CHAPTER XIV

THE FAMINE

Poverty in Ireland: The Potato Blight.-It has already been mentioned (Chap. XI) that during the earlier part of the nineteenth century a large proportion of the Irish people lived habitually on the verge of destitution. The food of about one-third of the population was almost exclusively potatoes, with which the better-off drank milk.

As the people thus depended for their subsistence on one crop alone, it may well be conceived with what dismay the appearance of a strange disease amongst the potatoes was observed in 1845. Within a few days fields which had been filled with promising green plants showed nothing but withered stalks, and under them roots reduced to a black and rotten mass. Luckily, the early crop had been raised before the disease appeared, so that the distress, although great, was less than it would otherwise have been.

When again the time for digging drew near, the peasants watched their little potato gardens with anxious eyes, dreading to see the withering of the leaves, and to notice the sickly smell which heralded the approach of the scourge. They had but too much reason for their fears. The potato crop of 1846 was practically a total failure; the blight was nearly everywhere; potatoes to the value of £16,000,000 were destroyed. The despairing people saw themselves menaced with the most terrible of all fates-death by hunger.

Patience of the People: Their Sufferings. It is true that the country produced that year a supply of food far more than sufficient to feed the population, but it was sold and exported. Ships coming into the ports of Ireland laden with meal and flour, given by the charity of foreign nations to maintain life and barely life in the starving peasants, met other ships bearing from her shores the corn which these very peasantry had sown and cultivated and reaped; the cattle which they had fed and tended. Lord John Russell, the English Minister, refused to close the ports. The starving people submitted and they died. Through villages where men, women and children were perishing of hunger went lines of carts laden with sacks of grain, but there was no attempt to seize them.

The famine grew and extended, affecting, first the labourers who

could find no work; the cottiers who had no savings. Then came the turn of the small farmers, who had relied on their patches of potatoes to support themselves and their families, and on their corn and their few head of cattle to pay the rent. The shopkeepers lost their customers; the servants were turned adrift by employers unable any longer to maintain them.

By the roadside the people lay down and died. Neighbours, entering a cabin, sometimes found within the corpses of all those who had dwelt there. Starving crowds made their way to the newly-built Workhouses, where the iron discipline parted husband from wife, parent from child ; often to meet no more on earth, for, in the overcrowded buildings the "famine fever" raged, and every morning a cart-load of corpses was conveyed to the great pit dug in the churchyard to receive them. Soon the Workhouses were full; admission had to be refused to the numbers who clamoured for it.

Those who could in any way collect the needed passage-money, fled in thousands across the Atlantic. The wretched emigrants were crowded, men, women and children, into vessels, many of which were old and unseaworthy, so that not a few foundered in mid-ocean, and crews and passengers perished. Amongst those who came on board were generally some already stricken with fever, and the disease spread like wildfire. In some instances more than a hundred corpses were flung overboard in the course of the voyage. The survivors carried the disease with them when they landed, and the hospitals of New York, Montreal, and many other American cities were soon crowded with cases, very large numbers of which proved fatal.

Relief Measures.-It was long before the English Government awoke to a full realisation of the magnitude of the disaster which had overtaken Ireland. When at last it was understood that the problem of how to feed some 3,000,000 persons had to be faced, so many formalities were gone through before any action was taken that, by the time that the relief schemes were got into working order, thousands of those for whose benefit they had been devised were already in their graves.

The schemes were, moreover, faulty and unsuitable, badly conceived and badly managed, uniting a minimum of advantage with a maximum of expense. Contrary to the advice of many experienced Irishmen, and notably of O'Connell, Relief Works on a large scale were started (March, 1846), half the expense of which was to be borne by Government and half by the local rates. The works undertaken were, and were intended to be, for the most part useless. Roads were constructed which led into the middle of bogs and stopped there; piers stretched out into the ocean, opposing themselves to the fury of the Atlantic billows, which, in a few years or less, swept them away.

In the payment of crowds of officials a great part of the available funds were frittered away. Persons not in need of relief obtained employment by means of "influence," while the destitute and deserving were often refused. In some very poor districts no more than one man out of ten or twelve was taken on the works. Everywhere there was fraud, waste and demoralisation. Meanwhile, the famine continued to claim its victims; the little children especially perishing in huge numbers.

Of the resident landlords many did their duty nobly. Some were ruined by the lavishness of their charity. On the other hand, there were surprising instances of heartlessness, amongst the absentees especially. There were parishes in which practically the whole population was reduced to a state of utter destitution, while the lord of the soil, dwelling in London or in Paris, subscribed not a penny for their relief, and merely grumbled that his rents were not remitted to him as usual. Perhaps even, he desired his agent to serve notices of eviction on the starving peasants, and to fling them out to die on the roadside.

