The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat Coogan

Author:Tim Pat Coogan [Coogan, Tim Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Ireland, Modern, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781137278838
Google: x3HEH2XvUZ8C
Amazon: 1137278838
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

TEN

THE POOR LAW COMETH

“Neither ancient nor modern history can furnish a parallel to the fact that upwards of 3 millions of persons were fed every day in the neighbourhood of their homes, by administrative arrangements emanating from and controlled by one central office.”1

—Charles Trevelyan

THE FOREGOING WAS THE GLOWING PRAISE that Charles Trevelyan bestowed on the operation of the Soup Kitchen Act, much of which he had diligently overseen and for which he felt entitled to take credit. What he did not state was that he had subsequently moved on to play a leading role in the operation of the Irish Poor Law Extension Act of 1847, which effectively undid much of the benefit of the soup kitchens and brought an incalculable amount of suffering and death upon the starving.

The Poor Law Extension Act was the spawn of two conflicting ideological parents: one maintained that Irish property should pay for Irish poverty; the other that, for both ideological and economic reasons, relief should not be given outside the workhouse walls. To provide outdoor relief, according to the moralizing political economists, would be both “demoralizing” and ruinous, given the numbers involved. These doctrines were so rigorously adhered to that in some cases they even led to the ending of food distribution within the workhouses.

The workhouse in Cashel, County Tipperary, was suffering from “frightful overcrowding” as Christmas 1846 approached and they had to turn away five hundred people who were eligible for admission but for whom there was no room. Because of their eligibility, the workhouse authorities, as was done elsewhere, gave the five hundred one meal a day inside the workhouse, arguing that this could not be considered outdoor relief because the food was eaten inside the workhouse. Officialdom would not accept this plea and said the practice had to stop.

However, back in London realization had set in that the work scheme had been a disaster and that something fresh had to be attempted. Barely a month after Cashel was forced to deny the starving five hundred, Lord John Russell announced a policy reversal. It made way for an expansion of the poor law to allow for the introduction of outdoor relief later in the year.

This legislation depended first on an impossibility and second on a cruelty. The impossibility lay in the principal assumption underlying the poor law extension, namely that it would be paid for out of the rates (local taxes) collected in Ireland. The doctrine on which this decision was based, that Irish property should pay for Irish poverty, would have been better phrased “Irish poverty must support Irish property.”

The ruinous state of the country generally and that of the landlord class in particular has already been described. Even before the failure of the potato, in 1844, the Conservatives, who were never in any danger of being accused of excessive tenderheartedness where the collection of Irish taxes was concerned, had taken part in a spectacular demonstration of the difficulties of extracting blood from a stone. In Mayo only one-quarter of

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