George Poulett Scrope

“ Is it supposed by any one that the quick-witted peasantry of Ireland cannot reason from these simple premises? Does not their religion teach them that God gave the earth to man to inhabit and cultivate, giving to man at the same time that instinctive desire, which they so strongly feel and exhibit, to obtain his living by its cultivation? ”

“ The condition of all industry is the right to enjoy its fruits. The bees, it is true, those models of industry, are, like the Irish peasant, robbed ever year of the results of their labour, and yet continue to toil on. But the bees do not foresee this hard fate; while the quick-witted Irishman knows that what has happened before will very likely happen again, and taking warning by a neighbour's fate, only labours so far as just to live, in the conviction that any surplus he could by any effort produce, beyond the barest necessaries of subsistence, would go to his landlord, not to him*' self. ”

“ But, independently of this argument, it is sufficient to ask what peculiar sanctity can there be in waste lands, that is to protect them from that appropriation to public uses, when required, which is daily practised, in every ordinary railway, or canal, or road bill, in the case of lands highly cultivated, improved and adorned—nay, even of buildings and residences on which vast capital has been perhaps laid out, or which are consecrated in the affections of their owners by a thousand cherished associations? ”

“ But, nevertheless, I cannot agree with those who put forward either or both of these schemes as in themselves capable of acting with sufficiently immediate, direct, and powerful effect upon the present circumstances of Ireland to warrant their being so prominently advocated as they have been, to the exclusion of other measures more appropriate, and more immediately applicable to the crisis we have to deal with.
The great object to be had in view is to create: employment and food for the people. ”

“ Indeed it is a singular and striking fact, that it is precisely those districts of the west and south of Ireland where the population is most wretched and destitute of employment, which most abound in improveable waste land. The useless land, requiring only labour to produce abundance, generally lies almost at the doors of the idle thousands, who are starving for want of work. ”

“ Then what must be their sense of the justice, or accordance with the Divine will, of a law which shuts up vast tracts of untouched land from their use, and leaves them to starve, or at best to lounge idly upon it, forbidden to plant a spade in it for the purpose of fulfilling the Divine commandment of gaining their bread from the earth by the sweat of their brow? ”

“ In the words of the address of the Council of the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society, for 1845, "In every district may be seen tracts on which labour might be employed with the utmost advantage, and in all those districts are to be found masses of people in want of food, or of wages to purchase food." ”

“ If, as every one knows to be the fact, there are parts of Ireland where it would be absurd to expect that sufficient rates will or can be collected by the Guardians, in the coarse of the coming winter and spring, to feed the destitute portion of their population, it becomes the imperative duty of the Commission—that is, of the Government—to provide the means for supplementing the deficiency. ”

“ Urgently as I have always pressed for a completion of the Poor-law, as the necessary foundation and commencement of social reform in Ireland, I have never failed to express the opinion that it would require other supplementary measures to be adopted at the same time, to enable it to be successfully put into operation, as well as to assist in bringing about the great object in view, of securing to the bulk of the people of Ireland the means of living in that decent condition which civilization requires and ought to afford to them. ”

“ Feelings of this nature in other countries of Europe within very recent periods have generated, you are aware, successful revolutions, by which dynasties have been overthrown, whole races of landowners summarily dispossessed, not of their wastes only, but of their entire estates; and the many made proprietors—happy and comfortable proprietors—of the soil, instead of the few. Will you wait for some similar convulsion in Ireland before you appropriate the waste lands of the island—the people's farm— to the use of the people? ”

“ On the one hand, hundreds of thousands of the people of Ireland are asking for food in return for their labour. On the other, millions of Irish acres only require labour to produce food. Can there be a question that the first and most urgent of all measures demanding the attention of the Government and Legislature, must be one to apply the unemployed labour to the unemployed land? ”

“ Many demand for this purpose the universal extension of the kind of tenant right which has made Ulster prosperous,—as compared with the other three provinces—has maintained harmony between land, lord and tenant, securing his rent to the former, and comfort to the latter—has always preserved the province from agrarian outrage, and saved its inhabitants from the extremity of famine last year—a system, in fact, which has been tried and found successful on the experience of centuries. ”

