient for the number of the destitute. The starving people wanted to get employment, whether men were wanting or not. What a complaint! Good Mr. Millet, the question with the people was not whether you required workmen or not, but it was, that they and their families were in the throes of death from want of food, and they saw no other way of getting it but by being employed on those works. Besides, your masters began by stating that the Public Works were not undertaken on account of their necessity or utility, but for the purpose of rescuing the people from famine, by giving them employment.[153]
The inspectors and the local Committees had such frequent differences, that the Board had it under serious consideration to dispense with those Committees altogether. This idea was abandoned, but the important privilege of issuing tickets for the Works was taken away from the Committees, by an order of the Board, bearing date the 9th of December. Besides the various other complaints forwarded to Dublin of the way in which tickets were issued by the Committees, one officer writes that he finds they had become a "saleable commodity" in the hands of the labourers. A man, he says, obtains a ticket, disposes of it for what he can get, and goes back for another, feeling sure that amongst the numberless applicants he would not be recognized as having been given one before. This practice, which was not and could not be carried on to any great extent, was but another proof that the works were insufficient to meet the demand for employment. Instead of the issue of tickets by Committees it was ruled by the Board, that the inspecting officer should furnish to the check clerk, for the engineer, a list of the men to be employed on any particular work.[154]
As before remarked, an undercurrent of feeling pervaded the minds of officials that there was not at all so much real distress in Ireland as the people pretended, and that there was a great deal more food in the country than there was said to be. This was sometimes openly asserted, but more frequently hinted at and insinuated in communications to the Board of Works and the Treasury. It was founded partly on prejudice, and partly on ignorance of the real state of affairs, which was far worse than the most anxious friends of the people asserted, as the event, unfortunately, too truly proved. That there was some deception and much idleness, in connection with the public works, cannot be doubted for a moment; such works being on a gigantic and ever increasing scale, effective supervision was impossible. The mistake of many of the officials, although not of all, was, that they regarded such exceptional things as an index to the general state of the country, built theories upon them, and sent those theories up to their superiors, which helped to make them close-handed and suspicious. Those officials did not, and, in many cases, could not sound the depths of misery into which the country had sunk; the people were dying of sheer starvation around them, whilst they were writing reports accusing them of exaggeration and idleness. What the Rev. Jeremiah Sheahan of Clenlure, in the County Cork, said of his parishioners was equally true in hundreds of other cases: "The most peaceable have died of want in their cabins. More than twelve have done so in the last six days."[155]
One of the proofs brought forward that the Irish people were not so badly off as they pretended—in fact that in many instances they were concealing their wealth, was, the increase of deposits in the Savings Banks. At a superficial glance there would appear to be much truth in this conclusion; but we must remember that the millions whom the potato blight left foodless, never, in the best of times, had anything to put in Savings' Banks. They planted their acre or half acre of potatoes, paid for it by their labour; they had thus raised a bare sufficiency of food; and so their year's operations began and ended. An official of the Irish Poor Law Board, Mr. Twistleton, gave a more elaborate and detailed answer to the Savings' Banks argument. Writing to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, under date of the 26th of December, he calls his attention to leaders in the Times and Morning Chronicle on the subject. One of those articles is remarkable, he says, since it "seemed to treat the increase in the deposits as a proof of successful swindling on the part of the Irish people, during the present year." So far from this being true, an increase, in Mr. Twistleton's opinion, might show "severe distress," inasmuch as when times begin to grow hard, deposits would increase for the following reasons:
1. People in employment, who were thoughtless before and did not deposit, would begin to be depositors in bad times.
2. People in employment, who were depositors before, would increase their deposits.
3. Thrifty people, who would at other times have gone into little speculations, would now be afraid to do so, and they would become depositors instead.
4. Persons of a higher class, say employers, in such times cease to be employers and become depositors.
An increase of deposits, Mr. Twistleton admits, may arise from prosperity; he only wishes to show that such increase is not always a certain sign of it. We know too well now, that the increase of deposits in some of our Savings' Banks during the Famine, was no sign whatever of prosperity; yet the journals named above, at once built upon the fact a theory most damaging to the existing destitution of our people, and most injurious to their moral character; basing this theory on one of those general principles of political economy, which often admits of grave exceptions, and sometimes breaks down utterly, when put to the test of practical experience.
Amongst the minor difficulties with which the Board of Works had to contend, were scarcity of silver, and the impossibility of having suitable tools manufactured in sufficient quantity. Gold and bank notes were of little or no use on pay day,—and where works were opened in wild out-of-the-way places, there was no opportunity of exchanging them for silver coin. Representations on this head having been made by the Inspectors, the "Comet," a government vessel, was sent to deliver as much silver as was required, to the various banks in the towns round the coast of Ireland; but this system was not long persevered in. Towards the end of October, Mr. Secretary Trevelyan announced that the Treasury would return to the ordinary mode of supply. The Bank of England, he informed the Board, is the appointed distributor of silver coin, which is supplied to it for that purpose by the Treasury; but as there might be some inconvenience in sending to England, the Board of Works are to apply to the Bank of Ireland, which is authorized to give silver coin when they have it, and when it is not in their own vaults, they will procure it for the Board from the Bank of England.[156] In this manner the want was met, but there is very little in the official correspondence about the channels through which it reached the various parts of the country where it was required; secrecy on the subject being, no doubt, thought necessary to avoid danger.
