Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848

Examples are not wanting in Ireland itself to show the feasibility of this plan of relief to its poverty. "Mr Stuart French, of Monaghan, has reclaimed three hundred acres of mountain-land in four years, and raised its value from two shillings to thirty-five shillings per acre. The entire cost was repaid by the crops in three years. Mr Reade, of Wood-Park, county Galway, reclaimed five hundred acres of moorland and mountain at a cost of from £10 to £17 per acre, which was repaid by the crop of the second year, and the land, formerly worth two shillings and sixpence per acre, now pays twenty shillings per acre annually. This same Mr Reade, who has made the experiment on a large scale, and can speak from experience, says, there are 128,000 acres of such reclaimable wastes in Galway, where thousands have died during the past year, and many are now (April 1848) dragging out a miserable and useless existence. Mr Coulthurst, in county Cork, reclaimed a bog farm for which the tenants could not pay four shillings per acre. The drainage and reclamation cost £16 per acre, which was repaid before the fifth year, and the land is now rated at the poor-law valuation at £4 per acre. Sir Charles Sligh, Bart., and his amiable lady, have effected great good on their estate in Donegal, by locating the surplus population on the waste lands, and assisting the poor farmers to cultivate them. This English family gave up their rents for two years, and permanent employment has been found for six times as many persons as the land could formerly support; and its produce has been multiplied tenfold."4

It may be asked, why are these examples not followed? and doubts have been thrown out as to the accuracy of the statements of the able inquirers who have reported on the Irish waste lands, because they are not actually reclaimed. One simple reason has been stated by Lord Cloncurry, viz., that "arterial drainage on a large scale is indispensable as a commencement, cutting through many properties, deepening river-beds, perhaps to a considerable distance. Hence government alone can set on foot such undertakings on that comprehensive scale, and with that engineering skill, which is necessary."5 But a more general answer will suggest itself to any one who knows the general habits and circumstances of the great Irish proprietors. Many of them have not the habits of life or the knowledge which would enable them to superintend or judge of such improvements; and many more have not the means of encountering even the small expense which will be requisite in their commencement. Further, it is always to be observed, that, in the present state of the country, another mode of greatly and rapidly improving the value of their estates, without any such outlay either of skill or capital, always presents itself to the Irish proprietors – viz., that of clearing their estates of the cottar population, and throwing them into large farms, to be cultivated in the improved English or Scotch style of agriculture – or even into pasture; the objection to which is simply that, in that case, they would not require for their cultivation more than a third part of the population now located on them, and, therefore, that this is a system relieving the landlords only, and greatly aggravating all the evils which make the management of Ireland an object of concern to the nation at large.

This leads us to consider the question, which is the most momentous of any that can be proposed on this topic – If the plan of locating the idle hands of Ireland on her waste lands is not adopted, what other resource exists for the relief of the redundant population, which is, as we have stated, so enormous and unquestionable a burden on England and Scotland? It is clear that, in Ireland itself, as the law now stands, two plans only are thought of, and if government does not bring forward a third plan, one or other of these must quickly predominate. Either the main body of the landlords, who are known to be quite incredulous as to any improvements being effected by their cottar tenants, must be allowed to pursue their own system of keeping them on hand —i. e., only as tenants-at-will – and clearing their lands of them as rapidly as possible, with a view to large farms or sheep-pastures; or else that system must be adopted, which is demanded generally by the tenantry and by the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, of giving to the tenants one form or other of what has been called "fixity of tenure" —i. e., such security against a ruinous rise of rent, or dispossession, as may induce them to exert all their energies, and sometimes to bring forth concealed capital, for the improvement of the soil, and, in many instances, for the reclamation of wastes; – this party maintaining that the main cause of the generally wretched condition of the cottars, and imperfect cultivation of the soil, is not the indolence of the people, but their knowledge that they are constantly liable to a rise of rent, or expulsion from their farms, immediately on its being perceived that they are effecting any improvement.

These are the two remedies for the existing state of matters in Ireland, which these two parties wish to apply, and unless a third plan be adopted by government, one or other of these must quickly predominate. Now, let us consider the results to be expected in either case.

