Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland

Front matter

LETTERS

TO

LORD JOHN RUSSELL, M.P.

Letter 1

LETTER I.

TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD JOHN RUSSELL,

&c. &c.

Auxiliary Measures should have accompanied the Poor-law—Waste Lands Reclamation the first—Requires Legislative Interference—Voluntary Exertions of Landlords not to be depended on.

My Lord,

Once more I take the liberty of addressing you on the condition of Ireland, and the legislative measures which appear to be imperatively necessary for its safety.

I am emboldened to do so, partly by the sanction which the course of events, and the policy recently pursued by your Lordship and the Legislature, with the almost unanimous assent of the public, have afforded to the views on this subject which I have for many years past put forward through every available channel (with a pertinacity which procured me for a time not a little opprobrium); partly by the conviction that much of the dreadful amount of calamity which has afflicted unhappy Ireland during the past year might have been avoided by an earlier adoption of the policy so recommended,—that, namely, of directing our Legislation to the cure of her physical and economical maladies rather than to those more fanciful grievances of an eccle or political character, to which the attention of Parliament was up to last year almost exclusively confined.

The remedies as yet applied—valuable as they are to the extent to which they go—cannot he supposed sufficient of themselves to overcome the enormous amount of social evils to he contended with. Further efforts must be made. And few days pass without threatening indications of the danger that must attend their longer postponement.

With the exception of the Vagrant Act, the Landed Property Act for sanctioning loans to a limited amount to landlords, and one or two others of minor importance, the Poor-law comprised the total of the measures passed in the last session of Parliament for the improvement of that horrible state of society which has long existed in Ireland; which Parliamentary Reports and Royal Commissions have more or less disclosed from time to time to the few who chose to attend to them, but which would have remained still unheeded by the directors of public affairs had not the potato blight at once raised its horrors to. an intolerable climax, and forced their consideration upon the Legislature.

Urgently as I have always pressed for a completion of the Poor-law, as the necessary foundation and commencement of social reform in Ireland, I have never failed to express the opinion that it would require other supplementary measures to be adopted at the same time, to enable it to be put into operation, as well as to assist in bringing about the great object in view, of securing to the bulk of the people of Ireland the means of living in that decent condition which civilization requires and ought to afford to them. If I held this opinion before the loss of the potato occurred, how much more strongly must I entertain it now, when the ordinary resources of the country have been so greatly lessened.? I say this, because my name having been often publicly coupled with the suggestion of such an amended Poor-law as was passed last session, it is due to myself that I should as publicly repeat the declaration that I have never put forward such a law as in itself a panacea for Ireland's ill, or even as capable of being effectually worked, without the accompaniment of other large and vigorous measures. Above all, at such a critical period as the present, with the awful prospect opening before us for the ensuing winter, it is impossible not to perceive that to leave Ireland to right herself by the bare unaided influence of the new Poor-law, would be to risk the failure of that law altogether; indeed, to play into the hands of its opponents, who will no doubt do all in their power to hamper and resist its operation; and thus, by discrediting it, to compromise its duration, and the realization of the vast benefits which, fairly carried out, it is calculated to produce.

Your Lordship yourself, in your opening speech on the state of Ireland last session, shewed that 4 you shared this opinion, by declaring your intention to submit to Parliament a series of other measures to accompany the Poor-law. Most of these, however, were either never introduced at all, or fell to the ground through the pressure of other business, and the necessity of an early dissolution of Parliament. Other prominent Members of the Legislature likewise proposed supplementary measures on a large scale-such as assistance to railroads and colonization—which met with much favour from portions of the public; all shewing the general concurrence of feeling that something else is required besides a Poor-law to tide Ireland over her present unexampled embarrassments, and elevate her people to that condition which her abundant natural resources give them a right to expect.

