CHAPTER L.

THE FAMINE OF 1877-80.

HE news of the tragic death of the Earl of Leitrim had the effect

THE

of arousing English attention to the perception that Ireland was not altogether so happy and contented as it ought to have been. Misery and discontent had, in fact, been aggravated by a considerable failure of the potato crop in 1877, but all the English knew about it was an occasional notice tucked in amongst paragraph advertisements or otherwise obscurely placed, merely conveying an idea that the old, old story was being told over again in the Emerald Isle. The assassination compelled the reflection that the potato failure was perhaps far more serious than had been supposed. From that time there was a languid perception that there was something much worse than usual going on. The potato crop of 1878, though more productive than that of the previous year, was very short of the average, so the misery from that cause was further prolonged. In the spring and summer of 1879, the continuous rains of a third wet year were ominous warnings of worse things to come, and in the autumn the potato crop proved to be little more than a quarter of a good yield.

On the 27th of March, 1879, Mr. Lowther was Chief Secretary for Ireland, and when on that date his attention was directed to the probable distress in Ireland, then present and to come, he jauntily replied that he was glad" to say distress in England was worse than in Ireland. That being the spirit in which the Government regarded the subject nothing whatever was done during that session. Mr. Disraeli having by this time become Lord Beaconsfield, the government was the Beaconsfield Government. It seems never to have stirred in the matter until November the 22nd, when it resorted again to the old device of lending money to landlords, really to enable them to raise their rents at the public risk, but ostensibly to enable them to employ the unemployed upon works of land improvement and reclamation. Some

of this money was advanced at only one per cent. Wherever such money was employed in the improvement of farms, will the raising of rents have been limited to one per cent? What guarantee is there that it was employed for such a purpose? Whether it was or not, lending money to landlords to give them the power of commanding the labour of the people, whose labour is eventually to be turned against themselves, is certainly a way of relieving the people that none but a real statesman would ever think of!

Independently of what the Government did, however, there were voluntary organizations for relief. The Duchess of Marlborough (wife of the then Lord Lieutenant), exerted herself nobly and successfully; her efforts were seconded by the Lord Mayors of Dublin and London. Responses from all quarters of the world were extremely liberal, amounting, in all, to hundreds of thousands sterling, and worthy to be recorded as a work of sublime charity. Partial figures would be of no value. Comparisons amongst them might appear invidious. Unless everything was stated, the amount would be incomplete, and there are private benefactions to think of. Supposing that the whole amounted to a quarter of a million, it is splendid, considering its source, but paltry indeed as a remedy for the famine. For, in those three years, the deficiency in the potato crop is put down at ten millions sterling!

Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in his admirable article in the Contemporary Review for December, 1880, points out that the tenement rental of Ireland is only about eleven millions, which he aptly compares with that deficiency in potatoes alone, as showing its relative magnitude. So the Irish were deprived, by the famine, of food to the extent of ten millions in three years. Lamentable fact ! Cruel necessity! Imagine the misery of it! But what is that compared with the deprivation of food by forced exports to England during the three years? Fifty millions' worth of live stock alone, besides corn, eggs, bacon, butter, and sundries, and amounts not enumerated in either class, not less than eighty millions in the three years! To prate of famine in the face of facts like these is a shameful mockery. To take, with the hard hand of domination, the best food of a people to the tune of eighty millions, and to meet the complaints of the consequent sufferers with the soft answer of a dole of probably less than a quarter of a million wherewith to go and buy such unstimulating rubbish as Indian corn, is only worthy of a nation of hypocrites, if their eyes are open to the truth of the case. To seize and get unduly fat upon the food belong

COMPENSATION FOR DISTURBANCE.

369

ing to other people, and then to cry aloud to Heaven because those people starve and are lean, is an impious misrepresentation of the real causes of the course of events.

To say that England is Ireland's best market, and to seek to justify the robbery and the mischief from that point of view, is no doubt quite consistent with political economy, as interpreted by persons interested in so interpreting it; but there are circumstances, as between England and Ireland, that cannot fail to over-ride the baseless dogmas of what is falsely called economic science, and to put political economists to shame.

Political economy will of course also justify the more numerous evictions that have always been concurrent with times of so-called famine. These were in 1876, 1269; in 1877, 1323; in 1878, 1749; in 1879, put down at 3893, subject to minor corrections. evictions continued, and reached the number of 1893. tions in the four years were more than ten thousand !

