CHAPTER LXX

THE GREAT FAMINE

THE Great Famine, usually known as the famine of '47, really began in '45, with the blighting and failure of the potato crop, the people's chief means of sustenance. The loss that year amounted to nine million pounds sterling. A worse failure occurred in '46. But by far the worst was in '47, when the suffering reached its climax. The terrible famine of '47 and '48 proved to be the most stunning blow that the Irish nation received in a century. It is calculated that about a million people died—either of direct starvation, or of the diseases introduced by the famine, and about another million fled to foreign lands between '46 and '50.1

The sufferings caused by the very first blight, that of '45, were such that Lord Brougham said: "They surpass anything on the page of Thucydides-on the canvass of Poussin-in the dismal chant of Dante." It was a catastrophe that demanded the immediate, energetic, most powerful, help of a country's government. And it is interesting to note just how those who insisted on governing this country met the terrible crisis.

Naturally, of course, the first thing that people in power should do, for a country facing starvation, was to forbid all export of foodstuffs from Ireland. But, as Englishmen, having this source of supply cut off, would then have to pay a higher price for their corn, the British Government, "could not interfere with the natural course of trade." "But," the Viceroy Lord Heytesbury, reassured the dying ones, "there is no cause for alarm-the Government is carefully watching the course of events!"

To relieve the acute situation, their first step was to send over a shipload of scientists to study the cause of the potato failure. Their second step was to bring in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland. The third step was after they had voted two hundred thousand pounds to beautify London's Battersea Park-to vote one hundred

1 The Government returns of emigration for those years are inaccurate. There were hundreds of little schooners sailing out of almost every bay on the west coast, weighted down with human cargo. of which no record was ever kept.

thousand pounds for the relief of the two million Irish people (out of a total of eight million) who were suffering keen distress-which was the handsome help of twelve pence each person to tide a starving population over till the next harvest !2

As they were this year unable to pay rack rent to the absentee landlord, thousands of the starving ones were thrown out, and other thousands threatened to be thrown out of their wretched homes, to perish on the roadside. In consequence frenzied poor men shot a few of the vilest of the land-agents and landlords. At the opening of the Parliament in January, '46, Queen Victoria, addressing her "Lords and Gentlemen" observed, with deep regret, the fearful situation in Ireland-adding-"It will be our duty to consider whether any measure can be devised, calculated to give peace and protection for life there."

The simple reader, who knows not the way of Britain with Ireland, would here naturally come to the conclusion that the tenderhearted gentlewoman, full of sympathy for the thousands who were dying of starvation, and for the hundreds of thousands who were daily in danger of dying, was directing her Parliament to try to save a multitude of lives. But this would be a mistaken conclusion. She was here referring to the handful of Anglo-Irish landlords and agents, whose lives must be solicitously protected whilst, in trying times, they were endeavouring to hack and hew their usual pound of flesh from the walking skeletons in the bogs and mountains of Ireland. Some of these thoughtless ones were in danger of slaying a landlord rather than see him slay their famished wife, or hollow-eyed children. Hence the good Queen advised her "Lords and Gentlemen" that a stringent Coercion Bill was needed, and must be provided to relieve the unfortunate conditions prevailing in Ireland.3

2 When the Irish Parliamentary representatives presented the claim of their suffering country for assistance from the common Exchequer to which their country contributed millions every year, the British view of their action was fairly well voiced by the London Times: "There would be something highly ludicrous in the impudence with which Irish legislators claim English assistance if the circumstances by which they enforced their claims were not of the most pitiable kind. The contrast between insolent menace and humble supplication reminds one forcibly of the Irish characters so popular with the dramatists of the last century who hectored through three acts of intermittent brogue, bullying the husband and making love to the wife."

3 Among other benefits which this excellent Bill proposed to confer upon the suffering people, it rendered liable to fourteen years' transportation any one found out of his own house after the sun set in the evening and before it arose next morning. In the operation of this beneficial Act many things occurred, that to an outsider might seem strange. For instance, John Mitchel records such happenings as that of a quiet, respectable farmer, who on a summer evening, when the sun was near setting, strolled a short way down the road to pay his working-men,

In the following year, when the distress grew worse, the Government granted the Labour Rate Act to Ireland-permitting the Irish people to tax themselves to give employment to those of them who were worse off than the others. And over and above this, there was contributed from the Imperial Exchequer a hundred thousand pounds for districts that were too utterly destitute to raise any money under the Act. This Act and Government grant materially alleviated such polite poverty as existed among the AngloIrish class in Ireland-going chiefly in salaries to many thousands of these people employed as "Commissioners," "Superintendents of work," "Inspectors of work," and so forth-a huge staff who were paid a large part of the small fund for the purpose of administering the little that remained.*

What did remain was paid in half wages to starving men for doing work that was unprofitable. This latter was a specific Government condition embodied in the Act. The work must be unprofitable, non-productive. The money, for instance, could not be used to build Irish railways-because that would be a discrimination against English railway builders. It could not be used either for seeding the lands, or reclaiming the millions of acres of bog-because that would be giving the Irish farmer an unfair ad

and walking back when the sun had just sunk-though it was still broad day light-was arrested for heinous crime against "the Queen and Constitution of this realm." At that time the tailor and the shoemaker would, in the late autumn and early winter, be taken by the big farmers to their houses, and kept there a week, to make shoes and clothes for the family. One of these tailors was arrested, on an evening, as he sat at his work in a big farmer's house--where of course he was spending his nights as well as his days. The villain had literally transgressed British law. He has been "out of his house" between sunset and sunrise! Fourteen years' transportation taught this dangerous criminal that British law was made to be respected.

