HISTORY OF EUROPE.

CHAPTER XX.

IRELAND FROM 1822 TO THE MONETARY CRISIS OF

DECEMBER 1825.

XX.

1822.

nell's account

WHILE Great Britain, in these alternate phases of CHAP. feverish prosperity and lasting depression, was undergoing the usual fate of a commercial country in which the 1. currency is made to rise or fall with the influx or disap- Mr O'Conpearance of the precious metals, there existed, within a of the Irish few hours' sail of its shores, an island, of which the follow- peasantry. ing account was, at the same time, given by no common man, and no inexperienced observer: "The state of the lower orders in Ireland," said Mr O'Connell, “is such, that it is astonishing to me how they preserve health, and, above all, how they retain cheerfulness, under the total privation of anything like comfort, and the existence of a state of things that the inferior animals would scarcely endure; and which they do not endure in this country. Their houses are not even called houses, and they ought not to be; they are called cabins: they are built of mud, and covered partly with thatch, and partly with a surface which they call scraws, but which is utterly insufficient to keep out the rain. In these abodes there is nothing that can be called furniture; it is a luxury to have a box to put anything into; it is a luxury to have

VOL. IV.

A

XX.

1822.

:

On

CHAP. what they call a dresser for laying a plate upon they generally have little beyond a cast-metal pot, a milk tub, which they call a keeler, over which they put a wicker basket, in order to throw the potatoes, water and all, into the basket, that the water should run into this keeler. The entire family sleep in the same apartment,—they call it a room; there is some division between it and the part where the fire is. They have seldom any bedsteads; and as to covering for their beds, they have nothing but straw, and very few blankets in the mountain districts. In general, they sleep in their clothes; there is not one in ten who has a blanket. Their diet is equally wretched. It consists, except on the sea-coast, of potatoes and water during the greater part of the year, and of potatoes and sour milk during the remainder: they use some salt with their potatoes, when they have nothing but water. the sea-coast they get fish; the children repair to the shore, and the women and they get various kinds of fish. The ordinary rate of wages is fourpence a-day; and during the distress of 1822, the peasantry were glad to work for twopence a-day. Yet, even at this low rate of wages, there is no possibility of finding constant employment for the population. The consequence is, that every man cultivates potatoes, which is the food of his own family, and thus land becomes absolutely necessary for every Irish 1 MrO'Con- peasant. He cultivates that food, and he makes the rent, nell's Evi in general, by feeding the pig, as well as his own family, Lords' Re- upon the same food, and, if it be not wrong to call it so, at the same table, upon the same spot. By that pig he makes his rent, besides any chance that he gets of daily labour." 1

dence,

port on Ireland,

App. 74, 76.

2.

the condi

tion of the

The greater part of the poor of Ireland, at this period, Statistics of obtained their subsistence by begging; and to such an extent was this carried that the average expenditure of each family on the begging poor was estimated, by competent observers, at a penny a-day, which, for a million

Irish poor.

XX.

1822.

of families, would amount to £1,500,000 a-year. Inde- CHAP. pendent of an indefinite sum levied every year by emigrant poor from Ireland upon Great Britain, there was raised, for the support of the destitute at home, though there were no poor-rates, on residents alone, £2,250,000, being half the public revenue, double the tithes, a fourth of the land-rent. The poor-rate of England, at its highest amount of £7,500,000, was only an eighth of the public revenue, a seventh of the land-rent assessed to it, and a half of the whole tithes in the hands of the clergy and the lay impropriators. This extraordinary and anomalous condition of the Irish poor is readily accounted for when their social situation at this time is taken into consideration. “There is no means of employment," said Mr Nimmo, in 1823, "for an Irish peasant, nor any certainty that he has the means of existence for a single year, but by getting possession of a portion of land, on which he can plant potatoes. In consequence of the increase of population, which is not checked by the misery which prevails, the competition for land has attained to something like the competition for provisions in a besieged town, or in a ship that is out at sea; and as there is no check to the demands by those who may possess the land, it has risen to a height far above its real value, or beyond what it is possible to extract from it under the management of the unfortunate peasants by whom it is cultivated. Add to this, that the land is almost always let by the proprietor to a large tenant, or middleman, who sub-lets it often through several gradations of sub-tenants to the actual cultivator, and each of these may distrain the crop and stocking for any arrears of 1 Mr Nimthe extravagant rent charged on him-a privilege which, mo's Eviby making the peasants generally liable for others' debts, Lords' Rerenders the growth of agricultural capital wholly impos- 131. sible." 1

Under this system there existed no practical check on

dence,

port, 129,

XX.

