The Story of Ireland

by Neil Hegarty

  In cancelling the Clontarf rally, O’Connell had blinked first – and in the process had shot his political bolt. Arrested on grounds of sedition, in February 1844 he was convicted, fined and imprisoned. He was released after three months, when the House of Lords overturned the sentence – but on his release, it was apparent that the disparate energies that he had harnessed were now dissipated. During O’Connell’s incarceration, moreover, the Tory government had granted additional reforms in Ireland, which – it was hoped – would have the effect of quietening Irish disaffection and at the same time sowing disunity in the Catholic ranks. Peel, now prime minister, complained to the Cabinet that ‘I know not what remedy there can be for such an evil as this [Catholic unrest] but the detaching from the ranks of Repeal, agitation and disaffection of a considerable portion of the respectable and influential Roman Catholic population.’29 And disunity did indeed arise: while the Church accepted the government’s proposal to award an annual grant to the seminary at Maynooth, this arrangement was anathema to many Catholics; equally, the foundation of the secular (‘godless’) Queen’s Colleges at Cork, Belfast and Galway was agreeable to many Catholics – including the Young Irelanders – but not to all members of the hierarchy and not to O’Connell either.

  Daniel O’Connell died at Genoa in May 1847, in the course of a pilgrimage to Rome: his heart was sent on to the city, his body returned to Ireland for burial, witnessed by vast crowds, at Glasnevin. His presence in Irish history is substantial and vital: he had demonstrated that public opinion could be harnessed, shaped and directed towards a specific goal – and this was a lesson that was absorbed by a global audience. He had understood that modern technology could be utilized quickly and easily as a means of broadcasting a political message and achieving certain ends; and that the policies of the state, at certain times and in certain ways, could be rapidly altered and channelled in a particular direction. He had also understood that the message of Irish nationalism could be internationalized and transmitted to a watching world, in particular in the direction of a rising America; and he had tapped into a version of Irish history that linked contemporary events to a distant, misty and frequently mythical past. Wolfe Tone’s vision of an independent Irish republic, however, had been succeeded by an entirely different model: O’Connell was at ease with the notion of an Ireland under the Crown; and he had, moreover, fused Irish nationalism and Catholicism in a manner that was new and altogether defining.

  Chapter Eight

  Hunger

  And if from one season’s rottenness, rottenness they sow again, rottenness they must reap.1

  In 1824, the ordnance survey of Ireland was inaugurated. Beginning with the flatlands on the shores of Lough Foyle, the country was mapped comprehensively, triangle by painstaking triangle; by 1846, the survey had been completed in County Kerry. With other economic surveys of the country being undertaken at the same time, Ireland could now be said to be more thoroughly known than at any point in its history: its social trends, its economic circumstances and potential were now fully charted, tabulated, calculated. This was a land where a line might have been drawn the length of the country, from Derry to Cork: east of that line, economic circumstances were in general more favourable; west of it, less favourable. But they were nowhere especially benign: there was still little work to be had in the towns; the wellbeing of much of the population was bound up alarmingly with that of the annual potato crop; and the fate of the country hung by a thread.

  Early in September 1845, as the first potatoes were being harvested across Ireland, news began to filter through to the administration at Dublin Castle: the crop was coming out of the ground rotten and putrid. The news would not have been greeted with much surprise: already in Europe that summer similar reports had passed from town to town; the phenomenon was everywhere. The disease was the potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, a microscopic fungus spread by wind and rain. Although previously present in the Americas, it had been quite unknown in Europe before 1842, when it was likely brought by ship to one of the continent’s Atlantic ports. Early in the summer of 1845, it was already destroying crops in Belgium and the Netherlands; by the year’s end, it had swept to the borders of Russia, Scandinavia, Germany and on to Britain and Ireland. It was only in Ireland, however, that such a high proportion of the population was so utterly dependent on a single crop.

  The effect of the blight was rapidly to turn the stalks black and reduce the tubers to a stinking pulp. At first, the response in government circles was measured: the loss appeared not to be so very great; and supplies could be augmented by the bumper oat harvest that year. As the autumn went on, however, it became clear that much of the crop had failed, though some districts suffered more than others; the western seaboard and much of Ulster at this time escaped with the least damage, while a great stretch of the midlands, east and southeast suffered the greatest. A massive wave of human tragedy had broken upon Irish society.

  The authorities investigated means by which the good potatoes could be safely stored: if they were kept in cool, dry, ventilated conditions, the blight might not spread and infest the entire crop. But the potatoes continued to rot as before. It was then suggested that the dug tubers be stored suspended in bog water. Lastly, farmers were advised that any surviving potatoes could be used safely for seed the following year. In the meantime, a good deal of the much-vaunted oat crop and other Irish cereal crops were sent for export as usual; and the price of the remaining oats and sound potatoes went through the roof. Peel’s administration now took steps to alleviate the developing crisis – though it did so reluctantly, as the orthodoxy of the time in British political circles dictated that the ‘natural’ workings of the economy and the market ought not to be meddled with.* The government’s plan was to import cornmeal into Ireland: this would be held by local committees wherever possible, and released only when prices in the open market climbed too high. These rations, however, were no free hand-out: they would be given in return for the recipients’ participation in public works schemes, including road-building and stone-breaking.