If government does nothing, but merely protects, by an armed force, the proprietors and their agents from the fury of the people, the system of clearance of the estates will be more and more acted on; and we must reckon on one-half or even two-thirds of the still existing population on most of the estates being turned adrift. No doubt the poor-law will make these outcasts a heavy burden on the proprietors; and it is held by many, and very probably with justice, that, instead of turning their cottar tenants adrift, and then having to deal with them as unemployed poor, if they were to accord to them such a tenant-right as exists generally, as a voluntary compact, in Ulster, they might expect the poor-rate to be so much less, the cultivation so to improve and extend, and the payment of rents to become gradually so much more punctual, that their own condition would be gradually amended. But it is certain that this is not the view that they take of their own position at this moment, nor that on which they will voluntarily act; for if it were, the tenant-right, or at least the practice of granting long leases, would be as general in other parts of Ireland as it now is in Ulster, or in Scotland.

This being so, the poor-law, giving the right to relief to the ejected poor, must either be enforced or not enforced. If it is enforced, and no other resource for the relief of those people is presented, there is every prospect of many of the unions becoming bankrupt, and the proprietors being involved in the ruin. We know that this consummation is already proclaimed by many of the proprietors in Ireland and their friends as nigh at hand; and the only advantage which in that case can be said to be derived from the poor-rate is, that the ruin and degradation, otherwise confined to the lower ranks, will have extended, as in justice they should, to every class of society. Again, if the poor-law is not enforced, and the redundant population is thrown, as heretofore, on its own resources, we have first, that res pessimi exempli– a law openly violated – that the rich may escape its inflictions, and the poor be deprived of its protection; and secondly, we have no other prospect before us but a continuance and increase of all that misery, vagrancy, famine, and pestilence in Ireland, and all that extension of these evils to the great towns of England and Scotland, which have made our connexion with Ireland the bane of this country.

On the other hand, if the legislature were to adopt the only effectual means of restraining the clearances by the landlords —i. e., to grant the desired boon of fixity of tenure, at the existing rent, to all the tenants – or even absolutely require leases of a certain duration to be given to them all – it cannot be denied that they would commit the grave political offence of extensive interference not only with portions of private property, (which, all admit, may be justly taken, on reasonable compensation, for public objects,) but with the whole income of many individuals. This offence is of such a character, that we can hardly expect to see a measure involving it ever adopted by any legislature in this country; and it must be confessed that, however well adapted such a measure may be to the exigency of the present time in Ireland, the precedent thereby established would go far to justify many acts, as regards other possessions of property, which can hardly be called by any other name than spoliation.

These are the considerations which lead us to believe that, in the present circumstances of Ireland – a population having grown up in the absence of any poor-law – with which a law, enacted tardily, and at a most disastrous period, cannot be expected to cope – the newly-acquired right to existence of the Irish poor must be aided and supported – as was always desired by Mr P. Scrope, and all the more enlightened advocates of that measure, and at one time proposed by the present Premier – by another measure, on the part of government, whereby employment may be procured for them, the resources of the country improved, and the proprietors taught, by example much more effectually than they can ever be by precept, how these duties, now legally imposed on them for the benefit of the poor, may be made to consist with improvement of their own position.

What is often said of the impolicy of government coming into the market for the purchase and improvement of lands in Ireland, as deterring private speculators from coming forward, and checking the influx of really productive capital, would be a very fair allegation, if the object in view were merely the economical one of raising the value of the land and the income of the landed proprietors. But this is not adverting to the real difficulty of the case, the existence of a redundant population– the result of the causes above explained, but now possessing a legal right to existence in the country—much more numerous than is required for that improved cultivation of the soil, which would be the most obviously and rapidly profitable to the proprietors. The problem for solution is, not simply how to enrich the country, but how to enrich it without exterminating any part of this redundant population. This is no object for private speculators, looking only to pounds, shillings, and pence; but it is, or should be, an object of paramount importance to the government of a country, to whom even an increase of wealth ought to be desirable, not for its own sake, but because it is the essential condition, and therefore the exponent, of an extension of human happiness; to whom, therefore, the lives of the poor ought to be at least as sacred as the purses of the proprietors and capitalists in Ireland.

Taking this view of the duty of government, we may cordially acquiesce in the statement of Mr Thornton, quoted and approved by Mill, that the great want of Ireland at this moment is, not the influx of capital (as it might be if we were at liberty to disregard the lives of the people, and look only to the wealth of the country,) but the protection and encouragement of its industry, and such an increase of its capital only as may be consistent with, or even produced by, an increase of the labour of all its able-bodied inhabitants. And it is because it is evident that the existing proprietors cannot in general perceive how this is to be done, or command the means of doing it, that the interference of government appears to be the only possible means of rescuing that unhappy country from misery.