The public works projected and carried on by the Government to meet the distress of 1845-6 were brought to a close on the 15th of August of the latter year. The Treasury Minute, empowering the Board to begin anew public works in Ireland under the provisions of the Labour-rate Act, was published on the 31st of the same month; so that the officials whom the Board had added to their ordinary staff, when entrusted with the management of the previous public works, were, we may assume, still in their hands, when they received their new commission from the Treasury. Although numerous, they were miserably insufficient for the vast and terrible campaign now before them. Indeed, throughout those trying and marvellous times, a full supply of efficient officers the Board was never able to secure; the pressure was so great, the undertakings so numerous and extensive, that this is by no means matter for surprise. A few figures selected from their accounts and reports, will serve to show the sudden and extraordinary expansion of their operations.
The baronies to which loans had been issued up to the 31st of December, 1846, under the Labour-rate Act, numbered three hundred and twenty-two, and the total sum issued up to the same time was £999,661 4s. 2d.—a million of money, in round numbers. Besides this, many of those baronies (but not all) had obtained loans under previous Acts; whilst baronies, which had as yet made no application for loans under the Labour-rate Act, were also indebted to Government for money borrowed under previous Acts. The number of baronies which had taken out loans under the Acts of 1 Vic., cap. 21, and 9 and 10 Vic., cap. 124, was four hundred and twenty-four. The account between the baronies and the Government stood thus on the 31st of December, 1846:
| Loans to baronies under Acts passed previous to the Labour-rate Act |
£186,060 1 5 | |
| Grants | 229,464 8 0 | |
| Loans to baronies under the Labour-rate Act | 999,661 4 2 | |
| ----------------- | ||
| Making in all | £1,415,185 13 7 | |
£229,464 8s. 0d. being the amount of grants, and £1,185, 721 5s. 7d. being the amount of loans; besides which there was expended by the Board of Works under various drainage Acts, for the year ending 31st December, 1846, a sum of £110,022 14s. 4d.
In the week ending the 3rd of October, there were 20,000 persons employed on the public works in Ireland; in the week ending the 31st of the same month, there were over 114,000. In the very next week, the first week of November, there were 162,000 on the works; and in the week ending the 28th of November, the returns give the number as something over 285,000! A fortnight later, in a detailed account of the operations of the Board, supplied to the Treasury, this remarkable sentence occurs: "The works at present are in every county in Ireland, affording employment to more than three hundred thousand persons."[157] The increase went on rapidly through December. In the week ending the 5th of that month, there were 321,000 employed; and in the week which closed on the 26th, the extraordinary figure was 398,000![158]
The number of persons employed was greatest in Munster, and least in Ulster. At the beginning of December, they were thus distributed in the four Provinces: Ulster, 30,748; Leinster, 50,135; Connaught, 106,680; and Munster, 134,103. At the close of the month the same proportion was pretty fairly maintained, the numbers being: for Ulster, 45,487; for Leinster, 69,585; for Connaught, 119,946; and for Munster, 163,213. According to the Census of 1841, there were in Ulster 439,805 families; in Leinster, 362,134; in Connaught, 255,694; and in Munster, 415,154. From these data, the proportion between the number of persons employed on the relief works in each Province, and the population of that Province, stood thus at the close of the year 1846: in Ulster there was one labourer out of every nine and two-thirds families so employed; in Leinster there was one out of about every five and a quarter families; in Munster, one out of every two and a-half families; and in Connaught, one out of every two and about one-seventh families.
At the end of November, the number of employees superintending the public works were: 62 inspecting officers; 60 engineers and county surveyors; 4,021 overseers; 1,899 check clerks; 5 draftsmen; 54 clerks for correspondence; 50 clerks for accounts; 32 pay inspectors, and 425 pay clerks—making in all 6,913 officials, distributed over nine distinct departments.
The gross amount of wages rose, of course, in proportion to the numbers employed. At the end of October, the sum paid weekly was £61,000; at the end of November, £101,000; and for the week ending the 26th of December, £154,472.
The number of Relief Committees in operation throughout the country at the close of 1846, was about one thousand. Indeed, everything connected with the Public Works and the Famine tends to impress one with their gigantic proportions;—even the correspondence, the state of which is thus given by the Board in the middle of December: "The letters received averaged 800 a-day, exclusive of letters addressed to individual members of the Board, on public business; the number received on the last day of November was 2,000; to-day, (17th December,) two thousand five hundred."
