19 DECEMBER 1846, Page 9

THE IRISH POOR-LAW QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR-

Castle Combe, 16th December 1846.

Ent—The Morning Chronicle of yesterday, in attempting to combat your com- ments on the confiscation cry raised by the opponents of an improved poor-law for Ireland, talks disdainfully of "the utter absence of decently presentable argu- ments" among the supporters of that proposition; and on this complacent assump- tion of the total want of reason or reasoning powers in his antagonists, the writer seems to think himself exempted from supporting his own view by any argument at all.

I, Sir, have for years past been vainly endeavouring to elicit something like a tangible argument front the opponents of the proposal to apply the English Poor- law to Ireland. I have met with plenty of the "assumption and declamation," of which we are accused; but of argument—none, or of reply to the arguments we urge in its favour.

They tell us all rent would be annihilated. I ask, has it been so in England ? They say all property would be swallowed up—all industry deadened. I ask again, -has not property increased, and industry exerted itself ten times as much, in Eng- land under a legal right to relief for all classes of its poor, as in Ireland without any? They say population would increase till it eat up the whole produce of the soil, and turned Ireland into a "warren of Yahoos" (the polite phrase employed by the Edinburgh Review). I ask, has not the population of Ireland, without a poor-law, increased faster than that of England with one? is it not notorious that the more miserable a people are, the more recklessly and rapidly they multi- ply? And does not the condition of Ireland at this moment much more nearly resemble the savoury illustration of the Edinburgh sage, than that of England, where this dreaded poor-law has been for two centuries and a half the resource and defence of the people against the extremity of want? Have we not a right 'to ask for some arguments on their side, beyond these naked assumptions in the teeth of all experience ?—some argument to show why what is good for England should be so bad for Ireland; why a system of law under which (in spite of its lately-corrected abuses, which no one thinks of introducing into Ireland) the working classes of England have been on the whole remarkable for industry, pro- vidence, decent comfort, loyalty, tranquillity, and attachment to the institutions of their country, is unfit to be applied to Ireland, whose population is notoriously dis- tinguished for the opposite characteristics?

Is it because they are so distinguished, that we are to refuse to protect them from destitution? Is it because their misery is so great, that we are to refuse to relieve it? That seems to be the real meaning of the " confiscation" plea. Is it because the Irish poor are unwillingly idle, that we are not to "set them to work"? Is it because they are improvident when left unprotected from the gripe of the extortionate landlord or middleman, which makes it hopeless for them to attempt to improve their condition, that we are to refuse them such a protection? Is it because, left as they are to perish or not as may happen, uncared fur by the law, they are discontented, turbulent, and hostile to the law—which exacts hard duties from them, but concedes no reciprocal rights—not certainly the most es- sential of all, the right to live—that we are to refuse them that right, and leave them still to perish unheeded?

Why, it has been shown over and over again, that the demoralization of the Irish in the present day is just the counterpart of that which prevailed in Eng- land before the reign of Elizabeth; and to be cured only in the same way, by af- fording them the protection of the law from extermination; a process which was going on in the sixteenth century by the clearance of estates, just as it has lately been practised in Ireland, and produced the same results. What reply has ever been made to this argument?

But the Chronicle of Wednesday proclaims that it has an argument " which nobody has attempted to answer, nobody has met face to face." And this is the old story—not an argument at all, but the same stock assumption—" that the rates would eat up the rent and the taxes in addition; that they would outstrip every possible increase of production, while they would at the same time render increase of production impossible; that the work done by those quartered on the poor-rates would, under any superintendence that could be counted on as a per- manency, be little more than nominal; and that when everybody could claim nomi- nal work at good wages from the parish or union, nobody would do other than nominal work. This is our argument It rests on the familiar laws of human. nature, on the !particular character and habits of the Irish peasantry, and upon the facts of their present conduct." Now, I think I have said enough (though studying brevity) to show that this argument does not rest on the laws of English nature, inasmuch as none of these consequences, but the very reverse, (in the long run, and putting out of eight the temporary abuses of the law,) have followed from the establishment in England of the principle I ask to be applied to Ireland.

