XLIII.

1847.

people despair of being able either to pay their rents or CHAP. cultivate their land, so as to be able to maintain themselves and their families. The crop of every kind in 1847 was so fine, that by orders of Government a public thanksgiving was returned for it; and the seasons from that time to 1856, with the exception of 1853, were favourable, as is proved by the prices-current of those years, quoted below, which were, till 1852, when the gold came in, extremely low. Some more general and lasting influence must therefore be looked for, if we would discover the real cause of this prodigious exodus, amounting, between 1846 and 1856, to 1,800,000, and which for several years rendered population declining in the whole empire. And if we look at the immense importation of foreign grain throughout the period, the fall in the exports of Irish during the same years, the prices-current of agricultural produce, and the proved diminution of Irish cereal cultivation, we shall have no difficulty in seeing what the cause really was.*

* PRICES AND IMPORTS OF GRAIN, AND IRISH EXPORTS AND
ACRES IN GRAIN FROM 1845 To 1856.

-TOOKE On Prices, v. 462; PORTER, 345; Census Report, No. V. p. 54; Agricultural Report, 1852, v.

This very interesting table speaks to the eye, and speaks volumes. As regularly as the importation of foreign grain, and especially wheat, increased, did the Irish exports of grain sink, and the emigrants from that country increase. When the importation of foreign grain had turned 10,000,000 quarters annually, the export of Irish grain sunk a half, and the emigration turned 200,000.

CHAP.

XLIII.

It is not to be imagined, from all that has been said, that the Irish people are destitute of charitable feelings, or that 1847. the poor were driven out of the country by the voluntary Voluntary failure of the industrial and affluent classes to maintain Ireland, and them. There is no country in the world in which the

49.

relief in

causes of

its small amount.

poor are more kind and humane to each other. Previous
to the introduction of the Poor Laws in 1837, the desti-
tute, who exceeded 2,000,000, were maintained almost
entirely in this way, and their support, it was computed,
cost the industrious poor £1,500,000 a-year. If the land-
owners were apparently deficient in that duty, it is to be
ascribed mainly to the unhappy, distracted state of the
country, which rendered absenteeism almost unavoidable
with all who had the means of leaving it; and the enor-
mous amount of their mortgages, the interests of which
absorbed £9,000,000 out of the £13,000,000 rental.
This prodigious burden was mainly owing to the circum-
stances that the habits of expenditure were contracted
during the high prices of the war, and the debt remained
under the halved rental produced by the contraction of
the currency during the peace. But the effect of it, of
course, was that the whole public burdens fell on the clear
rental of £4,000,000; and when the poor-rates amount-
ed, as they did in 1847, to £2,000,000, they absorbed
half, and in many of the Unions the whole, of the land-
lord's income. Amidst this scene of reckless extravagance
and industrial suffering, there is one noble and redeeming
feature, which should be recorded to the eternal honour of
the Irish character. How destitute soever the great majo-
rity of the emigrants may have been when they first set
out, the strength of the domestic affections among them
was such, that from the time when the great exodus began,
the sums they remitted to bring their relations out to
the land of promise were so large, that they rose from
£460,000 in 1848, to £1,350,000 in 1853.
To the
immense fund thus provided by the strenuous industry
and undying affection of the Irish poor on transatlantic

XLIII.

1847.

shores, for their relations left at home, the magnitude of CHAP. the continued stream of emigration which has since that time left the Irish shores, and the wonderful subsequent improvement wrought in the country, are mainly to be ascribed.*

50.

on the Irish

famine.