  The sulphur-yellow cornmeal – it was nicknamed ‘Peel’s brimstone’ – had been largely unknown in Ireland until this point; and it was deeply unpopular among a population accustomed to the comforting ballast provided by the potato. By the late spring of 1846, however, demand for corn had exploded and the prospect of mass starvation forced the government to open the warehouses and offer the supplies for general sale. By this point, reports were reaching Dublin of widespread unrest and spiralling crime rates in many districts: crops and cattle were being stolen from the fields; carts filled with cash crops of wheat and oats on their way to market were being stopped and ransacked by the desperate and starving. It appeared that the Irish countryside was descending into chaos.

  The story of the following three years is one of savagely bad luck combined with gross government inefficiency. The potato harvest of 1846 failed even more calamitously than that of the previous year; as early as July, the fields were ravaged and blackening, and the destroyed plants emitting the stench of blight. The blight struck across Ireland – though now with especial severity in the west – and with horrifying suddenness:

  On the 27th of last month [July 1846] I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3rd instant, I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrifying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly [at] the destruction that had left them foodless.2

  The situation facing the country was now immeasurably worse. After the 1845 crop failure, at least seed potatoes had remained available; in 1846, however, any remaining seed potatoes were eaten in order to stave off hunger. The Tory government – now headed by Lord Russell – refused to intervene to replenish stocks. The situation in 1847 was therefore destined to be equally bad, for there were scarcely any potatoes to plant and thus there
would be no crop to reap. It is one of the ironies of the Famine that the blight was actually much reduced in 1847 so that such paltry crops as could be sown came up green and healthy and remained so. A desperate effort was then made to sow the fields again for the 1848 harvest – but a sodden summer brought blight once more and the crop was destroyed.

  Prevailing economic doctrines continued largely to hold sway, so Irish cash crops continued to be exported rather than diverted to feed the population. At the same time, government strategies for dealing with the crisis were characterized by contradiction and reversal of policy. Late in 1846, the programme of public works began to wind down and it was decided that the shipments of cornmeal should also cease as soon as possible: the situation and the market in Ireland – and the two were firmly connected in the mind of the politicians – must be allowed to find their own level. In the real world, however, Ireland was lurching towards disaster: the destitute and the starving were besieging the country’s workhouses. The relief projects could not be terminated under such circumstances, economic orthodoxies notwithstanding. But government action was invariably reluctant, with much emphasis placed on the duties of the private sector in dealing with the crisis.

  There were, in fact, many private sources of succour: Quaker groups in Ireland and Britain ran soup kitchens; and as international attention was trained increasingly on Ireland, so other assistance arrived. (This assistance assumed a variety of forms: the French celebrity chef Alexis Soyer, for example, set up a soup kitchen to feed Dublin’s hungry, delivering one hundred gallons of soup for a mere pound in cost and saving numerous lives. In a Bedlam-esque footnote, however, Soyer supplemented his efforts by charging the city’s elite five shillings to observe proceedings; it cost only a shilling more to watch the animals eating in nearby Dublin Zoo.) A number of Ascendancy families were also prepared to do all they could for their tenants, some nearly bankrupting themselves in the process. The response of many others, however, was not so flexible: many families were evicted from their holdings and thrown upon the mercy of workhouses and of a Poor Law system that had not been designed with such a calamity in mind, and could not possibly cope with the numbers seeking aid.3 ‘The Irish landlords as a class,’ observed the Spectator, ‘have shown no capacity for the business of landlords’ – and many agreed with such opinions.

  The human toll in these years was stark, mounting inexorably into the tens and then into the hundreds of thousands. Epidemics of typhus, incubated in the overcrowded workhouses, swept through the population: as a result, the cities and the middle class began for the first time to feel the impact of what was taking place in the countryside. Famine victims were buried in mass graves; in the west, whole towns and villages began to empty. The British media devoted considerable resources to the disaster, with the Illustrated London News, for example, dispatching an illustrator to Skibbereen in County Kerry to record the event. Images of the Famine therefore spread rapidly, accompanied by reports of scenes of horror in Ireland. In response, the Times complained that the Irish were exaggerating, declaring that ‘it is the old thing, the old malady breaking out. It is the national character, the national thoughtlessness, the national indolence.’ In Cork, the Examiner retorted acidly that Victoria had sworn at her coronation a decade before to protect and defend her subjects without exception: ‘How happens it then, while there is a shilling in the Treasury, or even a jewel in the Crown, that patient subjects are allowed to perish with hunger?’

  On 3 October 1846, the Vindicator in Belfast printed a simple appeal: ‘Give Us Food or We Perish’; and by the summer of 1847 the government, under pressure from events, had wound up its programme of useless and body-destroying public works and instituted soup kitchens in its place. For a brief period, rations were dispensed for free and without strings attached: soon, some 3 million people were receiving food aid. But before long, the government suspected that among these 3 million lurked the feckless and idle; and the soup kitchens were abruptly closed at the end of September of that year. The deaths continued to mount – but now the government had concluded its interventions, and soon it began to claim that the emergency in Ireland was ending. Balls and the usual round of social engagements carried on in Dublin; and in 1849, Victoria paid her first visit to the country. The failure of the potato crop that summer was as absolute as in earlier years; after this point, however, the Famine began slowly to peter out.

