XLIII. 1847. be administered, not in money, but in food, whether the CHAP. applicants who could not be taken in were able-bodied, thrown out of work, or not. The great and important principles established by this Act were, that the administering relief to the destitute was rendered compulsory, and enforced by public boards and commissioners appointed for the purpose, and that the relief was to be extended to out-door applicants and the able-bodied unable to find employment. And of the necessity of this change in the administration of the Poor Laws, no better proof can be furnished than was afforded by the barony of Skibbereen, in the south of Ireland, where nearly the whole population, consisting of eleven thousand persons, perished of famine, and the deaths in the workhouses were a hundred and forty in a single month; and yet the rated rental of the Union was £80,000 a-year, the real rental £100,000, and the rate of assessment only 6d. on the pound, while the average of all England was 1s. 7d.! With truth did Lord John Russell say, in introducing Ann. Reg. this bill, that "in Ireland there was a very great deal of 43; Parl. charity, but it was not of the rich to the poor, but of the 102, 103. poor to the very poor."1 Under authority of this Act, and of the Temporary Relief Act, relief was administered, with a most unsparing hand, in the year 1847;* and the rapid rise in the sums * EXPENDED ON THE POOR IN IRELAND, AND NUMBERS RELIEVED BY UNIONS. 1 1847, 42, Deb.lxxxix. XLIII. 1847. 41. Immense relief af forded unin Ireland. der this Act CHAP. levied as poor-rates in that year afforded incontestable evidence of the scandalous neglect and parsimony with which it had formerly been administered. Depots of corn and meal were formed, relief committees established, mills and ovens erected, huge boilers, specially cast for the purpose, sent over from England, and large supplies of clothing provided. In July 1847, the system reached its highest point; for "3,020,712 persons received separate rations, of whom 2,265,535 were adults, and 755,178 were children." Three millions of human beings, a larger population than the whole inhabitants of Holland, fed by public charity! History affords no parallel to so magnificent a display of human beneficence. The supplies of all sorts imported into the country were on a corresponding scale. The quantity of all sorts of grain imported in the first six months of 1847 was 2,849,847 tons, equal to the support of six millions of people for a whole year. The price of Indian corn, of which the greater part of this immense importation consisted, fell in consequence so rapidly, that while, in the end of February, it was at £19 per ton, by the middle of August it had sunk to £7, 10s. The price of ordinary provisions, though higher than usual, was by no means extraordinary, and not nearly so high as it has been in several years since, when no scarcity whatever was experienced. That of wheat varied from 54s. to 66s. the quarter; the average of the whole year was 62s. 9d.* That of the preceding year had been 54s. 8d., that of the succeeding was 50s. 6d. Happily the next harvest was abundant, and the potato crop free of disease. By the middle of August food was 1 Nicholls' generally abundant, and labour in demand. Relief out Law, 318, of the workhouse was discontinued in one-half of the Unions, and it ceased altogether, under the Temporary Relief Act, on the 12th of September. 1 Irish Poor 319-Irish Crisis, 219, * The average of the harvest years, September 1847 to September 1848, was much higher; it was 72s., and for some weeks it was as high as 110s., and even 120s. XLIII. indigent relieved. Although, however, the circumstances of the country CHAP. were so ameliorated that the extraordinary support admi- 1847. nistered under the Temporary Relief Act ceased, yet 42. the pressure, especially for out-door relief, was only there- Ratio of by rendered the greater upon the Poor - Law Unions. persons It soon became excessive upon them, and the utmost difficulty was experienced in separating the deserving from the undeserving, and preventing nearly the whole working classes falling as a burden on the poor-rates. The workhouse test was first applied, but it soon failed, from the impossibility of finding accommodation in these gloomy abodes for the multitudes which thronged their gates. The labour test also failed, from the experienced difficulty of getting any profitable work out of the crowds of persons, many of them old or infirm, who required to be employed upon public works. Provisions gratuitously distributed were found, in too many instances, to be exchanged for drink: the shape in which they were found to be most beneficial was when cooked, in the form of porridge or "stirabout," because it became soon