“ First, To calm the excitement that so generally prevails throughout the class of occupying peasantry in Ireland, and induce them to relinquish that spirit of combination against the law, and that sympathy with agrarian crime, which are engendered amongst them by the insecurity of their present tenure, and which, so long as they last, will be an effectual bar to the introduction or investment of capital in the improvement of Irish agriculture. ”

“ If the waste lands are taken into cultivation, and industrious habits established, it is very doubtful whether there will be any surplus population, or even whether it would be equal to the demand."
"Providence has given everything needful, and nothing is wanted but industry to apply it."
Yes I there are two things more wanted—namely, that Irish industry should have leave to apply itself to the improvement of the Irish soil, and be assured of reaping the undivided fruits of such application! ”

“ Above all, at such a critical period as the present, with the awful prospect opening before us for the ensuing winter, it is impossible not to perceive that to leave Ireland to right herself by the bare unaided influence of the new Poor-law, would be to risk the failure of that law altogether; indeed, to play into the hands of its opponents, who will no doubt do all in their power to hamper and resist its operation ”

“ Whether they should take the form of such a measure as I have long urged upon you for employing the waste labour of Ireland in reclaiming and rendering marketable and cultivable her waste land, may be a question with some. For myself, I can see no resource at all comparable to this, whether in direct and universal applicability to the objects in view, in certainty of remunerative return, in the moderate amount of outlay required, or in its adaptation to the feelings, wants, and social circumstances of the population ”

“ That these multitudes should be still for another year or two maintained in idleness at the public expense, either in or out of the workhouse, eating up the resources of the country without adding to them, and learning indolence and vicious dependence, and that in districts where waste land lies at their doors on which they might be profitably employed, if the law permitted its appropriation to the purpose, would amount to a pitch of barbarian folly, that the common sense of the three kingdoms would hardly tolerate. ”

“ Even of those landlords who are roused, by the pressure of the times and the impending poor-rate, to action, the majority look for salvation to other means—to the eviction of their numerous tenantry, the clearing of their estates from the seemingly superfluous population by emigration or ejectment. ”

“ Now the universal testimony of all who have studied the natural resources of Ireland assures us that there exist ample means within her own limits for employing and feeding her entire population—nay, several multiples of that number—of employing them in the production as well of the food they require as of other objects of home consumption or commercial demand. ”

“ The people will be with you in a body. The people, not of Ireland only, but of Britain equally—for we know that unless the Irish are placed in a condition to maintain themselves, upon us will fall the burden of their maintenance. ”

“ One, the famous quarter-acre clause, which directly aims at making the law of relief an instrument for clearing estates of the smaller landholders, and thus still further complicates the difficulties of the crisis suddenly dissevering from the occupation of the land (their habitual means of existence) thousands and tens of thousands who in an extraordinary time of famine may require assistance, but for whom, as mere labourers in ordinary times there is not, nor is there likely to be, any demand. ”

“ The non-resident proprietors possess the most valuable interest in nearly nine-tenths of the soil of our district. Their estates are capable of great improvement; and for the most part, indeed four-fifths of them, are wilderness, waste and unproductive; but which, if reclaimed and improved, as they might he by drainage, &c., would give ample employment and subsistence to the whole surplus population, and change this district from a region of distress and calamity into one of comparative wealth and prosperity. ”

“ It is, indeed, self-evident that the improvement of the productive capacities of her soil, which alone can enable Ireland to emerge from her present difficulties, cannot be generally, or even largely, carried into effect, so long as the bulk of her estates are bound in a condition of hopeless paralysis by the net-work of legal settlements, trusts, and liabilities, which now incapacitate their nominal owners from either undertaking improvements themselves, or offering such terms as may induce other parties to effect them. ”

“ Is the infatuated resistance of the legal owners of millions of acres of reclaimable land, which they either cannot or will not make use of themselves, nor permit others to improve or cultivate on fair terms, to be still all-powerful? ”

“ The affections of the entire body of the peasantry, whether farmers or labourers only, would be thereby conciliated effectually to the Imperial Legislature and to British connexion. They would feel that they were no longer neglected by the law, and left at the mercy of others—that by their own industrial exertions they would be able henceforward to raise themselves from their present deplorable, or at best but precarious, condition, to one of comfort and respectability. ”

“ If this be not done, it is surely hopeless to expect that they will peaceably submit to a law which they have hitherto more or less effectually superseded by a legislation of their own—a law which denies to them those rights they have to a great extent secured to themselves in practice. ”