Science, politics and society in early nineteenth-century Ireland by Allan Blackstock

Author:Allan Blackstock [Blackstock, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Ireland, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9781526111807
Google: S3C5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2016-05-16T03:15:04+00:00

Fiorin grass: combating prejudice

The title was misleading. Familiar themes were rehashed. British ‘ aborigines’ knew of fiorin, but modern writers like Arthur Young and Davies of Wiltshire discouraged people by giving derogatory names to the grass, which, if tried, would reveal its qualities. Linnaean botanists fixated with classification and nomenclature failed to recognise its properties. Parliament should promote fiorin improvement, as the public would willingly pay to enhance national strength and prosperity. Smarting from queries about fiorin’s productivity, Richardson filled pages with statistics seeking to prove that fiorin would stop the financial drain of the poor laws. The wartime shortage of shipbuilding timber was grafted to the argument that fiorin and plantations could coexist. His triumphs, ranging from Shotts Iron Works to Hertford’s mountain, were ludicrously compared to Henry IV defending his hereditary kingdom.136

Though Richardson was oblivious to this absurdity, readers were not; and, in a sudden switch of emphasis, the once-supportive Farmer’s Magazine turned against him in a hostile review. Mocking Richardson’s Shakespearean analogy, like many ‘great heroes’ his irascibility could be excused by his battles in defence of his protégé. Anachronistic chauvinism was also ridiculed. Fiorin had advanced so slowly in Scotland that more acreage could be covered by the mass of ‘essays, letters and dissertations’ it generated than the grass itself. ‘The honour of our country’ was already satisfied by the assertion that Scots were more open-minded than their English neighbours. But, if fiorin was so wonderful, why did intelligent men oppose it? Turning to facts, the review noted that Scottish and English readers were rightly sceptical regarding Richardson’s calculations of fiorin’s potential contribution to national prosperity and claims about feeding cattle. Fiorin was unsuitable for arable land and feasible only in miry bog. Richardson knew little of modern husbandry, used the ‘language of enthusiasm’ and provoked opposition by his arrogance.137

This was a telling point. Despite his rebarbative bluster, Richardson was deeply worried about what appeared in periodicals and newspapers. Essentially fiorin had to compete on merit rather than on its socially constructed reputation. Responding to an Englishman’s identification of new plants in the Agricultural Magazine, Richardson sourly wondered if he would meet the same ignorant prejudice as he had faced. In the same journal, one letter writer demanded that Richardson state exactly how much weight was lost in winter haymaking. Even the etymology of fiorin faced scrutiny, with the implication that it was contrived. Richardson backtracked and admitted that he did not understand the Irish language, and may have spelt fiorin incorrectly, as its phonetic rendition was ‘fyorin’. Rather than being a platform for praise, county reports from the Board of Agriculture charted fiorin’s decline. A Derbyshire report remarked that fiorin should not go from being overrated to underrated, as farmers found it growing locally but got meagre crops which cattle disliked.138 Other supporters denied the perceived national differences, claiming that Humphry Davy’s chemical analysis showed that English and Irish fiorin had a similar saccharine content.139 But such pleas for open-mindedness marked how far opinion had turned against fiorin.

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