§ MR. P. SCROPEwished to ask the question of which he had given notice—whether the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland was prepared to lay before the House any statement as to the progress of the system of relief in Ireland under the Temporary Relief Act? That measure passed on the 26th of February. Three months had since elapsed, and, so far as he had ascertained, it had not been carried into effect in a very large number of districts. Accounts were continually arriving of delay. The Dublin Evening Post of last Saturday stated that there were many districts in which nothing practical had been done, or, what was worse, in which tricks and pretences were resorted to so as to avoid carrying the Act into effect. From the union of Bantry it was stated, upon good authority, that as yet in no union, electoral division, or district in the great county of Cork, was the Act in operation; though it was said that there the people were perishing at the rate of 1,000 a week; 13,000 persons had consequently been swept off to the churchyard since the Act had passed. Such was the statement of the Cork Southern Reporter, which, however, remarked that it was hard to hold the Government responsible; the relief committee at Bantry had not completed its preliminary arrangements, though these were begun in March last. The committee consisted of twelve men. In the previous October two gentlemen had completed the relief list in six or seven days; yet the same task had not been completed by the entire Bantry committee in six weeks. That statement seemed to bear out the charge of blame-able, wilful, culpable delay against the relief committees in carrying out the measure in that district. And supposing there was culpable delay, what was the consequence? The people were dying, as described, in large numbers. He had re- 957 ceived a letter from a gentleman, who stated that in Bantry there had been two large pits dug at Lord Berehaven's gates to receive the bodies of those who died of starvation; 247 bodies had been thrown into one without a coffin, and 403 into the other, making 650 in all. Lord Berehaven was said to have subscribed only 20s. per month to the soup kitchen, and that subscription was withdrawn because the list of subscriptions was published; he had never been seen outside his demesne for a month past, and no employment had been given by him to the people. The people in Ban-try workhouse were described as in a state which was scarcely credible. The report of Dr. Stephens, who had been appointed officially to examine the patients, stated that some were lying in their own excrement—that people labouring under fever he found lying five and six in a bed, without one to help them, and without a drop of water to moisten their palates. The relief committee in the district of Bantry having pretended to sit for six weeks without completing a single list, not one ration of food had been distributed among the people. On the 10th of March, sixty labourers were dismissed, and on the 20th of March, six hundred more, representing a population of 4,000 persons. More than two months, then, had elapsed, and no relief had been afforded by the relief committees, which were to provide a substitute for the relief given by the Board of Works. If culpable delay could be brought home to those parties, and it could be proved that they wilfully withheld the relief they were bound to give, he could not otherwise characterize their conduct than as chargeable with wilful murder. They had the law to execute; the law required them to relieve the destitute in the mode prescribed by the Government; and if they did not afford relief according to the necessities of the case, they exposed themselves to a charge of criminal neglect of duty. There were accounts of food riots every day; in five counties, Clare, Limerick, Cork, Mayo, and Kilkenny, there had been repeatedly food riots within the last three months; and if there was such negligence as that alleged in the case to which he had referred, was it astonishing that the people in those unions should try to help themselves, and that the law should be obliged to interpose for the purpose of putting down, perhaps at the expense of bloodshed, such attempts as those unfortunate people made to obtain relief for their families? 958 The danger arose from not providing the means of support in the interval between breaking up the relief works and opening the soup depots which the law required. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there was no means in the power of the Government to compel those of whom he complained to discharge their duty, or to appoint paid officers to provide the relief the committee were so unwilling to provide? He was not quite sure but the Relief Commissioners had power to appoint such paid officers.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREI cannot help repeating an observation made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that it is not a convenient course for an hon. Gentleman, in putting a question to a Member of the Government, to make a general statement, and one especially containing charges against individuals. The hon. Gentleman has alluded by name to a noble Lord. All I can say is, that I have been in personal communication with that noble Lord; and from my general knowledge of his character, I should be very much surprised if he has acted with the inhumanity with which he has been charged. In reply to the question of which the hon. Gentleman gave notice, I can only state that there is now in possession of the Government the Second Report of the Relief Commissioners in Dublin, containing very ample information as to the working of the late relief measure. That report is in the hands of the printer; it will be ready in a very few days, and will furnish my hon. Friend with the fullest information upon all the points to which he has adverted. In the meantime, I shall only say, that whatever obstacles may have occurred in bringing the new relief measures into operation, they have arisen from no want of zeal, ability, and energy on the part of Sir J. Burgoyne and his colleagues, who are members of the Relief Board. On the contrary, I believe they have laboured with the utmost energy and ability to carry into effect the intentions of the Government and the Legislature. They have had to contend with great obstacles on the part of relief committees, who—I do not say universally, but in many instances—have shown an unwillingness to assist; and they have also been impeded by a very great unwillingness on the part of the people to accept relief in the form now provided, instead of the wages which hitherto they have received. Those people are induced to believe that by resisting the new system 959 of relief, sometimes even by acts of violence, they will oblige the Government to resort to the old system of roadmaking. I trust the firm manner in which the Irish Government is checking violence, and showing that they will not be coerced by these ebullitions of popular violence to resort to a system which, though justifiable as a temporary system, would not be justifiable as a permanent system, will serve to disabuse those people of the delusion under which they are labouring; that a better spirit will prevail, and the measure be carried into effect, so as to afford relief to the really destitute, without involving the abuses to which the roadmaking system was exposed. But, as the most ample information will be contained in the forthcoming report of the Relief Board on the whole subject, I trust my hon. Friend will be satisfied with my referring him to that report, rather than going into any matters of detail on the present occasion.
