PRACTICAL LETTERS ON IRELAND.

12th October 1847.

Sin—I give my entire assent to your opinion, that the first and most es- sential thing to be done for Ireland is to improve the material condition ot the people. Let us pause for a moment to consider the circumstances un- der which this must be effected. The political and religious anomalies which I attempted to describe produced chronic anarchy, with its necessary concomitant, chronic poverty. Society has been languishing on in an un- cemented, disorganized state, barely held together by the physical force at the command of the British Government. But still it was held together' and lately we had begun to flatter ourselves that people were becoming sick of agitation, and that a very slow but decided improvement was making its appearance, when suddenly the famine came upon us and struck us to the earth. I am not going to enlarge upon its effects; I will merely say that the whole country appears to be paralyzed. Men live as it were in a kind of waking dream, hardly understanding what is going on around them, nor trusting themselves even to speculate about the end of it all. There has been throughout the whole year very little crime; the people have not had energy to commit it: but the demoralization, the exhaustion, the helpless despondency, as well as the positive waste and loss of resources, are very evident, and very painful to contemplate.

In order to bring the subject home to your readers more effectually, I will

describe some features of my own case. I write from the midst of a very poor and populous union: its estimated value before the potato failure was, in round numbers, 57,0001.; the population is 68,000; the number of hold- ings valued at less than 51. constitutes seven-ninths of the whole. The population has subsisted hitherto on the potatoes which their wretched patches of ground produced, or which they planted upon land let to them by a neighbouring farmer; and they paid the rent of it by labour. During the last year nearly one-half of them were upon the rates. Now, it is quite clear that the relation between resources and people must here be altered, not only if any permanent improvement is to be effected, but if the people are to be kept alive; and I entreat any one who may read this letter to ask himself calmly what he would do if he were in the place of a resident pro- prietor in such a district, in order to effect, in his proportion, that alteration.

I put aside, as out of the question, the idea of permanently supporting the

able-bodied population by poor-rates; because, inthe first place, it must be evident that, even if it were possible to levy so enormous a rate, no country in the world could long bear a procese/so exhausting and demoralizing; and secondly, the collection of it would be utterly hopeless—the mere attempt would produce universal resistance, and prevent the collection of any rata at all.

We must look out, then, for means of supporting the people by employ- ment. Now, if the landlord has capital, he is without the means of invest- lag it; for his estate is in the hands of small farmers, utterly incapable Of appreciating expensive improvements, and he knows that he will never be able to enforce the payment by them of such an increased rent as would cover his expenditure; but, almost certainly, he has not capital, for he has re- ceived little if any rent during the past year, and his prospects for the year to come are hardly improved. The Government loan of 1,500,0001., if equally divided over the country, would not employ one tithe of the un- employed labourers; and I believe that the whole of it is now applied. Above all, if both the capital and the land were available for investment, (which in nine cases out of ten they are not,) such is the feeling of inse- curity with regard to property produced by the causes to which I have already adverted, that no prudent man likes to invest capital, whether his own or borrowed, in the country; and, be it observed, the more pauperized the district is, the more employment is wanted, the greater will be the in- security and consequent disinclination to give it. Far the greater part of the Government loan is taken up for districts comparatively prosperous. It is vain to endeavour by artificial stimulants to force the investment of capital upon a field which is not suitable for its reception; and the most important element of suitableness is security. Here and there an indi- vidual may be found whose charitable feelings may overcome his reasonable fears, and who may be induced to spend money freely on his land, not as an investment, but as alms: but it is evident that the great majority of proprietors, influenced by the ordinary motives which guide men in the in- vestment of money, will not do so, and that the whole flood of misery will be left to concentrate its force upon the few who endeavour to make head against it. The effect is, that these few are ruined or discouraged; and the magnitude of the evil prevents the application of even partial remedies.

Again, the fact that the number of labourers is greater than the means

of employing them, tends directly to make labour unprofitable; for this reason—the labourers, knowing that they are employed primarily for the sake of relieving them, argue naturally that the same charitable feeling will prevent the employer from discharging them whether they be good or bad workmen, and consequently they lose the motive which is applied by the desire to preserve a character for industry and efficiency. Employment where there are too many labourers seeking for a master has most of the characteristics of pauper labour, and leads to most of its evils: those who have the largest families, or who are the least capable of providing for them- selves, as the old and the sickly, must be employed in preference to the class whose services would be really valuable, because they would sooner starve, and the whole system is based upon a wish to prevent people from starving. By " employment " of such a character resources are diminished instead of being increased, because capital is not replaced but wasted. For this, amongst other reasons, nominal cheapness of labour, when produced by over-population, is a positive obstacle to the profitable investment of capital; and accordingly, we find innumerable testimonies from the best authorities to the effect that English labour at 10s. a week is cheaper in reality than Irish at 5s.