That aid might be usefully afforded in moderation to the development of a system of railways in Ireland I fully admit. The expediency of a permanent national system of colonization for the benefit of the three kingdoms I have always advocated. But, nevertheless, I cannot agree with those who put forward either or both of these schemes as in themselves capable of acting with sufficiently immediate, direct, and powerful effect upon the present circumstances of Ireland to warrant their being so prominently advocated as they have been, to the exclusion of other measures more appropriate, and more immediately applicable to the crisis we have to deal with.

The great object to be had in view is to create: employment and food for the people. Employment in the production of food, if possible. Surely, if ibis can be created at home, it is much better (for a thousand reasons, which I need not dwell on) than attempting to find it for them in America. Now the universal testimony of all who have studied the natural resources of Ireland assures us that there exist ample means within her own limits for employing and feeding her entire population—nay, several multiples of that number—of employing them in the production as well of the food they require as of other objects of home consumption or commercial demand.

Then, clearly, the first and most obvious of all measures, for the attainment of the great end I have mentioned, should be the removal of all obstructions that may exist to the development of these natural resources, and its direct encouragement by every legitimate means within the power of the Government or Legislature.

Several measures have been, suggested for this purpose. Some have been partly recommended to Parliament by yourself. Some minor measures of the kind have been, to a moderate extent, already enacted in the Drainage and Fisheries Acts.

The more important measures, however, to which I allude are,

1. A bill for facilitating the sale of. encumbered estates.

2. An improved landlord and tenant law.

3. A measure for commencing the immediate reclamation of the waste lands.

These three measures are almost inseparable, all are fitted to work well together, and it would be difficult to say which is most urgently required.

If I begin, therefore, by enforcing upon your Lordship's attention the last as the most pressing in urgency, it will be chiefly because I have been led myself to pay the greater consideration to it of late; having introduced, as you are aware, a bill for the purpose in 1846; and because the subject is involved, I believe, in fewer difficulties, and is capable of a more immediate and simple adjustment than either of the others. It has the great advantage, moreover, of having been already recommended to Parliament by yourself, as one of the leading measures required for the improvement of Ireland.

On this latter ground I hope I shall not be considered, in the arguments I may address to you in its favour, as presuming to indoctrinate you on the subject, but rather as endeavouring to draw the attention of the public to the facts and reasonings on which rest the views your Lordship has already declared, but which you have hitherto had no opportunity of supporting by argument. In the pressure of. other public business last session, I vainly attempted, more than once, to obtain a Parliamentary discussion of the question. Of this I have no reason to complain. The subject was naturally considered of too great moment to be effectively debated on the motion of an uninfluential un-official member. I trust I may be more successful in the attempt I am now making to bespeak the attention due to it.

Though anxious to avoid all appearance of overestimating the merits of the particular measure I am recommending, yet I cannot refrain from expressing astonishment at the degree to which the almost inexhaustible resources offered by the waste lands of Ireland for the productive employment of the wretched and unwillingly idle labourers of that country have been overlooked and neglected, no less by statesmen than individual proprietors.

They would seem to offer the most obvious and natural resource. It is not that attention has not been constantly called to them. For, not to mention the Irish Bog Commission Reports from 1809 to 1814, and the frequent and strong recommendations on the subject by successive Committees and Commissions since that date, it is scarcely possible to open a work upon Ireland, or a petition or memorial from any part of the country, complaining of distress and asking for relief, without finding mention made in it of the immense extent of waste and unproductive but improveable land that lies in the vicinity of the district whose inhabitants are idle for want of work, and starving for want of food I As one example amid hundreds, I take a report, dated the 6th instant, from the Chairman of the Relief Committee of the Monaminey Electoral Division, in the Union of Mallow, made to the Relief Commissioners. In it I find the following passage:—

"The non-resident proprietors possess the most valuable interest in nearly nine-tenths of the soil of our district. Their estates are capable of great improvement; and for the most part, indeed four-fifths of them, are wilderness, waste and unproductive; but which, if reclaimed and improved, as they might he by drainage, &c., would give ample employment and subsistence to the whole surplus population, and change this district from a region of distress and calamity into one of comparative wealth and prosperity."