§ MR. SHAWsaid, he rose to deprecate the attacks the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Poulett Scrope) was in the constant habit of making upon the landlords and gentry of Ireland, and particularly the attack he had made that night, upon no other authority than that of anonymous publications and newspaper paragraphs. Lord Berehaven, whom the hon. Member (Mr. Poulett Scrope) in total ignorance of facts, and in the absence of authentic information, accused of little less than wilful murder, because he was among those whom the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Poulett Scrope) chose to say were systematically neglecting the distressed poor in their neighbourhoods; Lord Berehaven, he would undertake to assert, was a man of as humane and benevolent a disposition as was to be found in any country. He was a constant resident in Ireland, in a very remote district beyond Bantry, where he was incessantly employed in improving the condition and administering to the wants of the people. If, as the hon. Gentleman represented, it was attempted by relief committees to extort subscriptions by the threat of publishing lists of names, then he thought Lord Berehaven, or any other gentleman, evinced a proper manliness by refusing to yield such threats; but he did not mean, and he was sure Lord Berehaven would not so act, that the poor should be losers on that account, but that only each person should be allowed to give in the way he considered most conducive to the advantage of the poor. It was very easy for the hon. Gen- 960 tleman (Mr. P. Scrope) to talk in that House of administering the Temporary Relief Act in Ireland; but in practice it was extremely difficult. He believed that, generally speaking, the relief committees were exerting themselves to the utmost to execute the Act; but he had frequent communications, and these not from the worst parts of Ireland, representing the extreme difficulties they had to contend with; and the people were not only as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Labouchere) had stated, discontented with the particular relief provided by the Act, but the applications were so numerous, so almost universal among the labouring and poorer classes for relief of some sort, to which they now considered they were entitled by law, that you must either give to them all indiscriminately, or (as members of the relief committees wrote to him) have, in each union, on an average, about 25,000 cases weekly to investigate. How, under these circumstances, the Act was to be administered, he was unable to conjecture. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. P. Scrope) had disclaimed that night any intention to use his position as a Member of that House for the purpose of maligning the resident landlords and gentry of Ireland; but the hon. Gentleman must permit him, on behalf of that body, to say that the hon. Gentleman was in the constant habit of abusing his privilege as a Member of that House, by applying language there to the resident gentry of Ireland which he would not venture to do out of that House.
§ MR. B. OSBORNEthought the hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin might have let the charge pass in silence. The hon. Member for the University ought to have taken into consideration that this sort of attack was excessively popular just now with some constituencies; and that if the hon. Member for Stroud found his popularity on the wane, he was not to be blamed if he joined in the cry of "mad dog" against people whom he knew very little about. He quite agreed in the remarks which had been made concerning the ability and exertions of Sir J. Burgoyne; but he believed that his (Mr. Osborne's) anticipations were about to be realized, and that the Act would prove a failure. He had that very morning received a letter from one of the poor-law guardians of Clonmel, which showed that it had broken down, and stated that the poor people were assembled for twelve hours to receive relief, and that all did not get tickets, though they stood for that time 961 under a pouring torrent of rain. He thought if the hon. Member for Stroud would volunteer a journey into Ireland, and act as a member of a committee at a soup-kitchen, he would hesitate when he came back how he gave his opinions as to the difficulties of working the measure, or carrying the law into effect.
§ SIR J. WALSHwished to ask the hon. Member for Stroud before the debate came on, if, when he had brought forward such charges against the character of Lord Berehaven, he had taken the precaution of giving notice to the noble Lord, in order that he might meet them?
§ MR. P. SCROPEsaid, he had not done so. The general charge had been made before, and no names were given. When general charges were made it was said, "Oh, that is unfair to make such vague accusations;" and when names were given it was said, "You should not mention names." He had, however, given the noble Lord an opportunity of rebutting those charges; and he (Mr. Scrope) was happy he had done so, by stating them in the fairest way he could to the House and the public.
MR. STAFFORD O'BRIENobserved, that the hon. Gentleman seemed to think, whatever charge he brought forward, if he named the individual, he was fully justified. The state of the case in the county of Clare was this; that the relief committee opened their soup-kitchens, made out lists, and began to administer relief; but the people rushed upon the soup-kitchens and broke the boilers; whoever was to blame for this, it was certainly not the committee. He (Mr. O'Brien) could confirm what had been stated by the right hon. the Secretary for Ireland, that there did exist a repugnance in the one system for the other. If the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scrope) thought that the system of unproductive works should go on, let him say so at once; but if the hon. Gentleman objected to the continuance of that system, and at the same time blamed the relief committees when they were unable to administer relief because the boilers were broken, he put it to the hon. Gentleman if that was fair? He wished the hon. Member would turn his attention to the subject practically, instead of theoretically; that he would go over to Ireland and see the working of the system; or, what would be better, purchase an estate in Ireland, and then he would be better able to speak upon it.