Like much of the British Empire of the time, Ireland was composed of two nations, one poor and one rich, the rich having no conception of the circumstances of the poor, and in any case having little sympathy with their condition: society was entirely polarized;
“There was nothing between master and slave, nothing between all the luxuries of existence and the last degree of human wretchedness.” Costigan 1969
At the bottom of the scale forty percent of the population had a staple diet of potatoes, and the same proportion lived in one-roomed mud cabins which held an average of ten persons.
Most agricultural labourers were tenants without any effective legal rights, who held their land at the will of landlords who could raise their rents, or evict workers and their families at their whim.
The Tenant farmer system was designed to further the interests of the landowner, who could use his land to the best advantage, for example when by consolidating their land for beef and dairy farming greater profits could be made, hundreds of tenants were evicted: one landlord, the Earl of Lucan, evicted 187 families. Within 18 months, of the 913 people evicted 478 were receiving public relief, 170 had emigrated, and 265 were dead or ‘left to shift from place to place’ A member of the central relief committee of the Society of Friends wrote:
“It is evident that some landlords, forgetful of the claims of humanity and regardless of the public welfare, are availing themselves of the present calamity to effect a wholesale clearance of their estates”
The Limerick and Clare Examiner protested that:
“Even the good landlords are going to bad, and the bad are going to the worst extremities of cruelty and tyranny, while both are suffered by a truckling [submissive] and heartless government to make a wilderness of the country and a waste of human life”
The attitude of Britain to the Irish people was founded partly in the religious beliefs of the day, and partly in an extreme prejudice based on ignorance. Because potato famines had hit both Britain and Ireland before, and Britain had been far less affected, it was easy for the British to blame the Irish for
‘Not bringing up their children in habits of frugality, which qualify them for earning their own living and sending them forth into the world to look for employment’ they blamed the Irish for their heavy reliance on the potato as the staple diet, without recognising the economic necessities which forced that dependence, and not understanding the Irish reluctance to part with the potato, because in their experience they considered that there was an alternative. They also failed to understand why farms were sub-divided until they were too small to support a family.
Many politicians and the general population of Britain held a religious viewpoint on the ultimate cause of the famine. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham wrote to Prime Minister Peel of their shared view:
“It is awful to observe how the Almighty humbles the pride of nations. The sword, pestilence and famine are the instruments of his displeasure: the conker worm and locust are his armies; He gives the word: a single copy is blighted; and we see a nation prostrate, stretching out his hands for bread. These are solemn warnings, and they fill me with reverence; they proclaim with a voice not to be mistaken, that doubtless there is a God who judgeth the earth!”
Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of famine relief in Ireland, believed that the famine was divine intervention:
“the overpopulation of Ireland being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual.”
It is difficult to see how there could be effective relief to the suffering, when the person most heavily charged with intervention believed it was Divine will, and therefore not to be tampered with.
Not all British people of influence held this view, Lord Claredon, the British Viceroy during the famine, wrote to the Prime Minister Lord John Russell, towards the end of the crisis:
“I do not think that there is another legislator in Europe that would coldly persist in this policy of extermination. What is to be done with these hordes? Improve them off the face of the earth, you will say, let them die. But there is a certain responsibility attaching to it.”
This shows that he did not think the famine was God’s will, to be allowed merely to run its course without intervention.
The Irish condition was indeed terrible: They had hardly any industry and their economy was unstable and controlled by the British, who put the interests of private entrepreneurs and profits first, regardless of the plight of the workers: under free trade, grain crops grown by Irish farmers were sold to their landlords and exported for profit, in the belief that the money they received was best used to buy food; during the famine prices rose so high that most people could not afford to buy any food in any case.