And this is a district in which "the majority of the labouring population" have been during the last twelve months, or more, either fed in complete idleness at the expense of the community, or but nominally employed on useless roadworks, and must continue to be so uselessly fed or wastefully employed, during the next and ensuing years (unless they are to be allowed to starve), as the Report of the Relief Committee asserts, "without legislative interference"!

Yes! "without legislative interference—because the resident farmers are utterly unable to give employment on a large scale, and the proprietors, or nine-tenths of them, are absentees."

It is indeed hopeless to expect from the voluntary exertions of the landlords, whether absentee or resident, even under the stimulus of the threatened poor-rate, any adequate action in bringing to bear this shamefully wasted labour upon the wasted land in its proximity.

The landlords generally cannot be expected to possess the energy, if they even possessed the power, or could obtain the means, for effecting this to anything like the extent or with the promptitude that is required. In some cases, no doubt, the effort will be made; and by help of the Drainage and the Landed Property Improvement Acts, something will be accomplished. But in the great majority of cases, the same inertness, from whatever source arising, that has hitherto prevented their bringing into productive use the improveable portions of their estates, will continue still to operate, and the state of things described above in the division of Monaminey, and which is a fair sample of numerous other districts in the west and south of Ireland, will continue unabated.

Even of those landlords who are roused, by the pressure of the times and the impending poor-rate, to action, the majority look for salvation to other means—to the eviction of their numerous tenantry, the clearing of their estates from the seemingly superfluous population by emigration or ejectment. Such landlords are utterly incredulous when they are told that the population on their estates is not really redundant, and that by a re-arrangement of their farms—by an active reclamation of their waste land—by encouraging their tenants by liberal arrangements as to tenure or aid, to bring forth their little hoards of hidden capital, or to set to work with their own strong sinews to drain and otherwise improve the lands they occupy, or the surrounding waste—by acting, in short, as several enterprising landlords, such as Lord George Hill, Captain Kennedy, and others have acted, they might enable all to live decently off the produce of the land, and improve their own rental at the same time. They wholly refuse their belief in this; and that they will act upon the recommendation is entirely out of the question.

And yet nothing can be more true, or more capable of demonstration, than the assertion that there is no real redundancy of population generally in Ireland. Nay, that even in the most distressed and apparently overcrowded districts a wise and prudent management of their natural resources night find profitable employment for all, to the great advantage of the proprietors themselves, and the still greater benefit of the people and the public which is so deeply interested in this result. But I am exceeding all due limits, and must reserve my proofs of this assertion to another occasion. Meantime, I remain, my Lord,

Your Lordship's very obedient servant, G. Poulett Scrope.

London, Sept. 23.

Letter 2

LETTER II.

Ireland not over-peopled—Proofs of this upon every scale from a Townland to a County Statistics of Mayo—Waste Land and Waste Labour generally found together—Proofs that Reclamation of Bog will Pay—Lancashire Bogs—Irish Bogs—Private Enterprise not to be relied on in Ireland—Immediate Action indispensable.

My Lord,

I have ventured to assert, contrary to the general persuasion, that Ireland is by no means over- peopled; nay, that even her seemingly most over-crowded districts might easily, by wise arrangements, be made to support in comfort their entire population. I proceed to the proof of this assertion.