All this notwithstanding, the Famine was but very partially stayed: on it went, deepening, widening, desolating, slaying, with the rapidity and certainty which marked the progress of its predecessor, the Blight. The numbers applying for work without being able to obtain it, were fearfully enormous. From a memorandum supplied by the Board of Works to Sir Randolph Routh, the head of the Commissariat Department, dated the 17th of December, we learn that the labourers then employed were about 350,000, whilst the number on Relief Lists (for employment) was about 500,000,—that is, there were 150,000 persons on the lists seeking work, who could not, or at least who did not, get it. Those 150,000 may be taken to represent at least half a million of starving people;—how many more were there at the moment, whose names never appeared on any list, except the death-roll!
FOOTNOTES:
[139] Commissariat Series of Blue Books, Correspondence, vol. I., pp. 80 and 83.
[140] Ib. p. 98.
[141] Morning Chronicle quoted in Freeman's Journal of October 7th, 1846. The Standard, commenting on a letter which appeared in the Times shortly before on the same subject, and written in the same spirit of hostility to the Irish people, says it would be "indecent" at any time; at present it is "intolerably offensive" and "greatly mischievous." "That the Irish are not naturally an idle race," continues the Standard, "every man may satisfy himself in London streets, and in the streets of all our great towns, where nearly all the most toilsome work is performed by Irish labourers."
[142] Letter in Commissariat Series of Blue Books, vol. I., p. 360.
[143] Ib. p. 349.
[144] Afterwards Sir Thomas Redington, Knt.
[145] Mr. Brett, County Surveyor of Mayo to the Board of Works. Board of Works Series of Blue Books, vol. L, p. 125.
[146] "Employment, with wages in cash is the general outcry."—Com. Gen. Hewitson to Mr. Trevelyan; Commissariat Series, p. 12.
[147] "Those at taskwork had fivepence, and in some cases as low as threepence per diem. In other cases, again, an opposite extreme existed, and as much as two shillings and twopence per diem was found in two instances to have been paid ... I fear there was not, in all cases, sufficient sympathy for the present sufferings of the poor—a feeling quite compatible with a firm and honest discharge of duty. This inflames the minds of the people against the system generally, and they become victims alike to their own intemperance, and the mismanagement of those placed over them. Throughout the country, in the majority of cases, disturbances are attributable wholly, or in a great degree, to such errors, overseers acting more as slave-drivers than as the messengers of benevolence to an afflicted but warm-hearted people."—A Twelvemonth's Residence in Ireland during the Famine and the Public Works, with suggestions to meet the coming crisis. By William Henry Smith, C.E., late conducting Engineer of Public Works. London, 1848; p. 94.
Again: "I much regretted leaving, and but for the circumstance of some imperative engagements recalling me to London, my intended sojourn of two or three months, which I originally named to the Commissioners, would probably have been prolonged even beyond what it eventually was, amongst a people whom I saw no reason to fear, even when using necessary severity, but on the contrary every reason to admire, from their strongly affectionate dispositions and resignation in deep suffering: they treated it as the will of God, and murmured, 'Thy will be done.'"—Ibid. p. 18.
[148] "In cases where disturbances arose in any one district, the works of the whole barony were suspended, inflicting injury upon all, the guilty and innocent indiscriminately."—Ibid. p. 93.
[149] See Note p. 203, from Mr. Smith's valuable book, A Twelvemonth's Residence in Ireland.
[150] Board of Works Series, vol. L, p. 53.
[151] On the 8th of February, 1847, during the debate on the "Poor Relief (Ireland) Bill," in the House of Commons, Lord Duncan said, "He found it stated in the Blue Book he had referred to, that the two members for Clare had put tenants upon the relief-rate who were paying them considerable rents. He trusted that they would be prepared to deny this serious imputation."
Major M'Namara rose and said:—"Sir—As one of the members for Clare, I beg to say, that every sentence in Captain Wynne's letter is a malicious falsehood. (Some sensation, amid which the hon. member resumed his sat)."
[152] He thus complains in italics: "None of the gentry will take our part except one." Board of Works Blue Books, vol. L, p. 352, Appendix.
[153] "The works under 9 and 10 Vic., c. 107, are sanctioned for sake of the relief and not for sake of the works themselves." Mr. Trevelyan to Lieut.-Colonel Jones, 5th October, 1846.
[154] The duty of check clerks was to visit the works frequently, to count the labourers, and prepare the pay lists.
[155] Memorial to Lord John Russell, Dec. 14, 1846.
[156] Letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, 28th October, 1846.
[157] Board of Works' Series of Blue Books, vol. L (50), p. 352.
[158] Another account makes it only 376,133. It is easy to see that perfect accuracy with regard to the number of persons employed on the works at any given time was, for obvious reasons, not to be attained. The figures given above from the official returns are, therefore, only an approximation to the truth, but they may be accepted as substantially correct.