The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 39

The Illogical Imaginativeness of Ireland

The Illogical Imaginativeness of Ireland.

In a letter to the National Reformer, of January 4th, 1880, Mr. L'Estrange attempts to throw the blame of the chronic distress in Ireland upon Irish improvidence and priestly morality. The Celtic race is certainly not naturally improvident, for the French are provident to a fault, and so, too, are the Irish frequently out of their own country. On the other hand, the influence of Catholicism upon social morals is unquestionably the worst imaginable, since the Church blesses what reason holds accurst— i.e., the reckless multiplication of the people and professional mendicancy. It is not true, however, that Ireland was ever too densely peopled. On the contrary, as Mr. M. S. Crawford, in a sensibly-written letter to the Times of December 26th, 1879, states that while Guernsey curiously resembles Ireland in soil and climate, and natural products, Guernsey with a superficial area of 10,000 acres supports a population of 30,000, Ireland with an area of 15,550,000 acres has only a population of 5,500,000. That is to say that Ireland, peopled at the same rate as Guernsey, would have a population of 45,000,000. The truth is that the population question has really never affected Ireland, because, as the Abbé Perraud justly urges, in his "Etudes sur l'Irlande Contemporaine," the reduction of population—the removal of "overstock" tenantry can afford no permanent relief against the evils of rack-renting accompanied with absenteeism; and Mill expresses the same opinion in his "Political Economy." Now if this opinion of Mill's and Perraud's, shared by several French and German critics and economists, be correct, it should seem that what the Times calls the illogical imaginativeness of Ireland may after all have some basis in logic and in fact. Let us see.

The English landed system is in theory so entirely monstrous that foreigners are often at a loss to comprehend it,! and what it is in theory in England it is in fact in Ireland. The landlord may wring as much rent as he can obtain from the necessities of his tenants, it may be half or two-thirds of the gross value of the produce of the soil, an amount not always determined by the law of supply and demand, but sometimes by the tenant's affection, amounting to a passion, for his old home stored with priceless souvenirs. This vast pile of wealth, extracted perhaps from many square leagues of fertile territory, the landlord may carry away to Dublin, or Edinburgh, or Paris, or London, or Baden-Baden, or the Antipodes, and there, if he likes, he may squander it in gambling or debauchery, or in the search for the philosopher's stone. Whilst in his boyhood the dazzling prospect of this enormous privilege may be held before his eyes, and he can borrow money on the strength of it. It seems important to inquire whether there be any guarantee that this man shall be superior to his fellows, or if at the least there be a strong probability that he shall not be inferior to the average, because it is ill trusting to the wisdom of one who is not very unlikely to turn out a fool, and to the integrity of one who is not very unlikely to turn out a knave. Yet the actual case is worse, since it has always been a common-place of orthodox moralists that great wealth is corruptive. Behind him the absentee landlord leaves an agent who may or may not be prompted by motives of interest or of philanthropy to study to promote the well-being of the tenants and the improvement of the estate, but who has one sole recognised duty—namely, to obtain a proper rent for his employer. And what is a proper rent? As much as possible.

In England many circumstances prevent this law from working its most fatal effects, but it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences of it in a country where absenteeism is common, and where the landlords are generally out of sympathy with the tenants; and to say that this is true of Ireland is to keep within the mark—it is more than true. With a peasantry passionately attached to the soil, and having scarcely any resource except the land, and an alien aristocracy under no legal obligations to them, and able to play upon their passions and their needs in order to rack-rent them up to starvation level, but one result can follow. The thing is plain enough on paper, but it has been illustrated elsewhere than on paper.

Let this fact be published to the world and let men judge of it. At that time when the Irish were perishing by thousands of hunger and dysentery, and when Irishmen were being shot and bayoneted because they made the mistake of thinking that the produce of Irish labor and of Irish land ought to belong to Ireland; when the crowbar brigade were on their devil's errand, and the old, and the young, and the feeble, and women with infants at the breast, were sleeping their last cold sleep on the lea side of Irish haystacks and hedges, because the old roof tree was being hewn down by the profane hands of alien mercenaries, then, at that time, the Irish peasantry were raising with the sweat of their own brows on their own mother soil, oats and wheat; and native sheep and cattle were being tended with Irish care upon fat Irish pastures, a store of food consisting of the best of oatmeal and wheaten flour and the top quality of beef, and mutton, and pork and dairy produce was being created solely at Ireland's cost sufficient to have maintained the whole Irish people in super abounding plenty. Where did the food go? To England. In exchange for other merchandise? No! In exchange for the rentals of the absentees which were being abstracted from Ireland to the amount of more than five millions of money per annum. And most of this hoard of wealth was being paid over into the hands of men who are not Irishmen, nor who—nor their fathers before them—had ever given a quid, pro quo for any of it, had ever done a hand's turn for Ireland.

The harvest of cereals in 1846, worst year of the scourge, was splendid, but, remarkably enough, the cereals are not considered as food by the Irish, and the exports of that season were equal to the average. After noticing these very striking circumstances and giving the figures of the exports, says Gustave de Beaumont in his "L'lrlande Sociale, Politique et Religieuse:" "II est done rigoureusement vrai de dire que la population Irlandaise peut mourir de faim an sein de la plus grande abondance."

What wonder now if agrarian crime be rampant! What wonder if to some impassioned souls the hate of England has become an infatuation, a religion!

I refrain from some historical criticisms suggested by Mr. L'Estrange's letter, which would be very easy, but which would occupy too much space in the present busy crisis.

The metayer system of holdings, which Mr. L'Estrange recommends at the end of his letter, might answer in Ireland; but it would never do in England, because it ignores the claims of the urban and mining populations and also of the farm laborers.