sour, if not consumed on the spot, or near it. In spite of every disposition to resist it, out-door relief on a very large scale was fairly forced upon the Poor-Law Commissioners; and the number of indigent persons so relieved increased in an alarming ratio when the Temporary Relief Act came to an end in August 1847. The number of these reached its highest point in March 1848, when the in-door paupers were 140,536, and the out-door 703,762, making together 844,298 persons living on eleemosynary aid. This was independent of 200,000 children at the same time provided with food and clothing by the British Association-making in all 1,044,298 supported at one time by sioners' Republic or private charity, being above an eighth part of port, 1848, the entire population of the Island.1 And the Commis- Nicholls, 346; sioners, in their report on this year, say that "they cannot British Asdoubt that of this number a large proportion are by this 41. means, and this means alone, daily preserved from death 1 Commis 127, 131; Report of sociation, VOL. VII. S XLIII. CHAP. through want of food." The history of the world will be sought in vain for a parallel to a visitation of Providence of such magnitude so energetically met by the efforts of public and private beneficence. 1847. 43. tality of this period. Notwithstanding all these exertions, the number of poor Great mor- persons who died in Ireland during the calamitous years when the famine or its effects lasted, either from starvation or the diseases consequent on insufficient or unwholesome nourishment, was deplorably great. From the tables published by the Census Commissioners, in their deeply interesting sixth report, it appears that the average mortality of Ireland before the dearth was 78,000 annually. From the time, however, when the potato famine began, the number of deaths rapidly increased, and in the year 1847 they reached their highest point, being 249,335. The total deaths from the beginning of 1846, when the scarcity began, to the end of 1850, when its effects may be said to have ended, so far as mortality is concerned, were 985,000, from which, if we deduct 390,000 for the probable average mortality of the period, there will remain 595,000, which may fairly be ascribed to the famine, or the diseases consequent in its train.* A dreadful loss of life, and perhaps unparalleled in recent times in European story, yet not a quarter of what it would in all probability have been, had not Providence granted an Deaths in five years, two first being of famine, 985,366 Deduct average deaths of three years preceding, 78,000 a-year, 390,000 Died of the famine and its effects, 595,366 -Census Commissioners' General Report, No. VI., p. 51. XLIII. abundant harvest and crop untainted with disease in CHAP. 1847, and had not the British government and people met the visitation, when at its worst, with Christian beneficence and a noble patriotic spirit. 1847. 44. pecuniary in Great Britain. And truly the pecuniary sacrifices and efforts made in Great Britain to mitigate the calamity were on a scale Immense proportioned to its magnitude, and altogether unparalleled efforts made in the previous history of the world. When disease and fever appeared, as they did with fearful virulence in the beginning of 1848, three hundred hospitals and dispensaries were established entirely at the expense of Government, which afforded accommodation to twenty thousand patients, and administered out-door relief to above double the number for a very long period. The total sums advanced by the British government to Ireland in aid of the rates, or as a free gift, in 1846 and 1847, were £7,132,268, of which £3,754,739 was to be repaid in ten years, and the remaining £3,377,529 was a free gift. To meet these immense demands upon the Treasury, which were felt as the more distressing, as, from the violence of the monetary crisis which simultaneously set in in Great Britain, the public revenue was becoming very embarrassed, a loan of £8,000,000 was authorised by Parliament, and borrowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at 3 per cent. These immense public grants were independent of £470,000 raised by private subscription, one-sixth of which was applied to Scotland, and of £168,000 collected by the "Society of Friends," and distributed for the most part in clothing and provisions. Thus, between public grants and private subscriptions, nearly EIGHT MILLIONS STERLING were, in two years, bestowed by Great Britain upon Ireland—an example of magnificent liberality unparalleled in any former age or country, Nicholls, and forming not the least honourable feature in its long 320, 321; and glorious annals. The portion of the grant which 110. was nominally to be repaid has since been converted, Irish Crisis, |