this maximum is itself lessened by the thriftless habit of burning the land, which in too many districts the severe enactments of the Legislature have not sufficed to put down. A very few figures will serve to show the poverty of the localities concerned. In the County of Mayo, the valuation of the Union of Newport, which has 170,413 acres, is 13,1417.; that of Belmullet, with 177,933 acres, is 10,9077. In Galway, the valuation of Clifden, with 192,965 acres, is 17,9077; of Oughterard, with 172,289, is 15,009/. In Donegal, the valuation of Dunfanaghy, with 125,678, is 11,573.; and of Glenties, with 257,479, is 20,425. The year's expenditure of Poor rates is in Glenties, 35. 42d. in the pound; in Clifden, 5s. 11⁄2d. in the pound; and in Belmullet, 75. 334d. in the pound. There is little to help out the agriculture. There are fish off the coast, but no system of catching them is carefully worked out. Spasmodically, and not without some skill, the fishermen will go out for a short spell of fishing; but there is little perseverance and little thrift, the people preferring reliance on the assistance of the State, and reiterated complaints of the supineness of the Government, to such determined and persistent efforts as might result in success. Nor are their difficulties lessened by the inaccessibility of markets. It was with such a locality and such circumstances that the Government were asked, towards the end of 1882, to deal once more in an exceptional manner, and to apply one or other of the abnormal remedies referred to above. Their decision was communicated in a letter to Mr. Lea, one of the Members for Donegal, written by desire of the Viceroy on the 9th of December and explaining the views of the Executive with respect to the measures which should be taken for the relief of the destitute poor, not only in the Glenties Union, but also in other parts of the West, where exceptional distress may prevail. Various measures,' it was said, have been submitted as to the means by which the distress should be met, the most prominent of these being the establishment of works to give employment to poor persons.' 'The Government are not,' it was stated, 'prepared to adopt any of them; but have determined to rely solely upon the administration of relief through the ordinary channel provided by law, viz. the Boards of Guardians, as they are satisfied that no machinery so efficient as that of the Guardians can be devised for the distribution of relief." In consequence of this decision circulars were issued through the proper departments, pointing out to the Guardians their duty; requiring first a careful limitation of each relief district so as to insure the accessibility of the relieving officer, and secondly a careful and provident supervision of workhouse accommodation, so as to prepare for pressure in the workhouse wards; and finally, pointing out that it cannot be contended that persons who are unable to procure for themselves the necessaries of life should be allowed to determine the manner in which public relief is to be afforded, nor can any just ground of complaint exist if to every destitute person the means shall be readily accessible of obtaining effectual relief.' One important modification of the law, and one alone, was announced. Where the Poor-rates, which the Guardians might be able to make and levy during the year then current, should be proved to be insufficient to meet the exceptional expenditure thrown upon them, the Government stated that they would be prepared to empower Boards of Guardians to borrow at once such sums as might be requisite to meet the temporary pressure, and to apply afterwards for the necessary legislative sanction to such proceeding. This was communicated to Boards of Guardians on the 12th of December. The decision was promptly and fiercely assailed. The statement was said to be insulting, the circular shortsighted and mistaken. By persons with no responsibility more violent adjectives were used. In a letter written to the Freeman's Journal,' and published two days before Christmas, it was pointed out that the destitute people of the West, who would soon be seen dying down in the ditches and howling for bread, would neither emigrate nor accept the relief of the workhouse. 'Are they to be condemned because, either rightly or wrongly, they entertain these feelings? The question must be immediately and practically answered, and if not .' The terrors of the threat were left to the imagination. Boards of Guardians passed.resolutions of 'stern repudiation of the circular and its arguments. Its authors were held up to execration, and were charged with responsibility for the starvation which would inevitably ensue. Finally it was urged, with an advice which a writer in the Times' justly characterized as inhuman, that the best way of meeting and defeating the instructions of the circular would be by filling the workhouses, so as to force the authorities to give outdoor relief. The Irish Government did not run away from the problem. The most careful steps were taken to provide the two requisites pointed out in the circular;-the accessibility of the relieving officer, and an adequacy of workhouse accommodation; and with the former object a gun-boat was placed at the service of the inspector of the district in which there was most reason to fear distress, and in which are included several islands not easily and not always accessible from the mainland. The Guardians were fortified by the most careful advice. And then the course of events was awaited, until the time should come when the arrival of spring would enable the Government to attack the difficulty from another point. It might have been reasonably expected that the monthly returns of the pauperism of the country would have shown considerable and steady increase, and that long ere the end of the spring the whole available workhouse accommodation would have been utilized. The inadequacy of the action of the Government was proclaimed by no less an authority than that of five Roman Catholic Bishops of the West of Ireland, who submitted their views to the Lord Lieutenant on the 9th of January, 1883. Relief in the workhouse was by them declared to be so revolting to the feelings of the people, that it would be rejected even at the risk of starvation; its enforcement by the refusal of any other form of acceptable relief was said to be attended with the gravest consequences; and inasmuch as 'great and widespread distress is fast approaching,' the Government were advised to institute without delay a comprehensive scheme of loans to tenants for the improvement of their holdings. Nor were they few who joined in the confident prediction that thousands would sooner starve in a ditch than enter the workhouse. In a word, the gravest fears were very generally expressed. The manner in which these predictions were verified was remarkable. The number of persons in receipt of relief rose slightly week by week from October to February. But the maximum limit attained was not 15 per cent. higher than the minimum reached in the summer of 1882. Thus: Indoor, Outdoor. Week ended July 29, 1882......... 