The potato famine was not an isolated disaster, it was the final straw. The British government were well aware of the situation their policies were causing in Ireland; several English committees that studied the economic situation in Ireland warned that if there was a major failure of the potato crop, extensive starvation would result. In 1824 an economist former commissioner was asked in parliament
“Looking ahead to fifteen years or more, what must this increase in population in Ireland, without any employment, end in?” He replied:
“I don’t know, I think it is terrible to reflect upon” Nassau Senior
Despite this dire warning, nothing was done to remedy the situation in Ireland, even though it was known that the result would be devastating. This shows great contempt or neglect on behalf of the British, or their ignorance towards the welfare of the Irish people; it is certain that had the crisis been foreseen in any part of the mainland, inaction could not have been tolerated for fear of the outcry and unrest which would have spread through the country, however Ireland was a sea away, and suffering could be ignored or unrest contained. Even more astonishing is that the same former commissioner, once the famine was underway, wrote that he feared it would not kill more than a million people, which would scarcely be enough to eliminate the unemployment. This shows a total disregard for human life or as the British believed the inferior value of Irish lives. The Irish Famine was a problem which would disappear once the necessary cull had taken its course.
The impoverishment of the Irish was compounded by their disempowerment; in 1845 only one in eighty-three people was entitled to vote, with the Penal Laws completely disenfranchising all Catholics: It was agreed that the condition of the Irish was worse than that of slaves in the Americas; In the American plantations on Rhode Island, black slaves had a saying:
“If a negro was not a negro, Irishman would be negro”
Even though the government was pre-warned of the disaster waiting to happen, their efforts to relieve the famine, such as they were, were entirely futile, and bound by the free trade policy; this determined that no money should be spent on infrastructure projects which would benefit the Irish, such as drainage, harbours, fisheries and railways. These were amongst the first urgent proposals made by a committee of Irish citizens in 1845 to the government of Sir Robert Peel. Other proposals doomed to failure were: to stop the export of corn and distilling of grain into spirits, to set up relief committees funded in part by a ten percent tax on landlords; higher in the case of absentee landlords, and in part by a one and a half million pound, ten year British loan. The only proposal which was not ignored by Peel was that duties should be removed on food imports. This he agreed to because it would make the import of Irish corn into Britain easier. Peel did buy $100,000 of Indian corn and meal from the USA for the relief of the famine, which may seem a considerable gesture, however since the crop loss was £3.5 million, this was a wholly inadequate amount to ease suffering, and this corn and meal was not immediately distributed either. It was stored in military lockups and used only to as a leverage stock to prevent the over-fast rise in the market price of foodstuffs. £365,000 of government grants were also given to help Ireland through the first year, and the formation of relief committees to propose public works was allowed, but without any British funds, they relied on charitable donations.
The inadequacy of relief efforts by the British government worsened the horrors of the famine; months passed and many thousands died before the government would admit the direst necessity of financial help. When it was given it was in the form of soup kitchens and public works which were designed to be economically useless, so that they would not interfere with private enterprise. Workers filled valleys and flattened hills, and constructed roads in places where there was absolutely no need for them at all. Wages were so low that the worker could barely buy enough food to live themselves, and it was impossible to support their families. Even so there were not enough jobs; in 1846 400,000 people applied for 13,000 jobs. Free trade insisted that the destitute work on the public works or in the Workhouses, and that hundreds of thousands should receive wages below the miserable levels prevailing, in order not to distort the labour market. Another result of the free trade policy was that money could not be used for reclaiming the millions of acres of bog, seeding the lands or building railways because that would give the Irish farmer an advantage over the British farmer.
Initially the British believed that the free market would end the famine naturally, so in 1846 the Corn Laws, which had protected domestic grain producers from foreign competition, were repealed. The repeal however, brought little benefit to the Irish, since no matter how cheap grain was, the Irish peasants could not afford it. It also reduced the profits of domestic grain producers, and as a result of this Peel was ousted and replaced by Lord John Russell, who took over as Prime Minister in the latter part of 1846. He was even less sympathetic to the Irish: when Irish members of the British Parliament proposed that the British government buy stocks of grain and sell it in the worst famine areas, his response was simply no:
“ Purchase by government of any food in ordinary use is forbidden in order to avoid competition with private traders”
Charles Trevelyan, Lord Russell’s minister in charge of famine relief, later made the public works rule:
“Any public works done shall not be of a nature to benefit any individuals in any greater degree than all of the rest of the community”
This rule eliminated all projects for drainage and seeding of the bogs, which were the only way to rapidly increase food production, on the grounds that this would preferentially benefit those living nearest to the bog being drained. Free trade also decreed that no government surplus food; ‘no welfare’ be given to the starving, in order to leave the market for food undisturbed. So the British Government would not interfere with the regular mode in which the Indian corn and other grains might be brought into Ireland.