These are the chief obstacles to the introduction of capital ab extra to employ the people in their own country—vicious distribution of the soil, in- efficiency of labour, insecurity. Collectively they are insurmountable, and Must prevent every reflecting man from looking in that direction for the attainment of our object—the equalization of resources and people. Yet the proportion of resources to people must be altered, or we must look forward tn a long series of revolutions and famines. In Dorsetshire, the worst dainty in England as respects the standard of comfort of its labourers, the estimated rental is to the population as 41. 10s. to each individual; whereas in the whole of Ireland it is as 131 to eight persons; and in one- third of the whole number of unions the population exceeds the number of pounds in the rental. It is evident that nothing but potato cultivation could have enabled our agricultural population to subsist at all upon re- sources so inadequate when compared with the resources available for the support of the population in Dorsetshire. But we must recollect also that he whole agricultural economy of the people has been revolutionized by the loss of the potato, and that they require to be reeducated in farming: So that we are in this predicament—even if our land were so farmed as to produce the maximum of food, we could not profitably employ the pre- sent population in agriculture, and we are not now able, nor without some unexpectedly favourable change in our position are we likely to be able, to produce anything like the maximum of food.

It is not merely that we have lost so much food, nor even that we must learn to grow henceforth new crops after a new fashion: there is an ad- ditional and most important difficulty to which I have already incidentally alluded. It is this: throughout a great part of Ireland, (as was strikingly remarked by Mr. De Vere, in his evidence before the Lords Committee on Colonization,) the people have lost their only circulating medium, and must Lad a new one. They are as unaccustomed to money dealings as a Lon- aon merchant is to barter; and are as much puzzled as the latter would be by a sudden change from the one to the other. When the farmers are ex- horted to employ the people, they answer that they have nothing to pay them with,—meaning thereby, that they have no potatoes or potato-ground. a will take years to reconcile them to pay in money. All this has been often repeated, no doubt; yet I cannot think that people at a distance familiarize themselves sufficiently with it as a truth which is in process of exemplification. It is demonstrable as the first proposition in Euclid, and the corollary involves the starvation of multitudes. Now, I live in the midst of sights and sounds which would bring home conviction to the most apathetic and incredulous, which will not let me rest without raising my voice to reveal them. If the landlords of this union were angels and martyrs, possessed of wisdom to devise and energy to execute beyond all example or imagination, they could not employ or feed the people with the resources at their command; and, in the mean time, the people are dying —dying of insufficient nourishment, and the diseases which it engenders; while we can do nothing for them, or so little as hardly to make an im- pression on the misery which surrounds us. Is this a country to invest capital in, to undertake improvement of wastes, railways, manufactories? Government may take the land into their own hands, and sink public money in improving it, but private capitalists know better. However well the capabilities of such a country may look upon paper, no human wisdom can devise means of augmenting its resources, except by a perennial tri- bute, after the fashion of the Roman Sportula, by which Great Britain may feed Ireland, till she have reduced herself to a similar condition: there may be alms to any amount, but there will be no investments.

One alternative, and one only, remains,—it is to remove the people. I know how unpopular and invidious it is to defend the principle and ex- plain the advantages of emigration. I know how easy it is to call it "transportation," to evoke indignation on the beads of proprietors who "can think of nothing better than how to get rid of the people," and to draw pictures of the "inhospitable wilds" to which it is proposed to send Irishmen from "the hearths and homes of their fathers." But it is of no avail to argue against facts and the instincts founded on them. The theorist may be made unpopular; but his theory is recognized by those who are chiefly concerned with it as beneficent and sound. It is vain to preach patriotism to a starving people; they cannot wait for the solution of difficult political problems: the repeal of the Union, or the abolition of landlords, or the payment of priests, may possibly make Ireland a very 'pleasant place for them ten or twenty years hence; but they feel that it is not so now; as matters stand there are too many of them to feed, and in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation they fly for their lives.