As to Irish nature, will the Chronicle maintain, with Mr. Foster, that the Celt is an inferior animal, and not to be civilized in the same way as the Saxon NM civilized in the seventeenth century ? Why, he has himself often repudiated and scoffed at this unworthy argument—the same by which the slave-owners uphel& the necessity of the lash and the chain as the only means of making the Negro labour. He, the writer in the Chronicle, has justly argued in favour of his plea for creating a small proprietary on the waste lands of Ireland, that the Irish pea-. sant is only reckless when he finds care and labour useless; but that, placed in a position to reap the fruits of his labour for himself and his family, he becomes as industrious, as skilful, and as provident as the same grade of labourer or land- holder in any other nation. He has shut himself out, therefore, from the low plea that the Irish are irreclaimable by j'iist and generous treatment. Lastly, as to the "present conduct" of the Irish in "making a rush for em- ployment on the public works, and neglecting the due cultivation of the land." Against this part of the "argument," I appeal to the Chronicle's own leader of Monday last, as a complete reply to the charge. I appeal even to the extracts quoted in his own columns of what is now passing in Ireland. Take one front this very paper of Wednesday, to which lain replying- " NON-CULTIVATION OF LAND.—Many weeks ago we stated that the people IVOTO neglecting their spring work. Persons Ignorant of the real state of our peasantry, will be inclined to think that they deserve to want when they will not prepare the grounil for the seed. But this can be readily explained. The fact Is, they cannot afford the time to do so. Their wants are so pressing that they must take employment on the public works to keep body and soul together. —Sligo Champion."

How should it be otherwise? There are more than three hundred thousand (so-called) farmers in Ireland occupying less than five acres of land I These men have lost all the potatoes on which they and their families are accustomed to sub- sist. The little (if any) corn they have grown this year, has gone to pay their rent, or has already been eaten by them. How, in the name of common sense, are they to be expected either to hire labourers or to work on their land themselves? They must flock to the public works "to keep body and soul together," as the Sligo Champion says—they, and the five hundred thousand of a still lower class, the labourers who hold no land.

Who can be surprised, under these circumstances, at a " rush " being made to the Government works, or at the imputed neglect of field-labour, or at the large sums of money which the Treasury has been obliged already to issue? On the contrary, I believe that what has been done already is nothing to what must be done, unless a large proportion of the population are to be allowed to starve. Every account arriving from every province in Ireland proves the insufficiency of the assistance as yet afforded to meet the exigency of the demand. The people— the once but no longer able-bodied men—are described by the Chronicle's own correspondent as wasting to bloodless shadows, unable to do a real day's work, dropping and fainting at the roadside in the attempt; nay, more, as dying by scores: forty-seven verdicts of" death by starvation " already in the province of Connaught alone!

Instead of thinking too much is doing, and that the Irish poor are imposing on the Government, I am confident the reverse is the fact; and, as the mischief

progresses, a heavy responsib rest somewhere for the inadequacy of the means taken to avert famine. The infirm poor have been wholly unprovided for- by the Legislature or Government; left to the chances of voluntary subscriptions from the landlords, of whom, (see the Chronicle again,) for one that subscribes a few pounds when applied to by the Relief Committee of his district, there are ten who refuse anything, or disdain to reply. The workhouses are crowded far be- yond the numbers they were calculated; to hold, and fever is the natural result' while hundreds are refused admission, and left to die outside. Some, like Lord Lucan's Castlebar Union, refuse to take in any poor at all—though with plenty of room—because they don't like to pay the necessary rates! And this in a dis- trict where Lord Lucan himself, the Chairman of the Board, is said to have lately received his rents in full ! They only act, after all, on the principle of the Chronicle—the dislike of confiscation. They think, perhaps, that if there were fewer poor, rents would be still better paid. But here you have an instance of the state of things in Ireland, which we are not to interfere with by a poor-law. The landlord gets his rent, the farmer his profit—the poor starve, and can't get even into the workhouse; and the Government looks on, or hesitates to.act with vigour, while thousands are dying of want. And meanwhile their organs declaim against that principle which even the Irish landlords are become converts to under the pressure of recent events—the principle that the property of Ireland. InuA be made responsible for employing and maintaining the population of Ire-

land. 1 remain, Sir, your obedient servant, G. PotmErr Scam's.