In 1880 these

So the evic

During the later months of 1879, and the earliest of 1880, the Beaconsfield Government began to be seriously influenced by the Irish difficulty. It was not the distress—a fig for the distress! It was the growing discontent, and the increasing resort to retaliation, and that, from the Government point of view, was, as Lord Beaconsfield said, worse than pestilence or famine." Liberal politicians of all shades flung Ireland at the Conservatives, and, in the heat of their electoral campaign, the Liberals again promised great things for Ireland. The dissolution took place on the 24th of March; the general election immediately followed; the verdict of 1874 was reversed; the Liberals got a majority estimated at 175 seats; and Mr. Gladstone became the head of the cabinet, and Mr. Forster took office as Chief Secretary for Ireland. The one thing the Government was careful to do was to confirm and extend those kind loans to the landlords that the previous Government had newly initiated; which was, to say the least, liberal. At the same time it was announced that though the Government really intended to pass a sweeping Irish Land Bill, there was not time that session. After a while, it occurred to the new Chief Secretary, that, as he was going to be so very kind to Irish landlords, he might spare a trifling proportion of his remaining kindness for Irish tenants. So he devised a scheme of Compensation for Disturbance. It was at first tacked on to the bill for granting more loans to the landlords, but a very moderate amount of pressure untacked it, and so the proposals

were made into two separate bills. The bill to help the landlords passed both Houses with alacrity; the bill to help the tenants did not On the contrary, the bill "to make temporary provision with respect to compensation for disturbance in certain cases of ejectment for nonpayment of rent in parts of Ireland" had a stormy and unfortunate career. The papers, who saw no invasion of the principles of political economy in lending public money to landlords at lower interest than the public paid for it, became very politically economical indeed when it was seriously proposed to do something for the relief of the poorest classes of tenants. As usual, there was exaggeration on both sides. The bill was supposed to confer upon tenants prodigious advantages and to inflict upon landlords intolerable restrictions. Had the bill passed it would very likely have been abortive like so many of its predecessors, but the landlords would not run the risk. Led by the Times, which proved, for once, not to be a false prophet, the landlords of both parties vehemently opposed in the Commons. Notwithstanding, the second reading was carried on the 5th of July by 295 to 217, and after a prolonged fit of obstruction in committee the third reading was reached on the 26th. The Lords had, like caged lions, been watching the growth of the unfortunate bantling, and, as soon as it was thrown into their den, they set upon it with great fury, metaphorically tore it into pieces, and in rejecting the second reading by the unprecedented majority of 282 to 51, threw the pieces in the faces of the Government on the 3rd of August, and thus also dared the Irish tenants to do their worst. This bill made such a stir at the time that, as an authentic leaf out of the political history of 1880, we give a copy of it in our Appendix.

The reply of the Government was a formal protest in the Commons from the Chief Secretary, qualified by the expression of inability to provide any remedy or substitute for the defeated bill. And so Parliament went on its customary shooting excursions, and some of the Irish tenants prepared to start upon theirs.

This famine, however much it may have inflicted severe trials and sufferings upon the Irish, was not of an extremely fatal character. Doubtless there were many deaths that might be indirectly ascribed to it, but, partly from the qualified severity of the visitation and partly from the liberality and activity of the relief organizations, it is said there was not a recorded case of actual death from starvation arising from deficiency of food.

IM

CHAPTER LI.

BOYCOTTING.

MMEDIATELY after Parliament was prorogued in the autumn of 1880, the landlords of Ireland, elated by the defeat by the Lords of the Disturbance Bill, and anticipating that future legislation might bar their proceedings in time to come, commenced proceedings for ejectments with renewed activity. This course was stimulated by the fact that, as the amount of Griffith's valuation had been so generally tendered and refused, rents remained unpaid almost everywhere to an extent without precedent.

Of course the Compensation Bill did not contemplate the relief of tenants who could afford to pay, or who had the means of paying, but only those who were really unable to pay-poor, broken down occupiers who had been hardest hit by the succession of wet seasons. These poor fellows, though very numerous, were, as it turned out, somewhat restored to comparative prosperity by an unusually prolific harvest. This points all the more to the probability that the Compensation Bill would have been a dead letter if it had passed, as men who had just had the benefit of a good harvest could scarcely have proved their inability to pay, as the bill required.

All the year, and especially at harvest time, the Land League operated vigorously, stimulating tenants by every means to firmly refuse payment of more than Griffith's valuation. The good harvest made this appear all the more unreasonable, from the landlord point of view, so every landlord who could afford to wait persisted in refusing the compromise offered. Many volunteered deductions of from ten to twenty per cent, but the tenants rejected all such proposals, as of course they wanted to establish the principle as a matter of right.

In defiance of every opposition, many evictions took place, and, though some farms did not obtain tenants, a fair proportion did, and