A history of the Irish poor law, in connexion with the condition of the people. Sir George Nicholls
and county of a city or town—severe punishments were enacted against idle vagabonds and vagrants; whilst the deserving poor were to be badged and licensed to beg, or if infirm and helpless were to be maintained in the hospitals or houses of industry, for the building and upholding of which however, reliance was chiefly placed on the charitable aid of the humane and affluent, assessments for the purpose being limited to 400l. in counties at large, and to 200l. in counties of cities or towns.
It is evident that each of these measures partakes more or less of the nature of a poor-law, but there is one material deficiency pervading them all, that is, the want of a certain and sufficient provision for carrying them into effect. In no instance is such a provision made compulsory upon the public. A portion only of what is necessary for the purpose is so imposed, and the remainder is sought to be obtained by voluntary contributions, a combination always attended with uncertainty, and in most cases leading to an insufficiency of the necessary means. Even if the various provisions were fully carried into effect and generally acted upon, this would go far towards rendering them practically inefficient; but at that time in Ireland, it by no means followed because an Act was passed that its provisions would be enforced, and there is reason to believe that in very few instances only were the provisions contained in these Acts carried into operation. The existence of such provisions however, defective and for the most part inoperative as they were, would nevertheless serve as an answer to any person who might be desirous of seeing an efficient system established for the relief of the destitute; and thus the semblance of such a system may have prevented the establishing of one that would have been real, which it only could be when founded upon a general rate, as in the Act of Elizabeth. No such foundation was however, we see, here provided. Neither parochial nor parental liability as recognised and enforced in England, was established by these Acts. Even in the case of fatherless and deserted children, the entire chargeability of the parish for any such child was limited to 5l., an amount surely insufficient for its rearing and maintenance until it attained an age to support itself; so that here also reliance must have been placed on the co-operation of private charity, or else upon the child’s being received into one of the foundling hospitals, and the parish being thus relieved from further expense. In short, the training up and educating poor children as protestants, and the repression of vagabondism, appear to be the objects chiefly sought to be attained in all these Acts of the Irish parliament; and to these objects the relief of the infirm and destitute poor, seems to be regarded as a matter altogether secondary and subordinate.
A short account of the state of Ireland at this time will be a fitting conclusion of the present chapter, as well as a useful preparative for what is to follow. The best authority we can refer to for furnishing such an account I believe to be Arthur Young,[25] who devoted three years from 1776 to 1778 inclusive, to a personal examination of the country, its agriculture, commerce, and the social condition of the people. I have had considerable opportunities of testing the accuracy of Arthur Young’s statements, and making due allowance for the changes which must be presumed to have taken place during a period of some sixty years, they have appeared to me to exhibit the circumstances of the country about the time they were written with remarkable accuracy and perspicuity. Of these statements, the following is such a condensed summary as will, it is hoped, show the reader what were Arthur Young’s views of the then condition of Ireland, more especially with regard to matters bearing upon our present subject.
Arthur Young’s account of the state of Ireland.
In natural fertility, acre for acre, Ireland is said to be superior to England. It has no such tracts of uncultivated mountain as are seen in the English northern counties, and its lighter shallower and more rocky soil (chiefly of limestone) is nourished by and flourishes under a fall of rain, which if it took place in England, would render the stiff clay lands almost useless. There is no chalk, and little sand or clay in Ireland. The fertility of England may be said to be in great measure owing to the application of skill industry and capital, that of Ireland chiefly to the soil and climate; whilst the bogs, which else would be waste, afford abundance of fuel. Notwithstanding the naturally superior fertility of Ireland however, the rent of land there as compared with England is in the proportion of two to five, or in other words, the land which lets in Ireland for two shillings, would in England let for five. It is considered that 5l. per acre expended over all Ireland (which would amount to about eighty-eight millions) “would not more than build, fence, plant, drain and improve that country to be upon a par in those respects with England;” and that it would take above twenty millions more to put the farmers in the two countries upon an equal footing. Profit in all undertakings depends upon capital, and the deficiency of capital thus accounts for the inferiority of the Irish rents. Tillage is little understood, and the produce is very inferior; “and were it not for potatoes, which necessarily prepare for corn, there would not be half of what we see at present.” The practice of harrowing by the tail, and burning corn in the straw, was still seen at Castlebar and other places in the west, notwithstanding its being prohibited by statute.[26] The moisture of the climate is favourable to pasturage and the keeping of cattle was much followed, as it well suited the indolent habits of the people.
Considerable pains are taken to show that the system of middlemen which then prevailed, or persons holding tracts of land intermediately between the head landlord and the smaller occupiers, was injurious to both, and a bar to improvement. It was defended on the ground of its affording greater security for the rent. But Arthur Young says that the smaller tenantry were found to be the most punctual rent-payers; and he further observes, “that at the last extremity it is the occupier’s stock which is the real security of the landlord—it is that he distrains, and finds abundantly more valuable than the laced hat hounds and pistols of the gentleman jobber, from whom he is more likely in such a case to receive a ‘message’ than a remittance.” These “profit-renters” are said to waste their time and their means in horseracing and hunting, and to be the hardest drinkers and most dissolute class of men in Ireland, as well as the greatest oppressors of the poor tenantry, whose condition is described as little better than the cottars they employ.
Arthur Young declares, that—to be ignorant of the condition of the labouring classes and the poor generally, is to be wanting in the first rudiments of political knowledge, and he states that he made every endeavour to obtain the best information on the subject, from persons in every class of life. According to some, the poor were all starving. According to others, they were in a very tolerable state of comfort.—Whilst a third party, who looked with a jaundiced eye on British administration, pointed at their poverty and rags as proofs of the cruel treatment of their country. When truth is thus liable to be warped, an inquirer should, he remarks, be slow to believe and assiduous to examine, and he intimates that such had universally been his practice.
The recompense for labour is the means of living. In England the recompense is given in money, in Ireland for the most part in land or commodities. Generally speaking the labouring poor in Ireland are said to have a fair bellyfull of potatoes, and the greater part of the year they also have milk. If there are cabins on a farm, the labourers reside in them. If there are none, the farmer marks out the potato-gardens, and the labourers raise their own cabins, the farmer often assisting them with the roof and other matters. A verbal contract is then made for the rent of the potato-garden, and the keep of one or two cows, as the case may be; after this the cottar works with the farmer at the rate of the neighbourhood, “usually sixpence halfpenny a day, a tally being kept, half by each party, and a notch cut for every day’s labour.” At the end of six or twelve months they reckon, and the balance is paid. Such it is said is the Irish cottar system, and it does not differ materially from that which prevailed in Scotland at a period somewhat anterior. Many cabins are however seen by the road-side or built in the ditch, the inhabitants of which have no potato-gardens—“a wandering family will fix themselves under a dry bank, and with a few sticks, furze, fern &c., make up a hovel no better than a pigsty, support themselves how they can by work begging and pilfering, and if the neighbourhood wants hands or takes no notice of them the hovel grows into a cabin”—these people are not cottars, but are paid in money for whatever work they perform, and consequently have no potato-ground.
The food of the smaller tenantry the cottars and labouring poor generally, was potatoes and milk, of which for the most part they are said to have a sufficiency. The English labourer’s solitary