  Famine years had been an intrinsic part of the fabric of Irish history. In 1740–1, for example, severe famine killed, proportionate to the then population of Ireland, as many people as did the crisis of 1845–9, but this earlier event holds no such well-defined place in the collective consciousness. This has much to do, of course, with the fact that a modern media and swift communications ensured widespread coverage of the nineteenth-century Famine. What makes it unique in Irish history, however, is the fact that it fused with issues of politics and national identity. As 1845 approached, the country had been in the midst of a debate on its destiny; the future of the Union itself was under discussion; and Daniel O’Connell had succeeded in forging, in the minds of the great majority of the population, a national consciousness that was distinctively Catholic and that questioned the British connection.

  Moreover, the British response to the crisis fed this debate, for it undermined the central claim of the Act of Union: that the fates of Great Britain and Ireland were bound together now by sacred ties of mutuality. In the eyes of many, the government’s willingness to countenance scenes of mass death and unparalleled misery in Ireland meant that it was abdicating its responsibility and demonstrating in the process that the philosophical foundations underpinning the Union were hollow. Such sensations led to, for example, the incoherent Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 – the year of revolutions in Europe – that began and ended most ignominiously in a County Tipperary cottage garden. Its leaders scattered to the winds: some were transported to Australia and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania); others fled the country, carrying their potent version of national radicalism to France, the United States and beyond.

  An estimated 1 million people died of hunger and disease in the course of the Famine, and more than a million emigrated, gathering in a host of Irish ports to take ship for Britain, North America and further afield. The conditions aboard these ‘coffin ships’ were frequently horrifying: disease and thirst claimed the lives of untold thousands; and more died within days of landing in such notorious quarantine camps as Grosse Isle in Quebec. The emigration statistics are startling: between 1851 and 1921 some 2.5 million people left Ireland, a proportion of the population that far outstrips the exodus from any other country. As many females left as males; the young inevitably in greater numbers than their elders. The crisis also had the effect of fraying the potent bonds of society, sometimes to breaking point: cherished norms and values were forgotten, so that aged parents were abandoned by their children and young children by their desperate parents; bodies were dumped in ditches for want of coffins and the strength to dig a grave; foodstuffs were stolen from equally desperate neighbours; crimes undreamt of were committed in the struggle to stay alive. In the light of such facts, it is little wonder that the Irish looked for guilt in the corridors of Whitehall. Young Irelander John Mitchel summed up this response in his famous claim that ‘the Almighty sent the potato blight but the English created the Famine’ – an attitude that formed a central plank of later historiography. It was perhaps inevitable that the collective trauma brought about by the years of hunger would be distilled and heaped, in grief and rage, on to the head of the British government.

  British policies did, of course, exacerbate famine in Ireland. And other decisions were equally disastrous: the government’s claim, for example, that property taxes levied solely in Ireland would suffice to cover relief work in the country was simply wrong: there never was the wealth base in Ireland to manage such a situation alone. Indeed, later government claims on private British charity to cover the shortfall implied as much – th
ough they did not bespeak a concomitant change in heart: ‘No assistance whatever will be given from national funds to those unions [workhouses] which, whether they have the will or no, undoubtedly have the power of maintaining their own poor and…the collection of the rates will be enforced so far as it can, even in those distressed western unions in which some assistance from some source or other must be given.’4 British policy towards the calamity in Ireland, then, was short-sighted, counter-productive and characterized by ignorance, wilfulness and incomprehension. Famine followed: and politicians then failed, in a host of ways, to change or augment policy in time to head off further disaster. But these facts do not – as Mitchel suggested at the time – imply an intention to create famine in order to weaken and diminish Ireland.

  Had the politicians cared to look about them in these years, they would have found no shortage of advice emanating from the voluble and quarrelsome British press: after all, the various political and cultural situations that manifested themselves in Ireland had always been a favourite topic of discussion. For some, government stupidity was manifest; other voices, however, complained bracingly that policy towards Ireland was in fact a good deal too indulgent: aid would be embezzled; the Irish were congenitally idle; and as a result the country should be left to its own devices and to the will of God. And there was a broad spectrum of opinion in Ireland too: in advance of the Famine, Young Ireland and the Nation had rejected the very notion of humanitarian aid, disgraceful and degrading as it would be to Irish society, and had called for the country to be given control of its own economic destiny: ‘It is a blundering system of legislation which converts the whole population of the country into paupers, by taking away the produce of the labour and giving it to idlers, and then sets up a costly machinery for the purpose of relieving their distress.’5 Later, in the teeth of the disaster, the movement would step back from such rigorously noninterventionist attitudes and condemn the British government for its failure to apply the laws of economics in a manner that took account of Ireland’s specific situation and needs.