Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser (NSW : 1848 – 1859), Saturday 18
August 1849, page 1
IRISH LANDLORDISM. [From Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, March 25.]
If further evidence had been necessary in proof of the utter selfishness and
shortsightedness of the Irish landlords, it would be furnished in the opposition they
are offering to the measure by which it is proposed to relieve some of the overburdened
and bankrupt unions of Ireland, by a rate-in-aid, to the extent of sixpence in the
pound. Ready as this class are to give their aid in the suppression of agitation, when
employed on behalf of popular objects, and to assist in those who may perchance
overstep the strict limits of the act for watching over and punishing ” open and advised
speaking,” wherever the speakers are identified with the oppressed and prostrated
classes ‘ of their unfortunate country, they are by no means fastidious in the language
they use – by no means nice in the means they employ, whenever they fancy they
discover that the obligations they owe their country in general, and their depressed
tenantry in particular, are about to be enforced.
What a spectacle does Ireland present to the civilised world! Her people are either
dying of starvation, or devouring the food that belong of right to others. And it is not,
as might and would be imagined by any one who knows not the fact, that the Irish
character is thus moulded and matured from the influence of tendencies of the lowest
class of her people. No. The process by which it is produced comes in the opposite
direction. As fast as the poorer classes of Ireland can escape from their own soil, and
enter other fields of industry, they give satisfactory proof that they are neither
indolent nor improvident. No matter whether they make their way to England, to the
United States, to Canada, or to the Cape in any of these places they are found to be as
industrious, as energetic, as sober, as self relying, and as independent as either
Scotchmen or Englishmen.
The Irish landlords as a body, seem to think that they were sent into the world ready
booted and spurred, to ride the rest of their countrymen to death, excepting in so far
as they may be sustained under the exhausting and destroying process by external aid
and support. They can look upon themselves in no other light than as a favoured race,
whose only business is to receive rent, and revel in the luxuries which the receipt of
rent will command. It is for them to take, as it is for all else to give. Other men are
ready enough – even the most selfish and grasping of them – to give trifles, if they
receive treasures – they’ll ” give a sprat to catch a herring.” But Irish landlords are an
exception to the rest of the species. Like the horse-leech, their unvarying cry is, ” Give,
give !” And they will part with nothing that they can get. Would any other set of men
in the civilised world have taken the course which they have upon the question of this
rate-in aid? Remember that it is to help – only to help! to help to feed the starving poor
of their own country.
England has just sent them another £50,000 to aid in keeping death from the Irish
cabins that are scattered over the aristocracy’s estates; but that will not suffice. Irish
landlordism demands that England should not aid them in driving famine from the
land, but that she should drive the fiend forth single-handed, and alone, while those
whose exactions and oppressions have exposed the people to its visitation and ravages,
may continue uninterrupted in the pursuit of their pleasures. At a meeting held at
Ballymena, the other day, under the presidency of the high sheriff, Lord Massarene
said, ” Let men of all parties and creeds unite, and if they cannot prevent the passing
of the present measure, or the levying of the tax, let them take care that the intruder
shall never go back with the supply…………He believed that twice or three times 50,000
soldiers would not, in the north, be able to collect this unjust rate in-aid. He would
dare the government to collect it.” The Honorable George Handcock, a son of Lord
Castlemaine’s took up the note, and called upon the people of Ulster, if the rate should
be laid upon them, to adopt the Quaker policy and say to the Government, “Help
yourselves – we will not, pay!”
At a meeting held at Downpatrick the Marquis of Downshire not only protested
against ” this most rascally” rate, but pledged himself, though at the risk of incurring
the odium of being a rebel, to ” oppose the stupid law” by every means in his power.