Many high authorities are fully convinced that the improvement of the cultivated portion of the land, and even of the rents of the proprietors, may be equally well effected by the petite culture, by keeping the cottars in their places, and merely giving them instruction as to cultivation, and security for a fair share of the profits of the improvements they effect – as by clearing the land of them, and enlarging the farms. All who have studied the subject, seem to be agreed as to the very general "almost superhuman" industry of peasant proprietors, in all parts of the world, and among all races of men. "The idea of property, however," says Mr Mill, "does not necessarily imply that there should be no rent, any more than that there should be no taxes. It merely implies, that the rent should be a fixed charge, not liable to be raised against the possessor by his own improvements, or by the will of a landlord." "Give a man a secure possession of a bleak rock," says Arthur Young, "and he will turn it into a garden; give him only a nine-years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert." It is accordingly stated by this author, and by others, as the result of experience, that long leases, at a low rent, will effect wonders, even in Ireland; and in proof of this, Mr Mill refers to the example of a company, called the Irish Waste Land Improvement Society, who have undertaken improvements in Ireland, not by creating large farms, and cultivating them by hind labour, but by farms only of a size sufficient for a single family – giving, however, small advances of capital, and a temporary security of tenure by thirty-one years' leases. Col. Robinson, the manager of this Society, reports of their operations in 1845, – "These 245 tenants and their families have, by spade husbandry, reclaimed and brought into cultivation 1032 acres of land, previously unproductive waste, on which they raised, last year, crops valued at £3896, being the proportion of £15, 18s. each tenant; and their live stock, now on the estates, is valued, according to present prices in the neighbouring markets, at £4162, being at the rate of £16, 19s. for each – £1304, a sum equal to their present annual rent, having been added since February 1844;" and he adds, "By the statistical tables and returns, it is proved that the tenants, in general, improve their little farms, and increase their cultivation and crops, in nearly direct proportion to the number of available working persons of both sexes of which their families consist." The occupants of larger farms than 20 acres, he states to be "a class too often deficient in the enduring industry indispensable for the successful prosecution of mountain improvements."6 Mr Mill's general conclusion is, that "under the new Irish Poor-Law there are no means for the landlords for escaping ruin," (as has been stated above,) "unless, by some potent stimulant to the industrial energies of the people, they can largely increase the produce of agriculture; and since there is no stimulant available so potent as a permanent interest in the soil, either the present landlords, or their English mortgagees, to whom the estates of the more impoverished landowners must inevitably pass, would find it to their advantage, if not to grant at once this permanent interest to their tenants, at least to hold out to them, the prospect of acquiring it."7 To the same purpose, Sir Robert Kane states his belief that "there are not people enough in Ireland for the small-farm system" if it were carried on in the manner which the experience of other countries has shown to be practicable, and which requires only a certain amount of instruction and of encouragement to the tenants, to enable them to raise at least as much produce, and pay a better rent, than large farms would do.8 But although this appears a very probable, as well as hopeful view, of the position of the cultivated parts of Ireland, and of the prospects of individual proprietors undertaking to reclaim the wastes, yet it is obvious that we can have no security for the landlords taking this view of their position, and that it would be a very questionable stretch of power to compel them to act upon it. And what we wish particularly to urge is, that it is not necessary to come to any decision on the disputed question of the grand or petite culture as applicable to the cultivated districts of Ireland, because the waste lands fortunately furnish a resource which is clear addition to the existing means of maintaining the agricultural population, available at a small preliminary expense only, which, we maintain, ought to be borne by the government of this country. The redundant population being thus disposed of, all the landlords will be left at liberty to try whatever modes of improving their estates they may think fit – subject always to this salutary check, that if by any of these modes they render an additional part of the population redundant, they will be compelled, by the poor-law, to pay more or less for them.

The digest of Lord Devon's report shows, that there were in Ireland, when it was drawn up, "326,089 occupiers of land, whose holdings were under eight acres each, and that the consolidation of these small holdings, up to eight acres, would require the removal of about 192,363 families; but, then, the first class of improvable waste lands in Ireland (on which we wish to see them employed) would furnish to all those removed families locations of about eight acres each – or, the first and second qualities of improvable waste land, taken together, would furnish them with locations of twenty acres each." These facts seem fully sufficient to justify Mr Mill's conclusion, (formerly quoted,) that if we "suppose such a number drafted off to a state of independence and comfort, together with a very moderate additional relief by emigration, the introduction of English capital and farming over the remaining surface of Ireland (at least where the proprietors may think it necessary) would at once cease to be chimerical."9 At least we feel justified by these facts, by all the statements here made, and by the authorities by whom this plan has been recommended, in demanding that a measure which promises so much relief, not only to the miseries of Ireland, but to the various philanthropic designs in this country – which are so continually thwarted by the influx of Irish poor – should be fairly and openly canvassed; and that, if any serious objections can be stated to it, they should be publicly brought forward and discussed.