I will first take an extreme instance on a small scale. In the course of last spring a memorial was circulated among Members of Parliament, signed by the Chairman of the Board of Guardians of the Union of Limerick, Mr. John Thomas Devitt, containing a statement in detail of the condition of the population of the single townland of Moanduff, in the county of Limerick, which measures less than 150 acres, and is inhabited by more than 300 souls, or above two to the acre I Being a rural townland, the inhabitants of which have to live (if they can) off its produce, it is, therefore, one of the strongest examples to be met with of a redundant population. As one consequence, the estate is eaten up by its pauper inhabitants. No rents or rates can be collected. And the memorial gives the names in full of some thirty or forty families inhabiting this true pauper-warren, who implore to be assisted to emigrate, or to be removed somewhere at the expense of somebody, to prevent their continuing to starve one another. Mr. Devitt, however, while he supports their prayer, in his "desire to catch at anything that may offer a palliative to their misfortunes," goes on to say (and I beg your Lordship to mark the words)—"Yet I hold that we have an ample field at home for the employment of what is now deemed a superabundant population. The very district I am describing possesses within itself mountain bog, and marsh (with an inexhaustible supply of limestone), more than enough, if brought into cultivation, to sustain five, aye ten times its present amount of population."

I refer next to the case of a wider district; for example, the considerable estate of Sir Charles Style, in County Donegal, managed by Capt. Kennedy, whose valuable evidence on the subject was given in detail before the Devon Commission. Here, " by lettings of waste land during the last four years no less than 172 families have obtained a permanent means of support, and there still remain 3628 acres of similar land disposable for an extension of the same principle." "The original cost of the reclamation is refunded in three years, and £1s. 12. 9d. per acre cleared on the average by the transaction," in addition to an increase of permanent value equal to 7s. per acre. The expenditure on these and other permanent improvements of the estate is, in the opinion of Mr. Kennedy, certain to pay a profit of at least ten per cent, on an outlay of £5. per acre. And the result of what has been already done is that the same population which was formerly crowded on a few tracts of old arable land, in numbers far beyond what its produce could maintain, is now comfortably located, each man on his own conveniently-arranged farm. Actually a want of hands is now experienced for the cultivation of a district, half of whose inhabitants were previously idle through the greater part of the year from deficiency of employment!—(See Digest, p. 586, &c.)

I proceed next to the case of an entire county. I take the one which of all the counties of Ireland, is generally referred to as the most over-peopled, the most incapable of affording a maintenance to its population—the county of Mayo. Mayo obtained a shocking pre-eminence last year in the starvation of its inhabitants. It was from Mayo chiefly that Liverpool was invaded by hordes of fevered and famished outcasts. It was in Mayo that ejectments and civil bill processes, having clearance for their object, were most numerous. It is in Mayo of all Irish counties, that the population will be found to have suffered most from these combined causes, when the dreadful reckoning of last year's is made up. Those who deny that Ireland can maintain her people, usually adduce as their strongest proof the statistics of the county of Mayo.

But what are these statistics? The population of Mayo in 1841 was under 400,000. The acreage of cultivated land is, in round numbers, 500,000, or four persons to five acres, which is at the rate of about six acres of cultivated land to each family. The population being almost entirely agricultural, this, no doubt, appears tolerably close packing. But what is the entire area of the county? No less than 1,300,000 acres; 800,000 acres being still uncultivated; of which very nearly 500,000 acres are declared by Mr. Griffith to be reclaimable with profit I Were these wastes, therefore, reclaimed, the proportion of cultivated land to the population would be doubled. Instead of six acres to each family on the average, there would be twelve acres, besides the run of four or five acres more of rough mountain or bog for their cattle and turf digging. Then it is evident that even Mayo itself is far from being over-peopled in reference to its natural capacity for maintaining an agricultural population. It is only the land now arable that is really overstocked. And this chiefly because it is cultivated in the most barbarous methods, rundale and joint-occupancy being general; drainage and green crops almost unknown! Hear the evidence of the Dean of Killala, given before the Devon Commission: —

73. "Is there sufficient employment for the people in the cultivation of the arable land?—No, it does not employ them half the year.

74. "But there would be employment for them in reclaiming the waste?—Yes, more than ample if there was encouragement given. Where I reside there are many thousand acres waste, because it would not be let at a moderate rent.

75. "Is the land which you term waste capable of being made productive, if a fair rent was fixed on it?—Yes, every acre of it."