Additional regulations were added to the Public works, such that local committees proposing public works had to sign a contract which held their members personally responsible to repay the British government 100% of the cost within two years, plus 3% interest per annum. But these public works grants were limited to one year and ended in August 1847. In the Spring of 1847 Britain adopted other measures to cope with the famine, setting up soup kitchens and programs of emergency work relief. However, many of these programs ended when a banking crisis hit Britain. This crisis was quite unrelated to the Irish famine, but brought the following reaction from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, recorded in a letter to the Irish Viceroy:
“Now financially, my course is very easy. I have no more money, and therefore I cannot give it.. Where the people refuse to work or sow, they must starve, as indeed I fear must be the case in many parts”
I believe this statement is a culpable lie used as an excuse to delay or end support for the famine; at this time Britain was heavily involved in colonizing India, and probably gaining massive revenue from this. Seven years later the British government found £70 million to finance the Crimean war.
In the end Britain relied on a system of workhouses, where several hundred thousand elderly, infirm and young children crowded, dying more slowly of malnutrition and disease.
One of the relief schemes tried by the British under Prime Minister Robert Peel was the importation of cornmeal from America. This was brought swiftly to an end when the government announced that:
‘There would be no more government importation of Indian corn or any other food, because private trade had been paralyzed by government purchases’ and ‘merchants had declared they would not import food at all if the government were to do so’
So it was left to private enterprise to provide the food, although by now food dealers in Ireland were charging enormous prices, quite beyond the reach of the ordinary person. An example of the British lack of compassion for the Irish is that when American Quakers offered to send food to Ireland, the British demanded that the food first be landed in England and transferred to English ships, to ensure that British shipping interests were fully employed. The American press were outraged and taunted the British, asking how greedy could Britain be, at a time when hundreds of thousands of its people were starving. The British finally backed down and allowed American ships to sail directly.
To limit the number of people seeking relief, and the expense to the British government, The Poor Law Extension Act of 1847 was introduced by Lord Russell’s government. One section of this, “The Gregory Clause” stated that no tenant holding more than a quarter acre of land was eligible for public assistance. This left many tenants with no choice but to surrender their land to landlords, some trying to remain living in their houses, but the landlords would not tolerate this. In many thousands of cases dwellings would be burnt or levelled to the ground with the tenants removed forcibly with the presence of a large party of soldiers or police who were likely to quell any thought of serious resistance. Even when some British newspapers began to criticize evictions, Lord Broughman made a speech in the House of Lords stating that:
“Undoubtedly it is the landlord’s right to do as he pleases, and if he chooses to stand on his right, the tenants must be taught by the strong arm of the law that they have no power to oppose or resist .”
This is a typical authoritarian attitude exercised without any degree of compassion.
Even when tenants were evicted in the dead of winter and died of exposure, the British Home Secretary, Sir George Grey:
“Rejected the notion that house-destroying landlords were open to any criminal proceedings on the part of the government.”
However they did pass a law making it a misdemeanour to demolish a dwelling whilst the tenants were inside, and prohibited evictions on Christmas Day and Good Friday, but the same law reduced the notice given to people before they were evicted to 48 hours.
It seems that the British Government’s contempt for the plight of the Irish could go no further when in 1847, known as “black 47” because of the severity of the suffering and total crop failure, Trevelyan sent the following statement to all Poor Law Unions:
“There is much reason to believe that the object of the Relief Act is greatly perverted and that it is frequently applied solely as a means of adding comforts of the lower classes…instead of being used, as intended as provision for the utterly destitute, and for the purpose of warding off absolute starvation…The commissioners cannot but complain of finding the demands for rations from many districts continually increasing, and sometimes largely, without even a word of explanation to account for it.”
The British rationalized that landlords and industries, who needed labourers would find it in their best interests to protect their investments; human labourers, however with landlords realising the advantages of increasing the size of plots, more evictions, and clearances of land caused over a quarter of a million people to be evicted between 1849 and 1854.