As to the simply economical objection, on the score of the outlay that would be required, we do not lay stress on the statement made on no less authority than Lord Devon's Commission, that, in fact, it ought to cost nothing; and that the improved rental of the land ought to bring in a return of ten per cent on the capital invested in the speculation. We may admit that this is too sanguine a view of the matter – that the sums advanced by the government of this country will probably be tardily and only partially repaid. Still, when we reflect on the facts that have been stated as to the actual cultivation of waste lands in Ireland, and on the concurrent opinion of so many able and experienced men, who have examined the country carefully, and report specifically on the facilities for the improvement of its different parts, it seems impossible to doubt, that, if the expenditure of the sums advanced by government is superintended and controlled by the talent and experience which the country may expect that the government can command, the repayment of a considerable part of the outlay, particularly of that which may be advanced on the credit of the poor-law unions, may be expected within a few years. And even if there were ultimately a loss to the extent of one-half of the £10,000,000, which has been stated as the probable expense of the whole change, the money will at all events have gone to the immediate relief of Irish suffering, and been better spent than what was formerly voted for that purpose; and we cannot think that a nation which spent a larger sum, only two years ago, in the mere relief of the sufferings of the Irish people, without any attempt at improvement, and very generally with a deteriorating (because not previously considered) effect on the resources of the country – and which spent £20,000,000 only a few years ago with very questionable effect, but certainly without being grudged, in attempting to assuage the sufferings, and raise the condition of the negroes in the West Indies – can repent the loss of a fourth part of that sum, in an attempt which can hardly by possibility fail of producing considerable effect, to provide remunerative employment for the hordes of Irish labourers in their own country, and arrest those grievous calamities which their diffusion over this country has brought on themselves, and on so many others who have come in contact with them.

In thus stating the grounds of a very decided opinion as to the measure supplementary to the new poor-law, which is most essentially required for Ireland, we do not of course mean to deny, that various other means may be adopted, with more or less of good effect, in furtherance of the same grand object. We have no doubt that both religious and secular education are of the utmost importance to the civilisation and improvement of every country; and although we do not regard education, as some authors do, as the main remedy for the evils of over-population, (being thoroughly persuaded that nature has provided for this object more surely than education can, by that growth of artificial wants in the human mind, which is the result and the reward of pains taken to relieve suffering and secure comfort during youth,) we are as anxious as any of our contemporaries for the extension of education in Ireland. We believe that instruction in agriculture, as well as encouragement to industry, is very much needed in most parts of Ireland; and that measures for the direct communication of such instruction, both to landlords and tenants, may be very useful. We believe that in Ireland, as in this country, there is great need of sanitary regulations; and we trust that the draining, cleaning, and paving of the Irish towns will be regarded with as much interest as similar purifications in England and Scotland. But we think no one who reflects on the subject can fail to perceive two truths, and to acknowledge their direct bearing on the subject of Irish misery —first, that to a people nurtured in destitution and amidst scenes of suffering, something of the great mental stimuli of employment and hope must be applied, in order to enable them to appreciate, or permanently to profit by, any kind of education; and, secondly, that in the existence of laws securing sustenance to all the poor of a country, and at the same time enabling the higher ranks to exact labour as the price of that sustenance, we possess a security such as no other social arrangements can afford, for habitual attention to all means of bettering the condition of the poor, on the part of those who have it in their power to apply those means, and on whose exertions their successful application must necessarily depend. Thus the poor-laws of Ireland, and the subsidiary measures for procuring employment for the poor there, so far from being opposed to any wise system of instruction, or of sanitary improvement, must be regarded as in truth an essential preliminary to the truly beneficial operation of any system that may be devised for either of these purposes.

THE CAXTONS.

PART VIII

CHAPTER XXXV

There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell Street – an Elf!!! clad in white, – small, delicate, with curls of jet over her shoulders; – with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone through the room, as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elf approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected, and the apparition so strange, that we remained for some moments in startled silence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two, and the more fitted to deal with the eirie things of another world, had the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"

Pretty child! was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve themselves only into pretty children!

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