After about a year of trial, the Government at last decided that the Relief Works were a mistake, and adopted the plan originally suggested by O'Connell of simply distributing food. Local Relief Committees were formed, and those wholly destitute were given rations of food free. The number relieved is stated to have been about 3,000,000 persons in all. This scheme cost to carry out hardly a third of what had been expended on the Relief Works, and certainly did far more for the relief of the people. If it had been adopted earlier, the lives of thousands would probably have been saved.

Private charity and associations formed for the purpose contributed generously to the relief of the starving Irish. Religious communities also did their share. In England, too, much was done, and Continental countries instituted collections. A section of the English Press indulged in sneers at the "begging" of the Irish; forgetting that, for this "begging," the misgovernment of their own country was mainly responsible, and also that the famine was so far artificial that, had the food grown in Ireland been conserved by the State, and its export forbidden, the needs of a population considerably larger than the actual one could have been amply provided for.

By the closing months of 1847 the distress had greatly lessened. The harvest was a very good one, and, before the end of the year, the famine might be regarded as over. Its effects, however, long remained.

Results of the Famine.--The classes which had been the employers of labour had been greatly impoverished. The smaller farmers had been obliged to sell their live-stock, their implements, often even their seedcorn. They had no money to replace these, or to carry on agricultural

operations as before. The labourers who had worked for them found themselves without means of subsistence. Wages sank, and many were willing to give their services in return for mere food. Public works were started, an Act of Parliament voting 1 millions for the purpose. Those of the exiles who had prospered in their new homes across the Atlantic sent large sums of money to their distressed relatives at home. Slowly the country began to recover. Other results of the famine there were, however, which did not so speedily pass; which, indeed, are still with us.

For over two centuries previous to 1846, the population of Ireland had been generally increasing; even the great famines of the eighteenth century had not checked, save very partially and temporarily, the prevailing tendency. During the years 1845, 1846 and 1847, probably at least a million persons had died of starvation or of disease resulting from it; more than as many had left the country, the vast majority going to the United States. The resultant diminution of population would, under ordinary circumstances, have been repaired in twenty years or less, but this was not to be. Owing to a variety of circumstances, the tide of emigration continued to flow. At length a custom was established. It became almost a matter of course that some members of every family amongst the small farmers and the labourers should, when eighteen or twenty years of age, cross the Atlantic to seek their fortunes. Those who went were generally the most vigorous and most intelligent of the sons and daughters. Very few of them ever returned to their native land; save, if they had prospered especially, for a passing visit. Owing chiefly to this constant drain, the population declined. Each census showed a considerable decrease. The 8,175,000 odd of 1841 had changed. in 1857 to about 6 millions. Thirty years later there were about 5,000,000 persons in Ireland. The last census (1911) shows not much more than 4 millions. The rate of decrease is however becoming less rapid, which is a hopeful sign.

The Irish emigrants who, during the famine years, left their native land for America, carried to their new homes a bitter hatred of England, to whose prejudices, injustices and, perhaps, deliberate malice and treachery they ascribed their sufferings. This feeling they have handed on to their descendants, and the Irish element in the United States has more than once influenced profoundly international relations and the trend of public feeling in regard to questions affecting the British Empire.

CHAPTER XV

THE "FORTY-EIGHT" MOVEMENT

THE end of the famine found the masses of the Irish people reduced in number and depressed in spirit. Their great leader was dead. A sea of suffering divided them from the days of Emancipation and of the Mass Meetings.

Different Views of the Two Sections of the Young Irelanders.On the Young Irelanders, on the other hand, the sight of the tortures and death of so many of their fellow-countrymen had produced a feeling of savage anger; for to the action and the inaction of the British Government they ascribed much or all of the horrors that had taken place. In the Confederation, though those who inclined to moderate counsels were much more numerous, yet the extremists, of whom Mitchel was the most prominent, had the advantage of possessing a definite programme. They desired total separation from England, and the setting up of an Irish Republic on the lines indicated by the men of '98. For the present, resistance should be offered by the refusal to pay excessive rents, by opposing the export of food and so forth; but, at the same time, arms should be collected, and the young men trained in the use of them, so that the country should be ready for an insurrection whenever an opportunity seemed to present itself.

To these views and to this programme the majority of the members of the Confederation refused to assent. Many, while unwilling to subscribe to the principle that force may never be resorted to in order to attain a political end, yet considered that to employ it in the Ireland of 1848 was neither justifiable nor expedient.

Though discouraged, they continued to believe that, by means of obstruction tactics in Parliament, Repeal or some other form of legislative independence could be attained, and this was the general policy of The Nation newspaper. From it Mitchel seceded, and founded a journal of much more extreme views, The United Irishman.

There were thus three distinct parties in Ireland to whom the title of Nationalist might be applied: the old Repealers, the Confederationists, and the party of Mitchel and The United Irishman. None of these