But the landowners of Mayo prefer driving their people out of the country, to England or America^ or starving them out of existence, to encouraging them by long leases and assistance to settle on their waste lands at home. This is why Mayo appears so over-peopled, when the contrary is, or ought to be, the fact.

And let me here remark upon the fallacy often put forward by those who insist on the impossibility of a county situated like Mayo maintaining its population. They compare the numbers of that population with the net valuation of the land now in (wretched) cultivation,—e.g. 400,000 souls with a rental of under £300,000. And allowing say £3. a head for each individual, see, they exclaim, it will take four times the entire rental of Mayo to maintain its population only on the footing of paupers!

Of coarse, this is the best possible reason for their being set to work to maintain themselves (as I have shewn they may so easily do) by improved cultivation of the soil of the country,—a process which, instead of diminishing its net rental, would, as Mr. Kennedy proves by facts, vastly increase it.

So, again, of the county of Monaghan. Mr. W. Steuart Trench, who has for years been extensively engaged in reclaiming waste land there, is asked,

12. "You have alluded to emigration to America. Do you think the locating the superabundant population upon waste mountain tracts in Ireland would have an equally beneficial effect?" His reply is, "Certainly; at least for a vast period of years to come."

I might quote similar facts and opinions in regard to other counties, especially Galway, Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Donegal, &c. Indeed it is a singular and striking fact, that it is precisely those districts of the west and south of Ireland where the population is most wretched and destitute of employment, which most abound in improveable waste land. The useless land, requiring only labour to produce abundance, generally lies almost at the doors of the idle thousands, who are starving for want of work. In the words of the address of the Council of the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society, for 1845, "In every district may be seen tracts on which labour might be employed with the utmost advantage, and in all those districts are to be found masses of people in want of food, or of wages to purchase food."

But to all this there are objectors who oppose the doubt whether the reclamation of these wastes would really pay, and the doubt is rested on the very fact that they have not been reclaimed. "Private enterprise," it is said, "would already have effected their reclamation if it were profitable." And to private enterprise they would still leave the process of effecting it. Such seems to be the feeling of many, who on this plausible primâ facie objection refuse to listen to any proposal for the interference of the Legislature in the matter, and forgetful of the momentous importance of the subject, treat with scorn and ridicule the notion of cultivating Irish bogs!

Yet those same incredulous venters of bad jokes against this proposal, have probably often admired, as they were whirled over Chatmoss on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the magnificent crops of every kind of produce which are now yearly raised upon a black bog worse in its unreclaimed state than three-fourths of the Irish bogs.

Mr. Baines, writing from Barton Grange, in Lancashire, "a house standing in the midst of a tract of 2,000 acres of peat moss, within a few years past as wet and barren as any morass in Ireland, but now covered with luxuriant crops," estimates the sum expended in reclaiming the Lancashire piosses at about ten pounds per acre on the average "all spent in manual labour," at the high wages of that county, which are more than double the ordidinary wages of labour in Ireland. I have the details before me of Mr. Wilson France's expenditure in reclaiming 1,000 acres of Rawcliffe moss, near Garstang, likewise in Lancashire, which amounted to £9,000. This outlay now pays ten per cent.; and the reclaimed bog gives constant employment throughout the year to seventy labourers at high wages.

Why cannot the similar peat mosses of Ireland, where wages are so much lower, be reclaimed with at least equal profit?

But, in fact, Mr. Griffiths, who superintended personally the Government Survey of Ireland, and has been employed all his life in the valuation and survey of the lands, both cultivated and waste of the island, unquestionably the highest attainable authority on the subject, estimates the number of acres of waste bog and mountain land in Ireland, that maybe profitably reclaimed, at four millions; one million and a half for arable purposes, two and a half millions of acres for pasture. Professor Kane's estimate of improvable waste is still higher, namely, 4,600,000 acres. Who has the right to sneer down, or dispute in any degree, these high authorities?