Indeed, the question as to the desirableness of emigration has been al- ready decided—by the people themselves: the questions which remain for statesmen and legislators to decide are, whether they shall have means to go, and where they shall go to. It is impossible, as the Emigration Com- mittee of 1826 well observed in their report, that the destitution of the Irish labouring population should not directly affect the condition of the English: men who are unemployed and starving here will go elsewhere if they can, and thousands who have not the means of going to America find means of going to England. This part of the case was much dwelt on by most of the Irish witnesses examined before the Lords Committee of this year, and every day furnishes to myself instances illustrative of it. Indi- viduals and families are perpetually applying to me for means to get across the Channel. A very small sum suffices. The worst that can happen to them is to be sent back at the expense of some English parish; and it is worth while for those upon whom the burden of their support falls here to send them away, even if they only stay a few weeks. Now I know that every one of these persons would gladly go to America if there were means of • sending them thither. An unemployed population must be migratory, unless confined by force or sheer impossibility of moving; and the !lee and cheap intercommunication and identity of language throughout the British islands subject the whole of them to the irruptions of those whom poverty and want of employment dislodge from any one part; while it is shown by experience that no legislative bulwarks can stem the torrent.

But though it cannot be stemmed it may be diverted, and made to flow in a channel where its effects will be as beneficial as they are now de- structive. It is a very remarkable fact, that this empire should be dis- tinguished among European nations at once by possessing the greatest amount of waste territory and by containing the largest number of unemploy- ed and destitute labourers. The coexistence of these phrenomena is as much opposed to experience as to nature and reason. In new countries, what- ever may be the frequency and severity of commercial crises or failures of crops, destitution; in the sense familiar to European countries, is unknown. The extent to which they possess a field for employing labour 'and capital,

in other words, fertile and unpeopled land, appears to be alone a sufficient safeguard against all the material evils which flesh is heir to. Nor is this the case only in the immediate vicinity of such land: the Eastern States of the American Union, though long settled and comparatively filled up, feel directly and perpetually the effect upon their labour market of the ex- tension of agriculture in the valley of the Mississippi and on the shores of Lake Superior. The wages of the agricultural labourer are as high, or nearly so, in Maine and Vermont as in Wisconsin and Missouri; the in- crease of their numbers by immigration and births being counteracted by the constant movement of population which goes off to the Westward: nor is there any reason to suppose that this salutary drain will be checked, till the whole continent shall be adequately peopled. Yet the expense of the journey from the Atlantic to the new States is, on the average, as tedious and fatiguing, and more expensive, than the voyage from Ireland to New Brunswick and Canada; while the motives to migration are beyond all comparison stronger with us than with the Americans. Now it is very important to reflect upon the cause of this anomaly; and, having ascertained why we do not make our waste lands as available for our people as is the case in the United States, to modify our policy accordingly.

In the first place, the United States having always been thinly peopled in proportion to their resources, and the prosperity of the working classes having consequently been constant and unchecked, almost every individual possesses the means of migrating; and secondly, in America, race, educa- tion, institutions, and (what may be called) the atmosphere of hope and progress which pervades a young country, have combined to produce a self- relying energy and fertility of resource which make them the best emi- grants and pioneers in the world. Irish labourers, on the contrary, are, unfortunately, remarkable for both poverty and helplessness; they have not the means of emigrating to and settling upon the waste lands of the British Colonies; nor would they be capable, if they went in numbers as large as their need requires, of providing (as an American colony would) for their own subsistence and progress. But though the means and facilities at the disposal of the British nation for making emigration available towards the promotion of the general wellbeing are differently distributed, they are really equal, if not superior, to those possessed by the Americans, if we only knew how to use them. Our Government and people collectively are far richer than the American Government and people; our merchants possess more capital; our rulers exercise a more efficient machinery of ad- ministration. Different circumstances, however, require a different system. In America, the working classes know how to colonize, and can afford it unassisted emigration, therefore, answers very well there. Here, where the converse is the case, the intervention of the State is necessary. If it were properly applied, I see no reason why such an immediate alteration should not be effected in the condition of our labourers as would raise them to the level of the same class in America; nor why, if a high standard of com- fort were once established, it should not be rendered permanent by the same causes which have led to its permanence in America. In every point of view colonization appears to be the next and most pressing business of British statesmen.

As far as lay in our power we have removed the barriers which impeded our foreign trade; but we must remain, in this respect, dependant to a great extent on the commercial policy of the foreigner: so that the formation of new and prosperous agricultural communities, with whom we can secure absolute freedom of trade, is a matter of primary importance to our mer- cantile and manufacturing interests. In promoting education, in the en- actment of sanatory laws, and in the improvement of agriculture, we meet at every turn with the obstacles presented by a population pressing on the means of subsistence. Above all, in Ireland, the chronic disorders, which this year's calamity has aggravated into a crisis, appear irremediable by any measures unaccompanied by a diminution of her redundant numbers. That which was always desirable has now become pressing and indis- pensable; the alternative, in fact, not only of fearful misery and vast mortality, but of social convulsions, which cannot but most alarmingly affect the institutions and prosperity of the British empire. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, J. R. G.