Parliament’s next idea was to force the English landowners in Ireland to bear the cost of the famine; according to the Poor Laws, landlords were bound to support their “peasants” who were sent to the workhouse, which cost £12. As a result landlords in Ireland now tried to evict all the tenants they could in order to reduce the number of local destitute which they would be responsible for, and therefore their rates. Since emigration to America and Canada cost only £6, many landlords chose to send their tenants abroad in ships crammed with as many as 900 people in filthy conditions; these became known as “coffin ships” and about half of those sent died before they ever reached their new homes.
Lord Palmerston, a prominent member of the British Cabinet and a landlord in Ireland, evicted and sent 9 shiploads of his tenants to Canada, 2000 persons in all. On their arrival in Newfoundland the authorities there were so shocked at the condition of these people that they sent a letter of protest and severe criticism:
“We the Common Council of the City of St. John, deeply regret that one of Her Majesty’s Ministers should have exposed such a numerous and distressed portion of his tenantry to the severity of a New Brunswick winter unprovided with the common means of support, with broken-down constitutions and almost in a state of nudity”
When called upon to answer for this, Lord Palmerston blamed his agents, who in turn made the emigrants write letters to the St. John newspapers expressing their deep gratitude to Lord Palmerston for ‘rescuing them from the famine’
During the famine years, and even when landlords and upper class Irish started to suffer inconvenience, Irish agriculture continued to yield profit for Irish landlords and British merchants. The country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to have fed the population, however this was a cash crop and not a food crop, and as such according to the British Free trade policies could not be interfered with. The state refused to do anything in terms of economic protectionism, arguing that they had just spent ten painful years campaigning for the lifting of protection on corn. Were they to throw that away because the Irish were hungry? It was only the potato crop that had failed in Ireland: wheat, oats, beef, mutton, pork and poultry were all in excellent supply, but the Irish and British landlords shipped these to the European Continent to ease hunger there, and receive very good profit in return. In 1846 even more wheat was imported into Ireland than was exported, however at least half the entire Irish population was without any means to buy food, and the free trade system allowed no handouts. All through the famine it was obvious that Ireland was not a major preoccupation for the British, and the famine had assumed the proportions of a crisis before schemes were implemented on any sizeable scale, and even when they were, it seems that the crisis was of secondary importance when it came to preserving the economic and social policies of the day.
“Laissez faire” meant that the British government would not interfere in business markets, or the economy in general. This policy was disastrous when famine struck as it meant there was no way of rectifying the situation. Theodore Hoppen, a modern historian, holds the view that:
“Although the Government’s response was extremely inefficient, grudging and limited, perhaps only an authoritarian state committed to the welfare of the poor at all costs could have achieved a great deal more”
I disagree with this view because Prime Minister Robert Peel’s initial response was prompt and interventionist; he took quite a liberal approach to famine relief considering the Laissez faire attitudes of the British at the time, and the situation became considerably worse when Lord John Russell became Prime Minister, because of the slavish adherence to free trade and the interests of the entrepreneur. Lord Russell would never have conceived of interfering with the structure of the British and Irish economies in ways which would have been necessary to prevent the worst effects of the famine. Hoppen’s view is rather ill-framed; why does he consider so little more could have been achieved by the same state system had there been a will to take efficient generous and effective action rather than resorting to the utopian “ authoritarian state committed to the welfare of the poor at all costs” ? I agree that a state hampered by the prejudices and the vested interests of those in power and controlling commerce, such as existed at the time, could do little to help the situation of the poor, but I find his “solution” rather glib.
In conclusion it is my contention that British politicians were more widely to blame for the disaster resulting from the Irish potato famine than may be thought, because rather than looking at the actions or omissions of the contemporary politicians, we must take into consideration that after nearly seven hundred years of attempted domination, the British oppression of the Irish had deprived them of all but the bare necessities of survival, and caused such destitution that when the potato famine struck, the poor could not avoid the worst privations, given the social and political conditions controlling their lives. The British government’s ineffectual attempts at relieving the situation played a major role in worsening the situation; they allowed prejudice and State and individual self-interest, economic and religious dogma to subjugate even the least consideration for humanity. Ultimately British politicians bear considerable blame because they were not prepared to allocate what was needed to head off mass starvation, and they as the parent government did nothing to protect its subject people.