Parliamentary Committees during the Famine - The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)

John Mitchel
Author’s Edition (undated)

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Their Lordships speak of one exception to the uniform testimony of Parliamentary Committees. I have already mentioned that Report of a Committee of the Commons, brought up in 1836, wherein their select lordships say they find with surprise the following sentiments—

"It may be doubted whether the country does contain a sufficient quantity of labour to develop its resources; and while the empire is loaded with taxation to defray the charges of its wars, it appears most politic to use its internal resources for improving the condition of its population, by which the revenue of the exchequer must be increased, rather than encourage emigration, by which the revenue would suffer diminution, or than leave the labouring classes in their present state, by which poverty, crime, and the charges of government must be extended."

The same anomalous Report had expressed the strongest opinion against Poor Laws, especially in the form of "out-door relief,"—had reported, in short, directly against the whole system of British policy in Ireland. You may have a curiosity to know who were the members of so perverse a committee. They were twenty-four Irishmen to nine Englishmen; so no wonder they fell into so cursed a mistake. Among the Irish names, I find men of all parties;—Col. Conolly and Mr O'Connell, Mr Lefroy and Mr Smith O'Brien, Lord Castlereagh and Feargus O'Connor: even Whigs,—Mr Wyse, Mr Shiel, and The O'Conor Don. This explains the Report, and explains further why the Imperial Parliament took care, afterwards, in all inquiries into Irish affairs, to employ Englishmen, on whom they could depend.

None of these vast public schemes of emigration were adopted by Parliament in their full extent, though aid was from time to time given to minor projects for that end: and landlords continued very busy all this year, and the next, shipping off their "surplus tenantry," by their own private resources, thinking it cheaper than to maintain them by rates. The Irish Press, and especially the Nation, took up each of the schemes as it was propounded, and vehemently denounced it as part of the plan to clear our island of its own people, and confirm England in the peaceable possession of her farm.

There has been now, I think, laid before the reader a complete sketch, at least in outline, of the British famine policy:—expectation of Government spoon-feeding at the point of police bayonets; shaking the farmers loose from their lands; employing them for a time on strictly useless public works; then disgorging them, in crowds of one hundred thousand at a time, to beg, or rob, or perish; then "out-door relief," administered in quantities altogether infinitesimal in proportion to the need; then that universal ejectment, the Quarter-acre law; then the cor- ...continue reading »

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