But any one who honestly and fairly wishes for information of a detailed and practical character on the subject will find ample evidence in the report of the Devon Commission, of instances innumerable. of successful and very profitable reclamation of waste in Ireland, both bog and mountain, on both a large and a small scale. Some of this evidence I printed last year, in the hope of overcoming the fatal incredulity which checked the birth of your Lordship's embryo measure. Some of it may be seen in Lord Devon's recently printed Digest. I cannot venture to quote any portion in this place. It is enough to state that in most cases the cost of reclamation was entirely repaid by the second year's crop; in some even by that of the first year. In all, after repayment in full of the expense of reclaiming, land was left worth from ten to sixty shillings an acre, which had previously been almost valueless—at the utmost worth from one shilling to two or three.

But then it is said, "If so much profit can be derived from the reclamation of waste land, private enterprise will be sure to undertake and accomplish it.*' And this argument is conclusive with many against any proposed Legislative interference.

This indeed would be a full and sufficient answer in England! But the case of Ireland is anomalous, and her condition wholly abnormal. The ordinary rules which teach us to leave profitable works of this kind to private enterprise are inapplicable to a country in the circumstances which Ireland exhibits at present. The very fact that these wastes, though cultivable with profit, have remained uncultivated, except here and there in a few instances, prove this assertion. It is not merely the insecurity of life and property prevailing there—nor the want of capital alone—nor the want of sufficiently secure tenure, or of a permanent interest—nor the embarrassments of proprietors—nor their habitual indolence and inertness—nor absenteeism. But it is the combination of all these impediments, and others besides, which has occasioned the neglect of such available means for enriching landlord, tenant, and labourer, if properly used. No doubt these impediments are capable of removal, and will be more or less, some or all of them, in course of time removed. But not in sufficient time to effect that great change in the existing relations between the numbers of the labouring population and the demand for their labour, which is immediately indispensable to avert ruin and revolution.

What is imperatively wanted is some means for securing immediate employment of a productive character, and such, if possible, as will directly increase the growth of food in the country, for many thousands of able-bodied men, who, during the next winter and spring (and probably for several following seasons) will, in very many localities, be left wholly unemployed by private enterprise. The waste lands— which are scattered very generally over the surface of the island, but especially abound, as I have already remarked, in the poorest districts, where labour is most redundant—offer you this, and the waste lands alone. Further useless expenditure of public money on the road-works of last year wilt hardly be thought of. Some roads indeed may require to be finished. In some districts works of drainage, or the lowering of river levels, may be usefully set about. But in very many localities, where large numbers of able-bodied destitute persons will have to be either fed in idleness (a system which it is difficult to believe will be any longer permitted), or employed on some public work, these resources will be wanting. While the waste lands in the vicinity, if power be lodged with the proper authorities to appropriate to the purpose such portions of them as are most conveniently applicable to it, will afford precisely the required means of employment, of a character superior in every respect to any other, and fulfilling all the necessary conditions—remunerative—productive of an increase of food—capable of indefinite expansion or contraction—most likely to elicit the industry and energies of the labourers employed; especially if it be a part of the scheme (as it should be) to hold forth to some of them the prospect of being enabled at some time, by industry and good conduct, to rent or purchase portions of the waste they may reclaim.

But my limits are long since exhausted. I must defer to another opportunity the description of the measure I venture to recommend for this purpose.

I remain, my Lord, Your Lordship's very obedient servant, G. Poulett Scrope.

London, Sept. 27

Letter 3

LETTER III.

Bill proposed in 1846 for Appropriation and Reclamation of Waste Lands—Its Effects now had it been then passed—Stopped hy Irish Landlords—Are they always to prevail?—Waste land should be the Domain of the State—Objection to "Government turning Farmer" considered—Work must be found—Where better than on Wastes?—Authorities in favour—Mr. Brownlow's Bill 1828—Poor Commission of 1834-6—Land Commission 1846-7—Digest of Evidence 1847.