Then, too, the Government was not only alert to guard the sacred rights of life-English landlords' lives, but also the sacred rights of property-English landlords' property. Mitchel, in his "Last Conquest," describes how he was called upon to defend poor starving creatures on charges of trespass because they had gone down to gather seaweed below high-water mark-and poor farmers who were indicted for robbery, because going forth into the sea's realm-where Britain decrees that the British landlords' rights reach-they had taken limestone from a rock that was uncovered at low-water only, and burnt it upon their lands, to try to force a little crop. The Cork Examiner of that period says: "Our town presents nothing but a moving mass of military and police. conveying to and from the court-house crowds of famine culprits. I attended the court for a few hours this day. The dock was crowded with the prisoners, not one of whom, when called up for trial, was able to support himself in front of the dock. The sentence of the court was received by each prisoner with apparent satisfaction. Even transportation appeared to many to be a relaxation from their sufferings."

In the beginning of '47 there were ten thousand Government servants under salary for administering what portion of the relief fund their salaries did not consume. "Some of these gentlemen," says Mitchel, "got more pay than an American Secretary of State."

vantage over his English brother, and might enable him to undersell the latter in the market. It could only be used-and only was used for such benevolent purpose as cutting down roads where there was no hill, filling in roads where there was no hollow, building roads where nobody ever travelled-having them start anywhere and end nowhere-erecting bridges where no rivers flowed, and piers where a ship's sail was never seen. There are still to be viewed in various parts of Ireland, some of these monuments to British Government wisdom, and solicitude-roads that are only frequented by the daisy and harebell, and broken bridges and tumble-down piers that stood in solitude for years, before sinking in despair.

Public committees had been formed in various countries (including England) and hundreds of thousands of pounds were collected for the relief of Irish distress-even the Sultan of Turkey contributing to the starving Irish subjects that the great British Government could not afford to care for. With the money thus collected, shiploads of Indian corn were imported to Ireland from America. As there were in the country hundreds of thousands of people in want for food, who yet would not accept it in charity, it was proposed that imported corn should be sold to these people at reduced price-but the paternal Government forbade the irregular procedure. It was not in accordance with the laws of political economy, and "there must be no interference with the natural course of trade." For the same reason the Government still persistently refused to close the Irish ports against export of foodstuffs. And it was noted that a ship, laden with relief corn from America, sailing into an Irish harbour, would meet several ships laden with Irish foodstuffs, sailing out!

At length, when conditions reached their most fearful stage, in '47, and that the uncoffined dead were being buried in trenches,5 and the world was expressing itself as appalled at the conditions, the Government advanced a loan of ten million pounds, one-half to be expended on public works, the other half for outdoor relief. And this carried with it the helpful proviso that no destitute farmer could benefit from that windfall unless he had first given up to the landlord all his farm except a quarter of an acre.

The extent of the want in Ireland, in the spring of '47, can be

5 Some Poor Law Unions, unable to provide coffins for all who died destitute, hit on the expedient of using one coffin with a hinged bottom. Corpses were often simply wrapped in straw for burial. Some were buried even without the covering of straw. People driving after night sometimes drove over the dead who had dropped on the road and there lay unburied. Dogs, pigs, rats, were fre quently found feasting on the neglected dead.

judged from the fact that in March there were no less than 730,000 heads of families engaged on relief works-almost three-quarters of a million men, who, for sake of earning about six-pence a day, forsook all work upon the land. Thus, the sagacious statesmanship of the English ruler in Ireland, sought to relieve want caused by shortage of crops, by paying men sixpence a day to refrain from raising further crops and do work that was guaranteed by the Government expert not to produce anything for the country's aid.

But to relieve acute distress among the poor absentee landlords in the gambling hells of Europe, the Government gladly contributed troops to aid the Absentee's agent and bailiffs in seizing the sheep, the cow, the oats, the furniture, of the starving people. Sometimes to seize the potatoes that had been donated to them to seed their land.

But in these terrible times there were thousands of poor people who, having nothing left to seize, were by the landlord thrown out with their families on the roadside. These people had two resources open to them. Having no house of their own to be in between sunset and sunrise (for even the workhouses and hospitals were long since filled) they could take advantage of the Coercion Act, and get transported for their crime. Or, their cases were thoughtfully met by the Vagrancy Act which punished by imprisonment with hard labour any one found idly wandering without visible means of support.

As the famine sufferings increased, the Government met the more acute situation by proposing a renewal of the Disarming Act, increase of police, and several other British remedies.

True, the Government now shipped in Indian corn. But there was more corn went out of the country in one month than the Government sent in, in a year. And during this time English traders

To some who do not know the quaint ways of English laws with Irish people this will seem to be a joke. Alas, it is a grim truth. Many of the broken and broken-hearted creatures-of the half-million people evicted in one year-were sent to the prison stone-piles in punishment for vagrancy.

In this black year of '47 in which the potato crop failed a third time-a total failure this time-in which far more than half a million died of famine and of plague begotten by famine, and far more than a quarter million fled the country, Larcom (the Government Commissioner) estimated at forty-five million pounds the value of the food-crops produced. The greater portion of these crops crossed the channel-sold to satisfy the landlord and tax-gatherer. "Travellers were often appalled when they came upon some lonely village by the western coast, with the people all skeletons on their own hearths. . . . Priests, after going their rounds all day, administering Extreme Unction, often themselves went supperless to bed." And the Protestant clergy, too, be it noted, worked nobly for the sufferers. One brave Protestant minister took off his shirt, and put it on a fever patient. Some few signally noble-hearted ones among the landlords lived on Indian meal, in order to spare more for the starving-some of whom were eating grass and turf.