1822.

3.

Ruinous

effects of

of the landlord.

CHAP. the power of the landlord. Whenever he pleased, or was himself pressed, he could extract the last shilling out of the unhappy cultivators beyond what could be produced by the rude culture of the land. Thus the lower orders in the power Ireland could never at this period acquire anything like property; they were always in a state of beggary; and the landlord, or the middleman, who was the principal person in those cases, on the least reverse of prices, which disabled the actual cultivator from paying what he had previously promised, had it in his power to seize, and actually did seize, his cow, his bed, his potatoes, and everything he had in the world. Any considerable fall of prices was thus the signal of utter ruin to the great body of Irish cultivators, and thus-as the country was entirely agricultural of the whole people. "I have known," said Mr Nimmo, "a cow sold for a few shillings; nobody would buy, and the driver bought it himself. In the town of Kilkee, in the county of Clare, when I was passing through it in the time of the distress in the year 1822, the people were in a group on the side of the pound, receiving meal in the way of charity; and at the same time the pound was full of cattle. Of course, the milk of these cattle would have been worth something if it could have been obtained, but no one could buy it."1

1 Mr Nim

mo's EviLords' Re

dence,

port, 132, 134.

4.

and redun

tion in the

country.

What aggravated to a most distressing degree the Immense general misery, and rendered almost nugatory all atdant popula- tempts for its relief, was the prodigious and dailyincreasing population which overspread the country. By the census of 1821, the inhabitants were 6,801,827; and so rapid was the rate of this increase, that in 1841 this number had increased to 8,196,597,2 although emigration had, in the interim, drained off a considerable number, and at least half a million had in that interval settled in Great Britain, where their daily-increasing numbers had come seriously to affect the employment of the people, and was a great cause of the general distress. Artificial wants.

2 Porter, 3d edit., p. 9.

XX.

1822.

and prudence in the conduct of life, the great restraints CHAP. on the principle of increase in well-regulated societies, had no influence on the Irish peasantry, who were almost always married before they were eighteen, and often grandfathers at thirty-four. This rapid growth of population operated in a pernicious manner on the condition of the people in two ways. In the first place, it lowered, by excessive competition, the wages of labour, which were everywhere brought down to the lowest point consistent with physical existence. In the next place, it proportionally raised, by the same competition, the rent of land. When a farmer, who had a few acres, had his children to portion out in the world, having never any money, what he invariably did was, to portion out his little piece of land among them. Thus every marriage was immediately followed by a splitting of farms, and a multiplication of indigent cultivators; and as their numbers soon became excessive, and the possession of land was the sole means Mr Blackof subsistence, the competition for these became so as to raise the rents to an extravagant height, often beyond what the land could by possibility pay. peasant did not care what he bid, provided he got of the land; and the landlords, charmed with the pect of six or seven guineas an acre for potato land Ireland, ii. which was not worth three, shut their eyes to the inevi- field's Iretable result of such a state of things upon the habits and 776. social condition of the people.1

1

burn's Evi

Lords' Re

great dence, far port, 154, The enham's hold Ireland, pros-Young's in

158; New

58, 59;

198; Wake

land, ii.

5.

to Ireland.

To assuage the misery of the country, the beneficence of England had flowed in mighty streams, both from the Munificent public treasury and from private sources, but without the English producing any sensible effect in its prevention. Independent of the munificent subscription of £350,000 already mentioned, which was raised in a few weeks in Great 2 Ante, c. x. Britain, and sent over to Ireland in the famine of spring 1823, the permanent grants of Government to the charities of Ireland were immense. In Dublin alone, the

$122.