Such is the tone and temper in which the proposition for a small rate-in-aid of the poor
fund is received by the Irish landlords, who for the most part, as we have said, exact
all they can, and protest against any opposition for alleviating the frightful condition
of the thousands whom their exactions and ill treatment have made paupers, if
that.propo sition threatens to make a call upon their purses, in even the most
moderate way. What is it to them that famine is decimating the population ? Let
England look to it and let England supply the funds necessary to stay the ravages of
the destroyer like she has done before. Irish landlords have quite enough to do to look
after their rents, and to enjoy the luxuries those rents afford.
The rebuke which one of their own countrymen a Catholic clergyman-administered to
them, a few days since, should mantle their cheeks with shame.-” It appeared
strange,” he observed, ” that in the various counties of Ireland the landlords were
violent in their opposition to the small amount which the Government called upon
them to pay to save the people from the most terrific of all deaths -death from
starvation (cheers).” There were other rates falling upon the people far more: grievous
than the trilling sum required for the rate-in-aid.’ He asked the landlords were they
aware that there was any snob thing as a rack-rent, and arrears of rent held over their
tenantry; which oppressed and paralysed them, almost beyond their power of
endurance. He contended that until they should blot out the arrears, and let their
lands at a fair and moderate rent, they would always have their tenantry, whether
Protestant or Catholic, dispirited; and do, not say what they would, when the tenantry
fell, the landlords would fall along with them.
In England, the value of land was arranged in three divisions – one-third for the
landlord’s rent, one-third for labour and cultivation, and one-third for the farmer’s
profits; but the Irish landlord, in most cases, was not satisfied with that – he would
have almost the entire; but if the rent-roll was not brought down, and the arrears
blotted out, there was nothing could save them from falling into the same state as the
south and west of Ireland. In former years, the county cess [local tax] was only about
£400,000 and it had lately increased to upwards of a million, which pressed heavily
upon the industrious classes. He had heard a great deal said that day by the landlords
of Carlow about the errors of their own class in the south and west, but many of those
things might be applied to themselves. That they had difficulties to contend against he
did not deny; but in order to escape from the difficulties under which they laboured
they should put their shoulders to the wheel and act like humane men. He looked with
compassion upon the state of the landlords of the south and west; but great as their
calamities were, the condition of the farmers was still more lament able, many of
whom from a state of comfort and comparative independence had been of late reduced
to the rank of paupers, and the labouring classes were fading away, perishing by
hunger. or pestilence, or flying from the land to the emigrant ship, almost reckless as
to where they would be borne. England had told the Irish people that they should do
something for themselves, and England was right. England in addition to the
enormous sums she had given in public grants, loans, and private contributions of the
most lavish and bountiful description, had paid in poor-rates, in addition to their own,
£800,000 to feed the Irish paupers that had been sent over from this country last year.
There was no niggard grumbling, nor ostentatious display one the part of the English
people in dispensing front their abundance those large sums of money for the relief of
their fellow-creatures in this country. No, the benevolence of the people of England
arose from the inate generosity of their disposition. They were not compelled by law to
pay for the support of Irish paupers in England; the British people gave hundreds of
thousands of pounds for the relief of the suffering poor in this country. The simple
question of the rate-in-aid resolved itself into this – if the landlords of Ireland would
make up their minds to oppose it, the people of Connaught alone would not be the only
place in which human misery would prevail. He implored of the landlords to pause
before they consigned the poor to the deplorable death of starvation. Their countrymen
were falling by thousands, and instead of opposing the trifling tax to be imposed for
their preservation, he conjured the landlords, while they yet possessed the little power
they enjoyed, to give their hearty support to the measure proposed by the Government
for the support of their fellow – creatures in distress, and save them from starvation.”
That is as full of sense as it is full of spirit, and when we find such appeals to the
better sense of the farmers and labourers responded to and cheered as this was, at
Carlow, and a resolution in accordance with it, carried as an amendment upon a
proposition denunciatory of the rate-in-aid, we begin to hope, in spite of landlords, and
law made parsons, and grinding middle-men, and other of the locust tribe with which
Ireland abounds, that the time is not far distant when Irishmen will ” do something
for themselves,” and render all appeals to commiseration and charity unnecessary.
Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, 22 September 1849.
FAMINE AND PLAGUE.-The accounts of the plague and famine are more rife than
ever, and horrors appear to be accumulating throughout that doomed land. The
‘Sunday Times,’ of the 3rd June says – “It is utterly impossible for language to
describe, or imagination to picture, the frightful condition of Ireland. It undoubtedly
appears to be ” the land of wrath,” the object of heaven’s vengeance – a plague spot
shunned by all who have either the means or the power to escape from it.” With
desolation is the whole land laid desolate – by starvation, pestilence, and death. The
phial of God’s wrath is, as it were poured out on the devoted land, and his angel of
destruction is exterminating its panic-struck, palsied, powerless people. Who can
understand – who can interpret? where is the Daniel to explain the mysterious hand
that is thus decimating a whole nation? Well has it been said that it would require a
Milton, a Dante, to describe those fearful realities, which fling into the shade the
darkest and the most terrible scenes which their inspired imaginations have painted.
Whole towns with their inhabitants have been destroyed, – child hood, womanhood,
and manhood are falling crushed to the dust by hunger. There they lie, unkennelled,
unburied, the food of ravenous dogs and birds of prey. The Dublin Evening Packet,
thus describes the condition of Ireland: – Thousands upon thousands of a once stalwart
race are skeletons now. Districts once peopled with the life and joy, are filled with
desolation and mourning. Childhood fights with childhood for that rare luxury – a
patch of nettles; or else glares at the passer-by from the ditch side with an awful look
of withered age and hopeless idiotcy which we contemplate with a shudder of the
frame, an icy chilling of the blood. Diseased entrails of diseased brutes – all kinds of
offal the most loathsome – are eagerly devoured. The gaols heretofore shunned by the
moral and the virtuous – as, let their traducers say what they may, the great masses of
the Irish people are – are now sought as refuge places. Crime has become a saviour of
life, and hunger, trampling shame under foot, has grown a wholesale demoraliser In
the world’s history – upon the broad face of the fruitful earth-such a spectacle as
Ireland presented, and presents, never appalled civilisation. A gentleman who has just
passed through the west, gives the subjoined horrifying evidence of the busy
operations of death in that quarter: – “On my way here I called at Ballinasloe,
Loughrea, and Galway. The first mentioned town I found a vast hospital, having
twelve or fourteen auxiliary poor houses, They are situated in every part of the town,
consequently you can’t go to any district without coming in contact with a cholera
hospital. A person from Ahaseraph, applying of coffins for that union, and such has
been the demand for the last month, that he employed forty men sawing boards and
twenty men nailing them together. Notwithstanding that number constantly at work
(even on Sunday), the guardian had to engage an additional contractor. With their
united exertions, and the numerous staff employed by them, they are scarcely able to
keep a sufficient number ready. Many of your readers can have no idea of the
description of cof fins they are. In order to give them information, I shall describe
them as well as I can. The boards are nailed together just in the same way boxes
containing yellow soap are sent to the country by the Liverpool manufacturer, but not
with as much care (without planing or painting)-You can judge what number seventy
or eighty men would prepare daily.” In Clare Island destitution is making awful
ravages. In three years the inhabitants have been reduced from 1700 to 1202. In
Kilrush, James Cox and his child died on the roadside from starvation. Cox’s winding
sheet was the only rag of a petticoat that his wife had.” Many in Mahon also died on
the roadside from starvation. John Moloney died in the grave yard, where his mangled
re mains were found – his head severed from the body by dogs and gnawed bare, his
bowels torn out and partly devoured, and his thigh bone denuded of flesh. The Irish
provincial journals give the most cheering accounts of the progress of the crops of all
kinds. The potatoes in all directions, present a healthy and luxurious appearance, and
those early planted are far advanced in growth.