47,956 60,255 Total. 108,211 122,570 Inasmuch as there was at the last-named date room for 90,000 in the workhouses of Ireland, the pressure upon the resources of the Poor-law could scarcely be called abnormal, and certainly was not extreme. From the week named, the time when, if the fears expressed so loudly had been justified, the period of distress would have begun to be acute, the numbers relieved sank steadily and even rapidly. There was no increase in the death rate; the people of the districts concerned set themselves to work; and after a debate in the House of Commons in April, to which we propose presently to refer a little further, nothing more was heard of the exceptional distress and the necessity for exceptional measures. We have dealt at some length with this part of the question, because we think that the history of the winter of 1882-3 in Ireland affords an important lesson. We often hear it said in England, as well as Ireland, that the poor will die before going into the workhouse; that relief in the workhouse leads to the breaking up of homes, and utterly destroys the self-reliance and future independence of those who accept it; that what is called a judicious system of out-relief is not only cheaper to the ratepayers, but better for the poor than adherence to the test of the workhouse; that in times at least of pressure a relaxation of the ordinary law is expedient from every point of view, and that only the most hard-hearted doctrinaires would refuse to aid in their own homes the infirm, the aged, or those who, being willing to work, are unable to find employment. These arguments have been refuted again and again, but rarely has their fallacy been so irresistibly proved by the stern logic of facts as in the case before us. The Irish of the West did not starve; those who were destitute, and those only, accepted relief in the workhouse; there was no great increase in the rates, but there was increase in self-reliance, exertion, and independence. In a word, the comparison of 1847 or 1879 with 1882 in Ireland adds very considerably to the evidence tending to show that the suffering undergone, wherever and whenever a lavish system of out-relief is established, are enormously in excess of those made necessary where the only public relief bestowed is to be found in the wards of a properly managed and liberally administered workhouse. We have no space to do more than glance at another theory upon which out-relief is supported It is held by certain public men, that it is better to keep the proletariate quiet by doles of public money, than to teach them independence and endanger an exercise of their power. Such a view we believe to be founded upon an entirely mistaken estimate, both of the relations between the State and the people of this realm, and of the character of the latter. A policy of suppression by alms could lead to no satisfactory result, and might be provocative of great mischief. A system of continual State aid has done much to perpetuate the spirit of helplessness from which Irishmen in their own country so severely suffer. We must not, however, be understood as saying that the poverty of certain districts of Ireland affords no problem for the statesmanship of Great Britain. There is a wide difference between the position that the Poor-law will suffice to avert famine, and the position that the aversion of famine is all that is required. It is very hazardous at every cry of distress to Vol. 157.-No. 314. 2 G organize deliberately a departure from the provisions of a law which was most carefully established; but it does not follow that the condition of the people may be with safety left solely to the action of the Guardians. The representations made of the poverty in the West during the winter of 1882 may have been too highly coloured, but that there is poverty, and that there are conditions leading to it for which a remedy should be sought, we are not prepared to deny. This is not a party question. The leaders of the Conservative party, as well as the Treasury Bench and the Home Rulers, have announced a desire to find a true and safe remedy for the ills admitted to exist; and an earnest desire to bring about some permanent improvement in the South and West of Ireland is not confined to those who so loudly proclaim themselves her only friends. We are compelled to quote a few figures to illustrate our view of what these evils are. In Mayo, where no less than 94 per cent. of the population are rural, the mean value of all the holdings of the county in 1881 was 87., the mean size of the holding thirty acres; there were 58 per cent. of the agricultural holdings under fifteen acres, and of these the average annual value was less than 4., under which value there were 21,736 holdings in the county. In Galway, 89 per cent. of the population in the same year were rural, 59 per cent. of all the agricultural holdings were not exceeding fifteen acres, and the average value of these was considerably less than 5%, while there were over 20,000 holdings under 47. in value. In Sligo, with a similar proportion of rural to civic population, 54 per cent. of the agricultural holdings were under fifteen acres, and of these the average valuation was much under 71. The average valuation of the county per acre was 9s. in Sligo, 6s. in Galway, and 5s. in Mayo. More than 30 per cent. of the population could not read in Sligo, more than 44 per cent. in Mayo, and more than 45 per cent. in Galway. In Donegal the condition of affairs was very similar, and there were 21,330 holdings below 47. valuation. In this last-named county there are practically no railways, except the line running along a portion of the eastern county border from Strabane towards Londonderry, with the branches to Stranorlar and Buncrana, and the line running along the southern boundary from Irvinestown to Bundoran. In Mayo, the large rectangle west of the line from Manulla to Ballina, and south of that from Manulla to Westport, comprising, as it does, the great baronies of Tirawley, Erris, and Burrishoole, is without any railway accommodation whatGalway is slightly better off as far as Athenry, but beyond that there is nothing save the short branches to Tuam ever. |