Such are the details of the Irish famine of 1846, and its effects in subsequent years, the most terrible calamity Reflections in modern times, and which, in the rapidity with which it mowed down the human race, greatly exceeded anything recorded in the annals either of war or pestilence. Even the Moscow retreat, or the siege of Sebastopol, occasioned while they lasted a much less destruction of mankind. If to this we add the astonishing fact of an emigration having taken place from the country to the extent of above 2,000,000 souls in eight years after, it may safely be affirmed that the calamity, both in present magnitude and ultimate importance, is unparalleled in authentic history. It demonstrates, in the most striking manner, the enormous extent of the social evils under which Ireland laboured, when Providence adopted such awful means to remedy them, and strikingly illustrates the limited extent of human vision on the subject, when narrowed by party ambition. All that the collected wisdom of the nation in the House of Commons, could suggest during forty years had been to admit forty landless Catholics into Parliament, give every starving peasant with £5 a-year a municipal vote, and take £200,000 a-year from the Church to devote it to the purposes of secular education. But if both governors

* SUMS REMITTED HOME BY IRISH EMIGRANTS FROM 1848 To 1854.

1848, 1849,

1850,

1851,

1852,

1853,

1854,

£460,000

540,000

957,000

990,000

1,250,000

1,349,000

1,234,000

-Irish Census, Sixth Report, lvi. ; and MR EVERETT's Letter to Lord MALMES

BURY, Dec. 1, 1852.

XLIII.

1847.

CHAP. and governed were grievously at fault in the conduct of Irish affairs before the visitation of Providence fell upon them, yet it must be added, to their, honour that both nobly redeemed their errors when it arrived. Never did Government meet a great national calamity in a more intrepid and generous spirit; never did the distant and the affluent aid them more nobly in their efforts to mitigate it; never did the sufferers bear their pains with more patience and magnanimity, or evince a more magnificent proof of domestic affection, than in the efforts made by such as survived to extricate their relatives from the scene of woe. If the former period, whether as regards the rulers or their subjects, makes us blush, the present makes us proud of human nature; and in this, as in so many other pages of history, we may discern the intentions of Providence in what appear at first sight its darkest dispensations, and learn that it is sometimes well for nations as well as individuals to be in affliction. It will be the pleasing duty of the annalist in a future chapter to show that the virtues elicited during this fiery trial were not without their reward even in this world, and to trace, in the rapid rise of Irish prosperity in subsequent years, the direct consequences of the sufferings undergone during a period when the country seemed crushed to the earth in affliction.

51.

mine in

at this pe

riod.

Ireland was not the only country by which the potato Potato fa- blight was experienced at this period. Scotland also shared Scotland largely, though not so universally, in the same calamity. Symptoms of the disease appeared in the autumn of 1846, but not so generally as to excite any serious alarm; but in August 1847 they became so common as to prove that nearly the entire crop, especially in the Highlands and Western Islands, had perished. As the potato furnished food for at least two-sevenths of the entire population of the country, and that the most destitute portion of it, this afforded the most serious ground for alarm, the more especially as, from the simultaneous occurrence of a still

XLIII.

1847.

greater calamity in Ireland, there was little chance of any CHAP. effective support being received from England. But in this extremity Scotland, though left to her own resources, was true, as she had so often been in former periods of her history, to herself. She did not demean herself by supplication, nor humble herself by lamentation. She neither asked for nor received succour from the Government of her richer and more powerful neighbour. She boldly looked the calamity in the face, and herself set about combating it.

52.

in Scotland

it.

Subscriptions to relieve the destitution in the Western Highlands were immediately set on foot in all parts of the Means taken country that in Glasgow alone, in a few weeks, exceeded to combat £30,000. Corn and meal were instantly bought up and despatched by sea to the afflicted quarters; committees were appointed both to collect subscriptions in the richer, and distribute the succours in the famishing districts. Fortunately the poor-law machinery, established two years before over the whole country, afforded the means both of collecting information as to the wants of the people and distributing the charity. The landholders generally acted in the most liberal and patriotic manner, and the advances made under the Drainage Act for Great Britain, the greater part of which the Scotch had the sense to take up for themselves, afforded in many places both the means of employing the poor in the mean time and permanently improving the country. The assessment for the poorrate was largely augmented, in proportion to the necessities of the case; and the splendid sum of £77,683 remitted by the British Association, being one-sixth of the sum they had collected, was thankfully received, and proved of essential service. By these means, aided by two depots for the sale of corn established by Government in