HL Deb 25 March 1852 vol 120 cc64-76
LORD MONTEAGLE

, having presented petitions from the Guardians of 'the Castlebar, Castlederg, and other Unions, praying for inquiry into the advances made in relief of the late famine in Ireland, moved for a Select Committee to which should be referred the Treasury Minutes providing for the debts due from counties and unions in Ireland, by the imposition of a consolidated annuity for a period not exceeding forty years. The noble Lord said the subject was one of the most important financial questions that could affect the sister kingdom. But he must guard against one misconception, before addressing himself to his argument. It was true that he considered the arrangments proposed by the Treasury for the repayment of these debts to be unwise and oppressive. He was not on that account forgetful of, or still less was he indifferent to, the noble efforts made by the people of England to relieve the calamity which had afflicted Ireland; he believed their efforts were unparalleled in the history of mankind; but he feared that our legislative measures were not characterised by as much prudence as the acts of private persons had been. The country and both Houses of Parliament were animated, he was convinced, by a sincere desire to relieve the most distressing calamity that had occurred in modern times to a civilised country; and he must not be charged as urging anything in the nature of an unreasonable complaint if he hinted that the interposition of the Legislature did not exhibit all the sagacity that might have been shown by Parliament on such an occasion. Our statutable interpretation was not quite so wise as it might have been, and the remedies adopted for the evils which afflicted Ireland, so far from working a cure, had too often been productive of great and lasting calamities. Grievous misrepresentation had taken place both in Parliament and in print. It had been said that all loans to Ireland assumed, before long, the form of gifts; and that those who sued for aid were, after a short time, found to repudiate that part of the obligation of a debt, which consisted in the duty of repaying it. Such a statement was a misrepresentation of the Irish character, and was at variance with the facts; he should have hardly thought it necessary to say a word upon it, in their Lordships' House, were it not that it was one of those fallacies which had been repeated and reiterated so often, that it had tended to exasperate parties on both sides of the Channel, creating a mutual estrangement which a knowledge of the truth would, he trusted, be calculated to dispel. With that object, he would submit a few facts to their Lordships, which, he believed, would be new to some among them, and which having himself verified, he could assure the House would be found correct. During the depressed condition of Ireland, from 1837 to 1852, very considerable sums had been advanced by way of loan to Ireland; and what was the result? Was it true that Ireland had shown any desire to cheat, to defraud, to evade the payment of what had been advanced, or to shrink from her engagements? On the contrary, there had been shown the most anxious desire and the most strenuous effort to meet them, even at a time when the people were overwhelmed with affliction, and were the victims of plague and pestilence. He would call their Lordships' attention to the fact, that the amount of the repayments which had been made by Ireland to the Exchequer, from May, 1837, to January, 1852, had not been less than 6,065,079l. There had been a repayment of the whole sum advanced on the credit of the rate-in-aid; 150,000l. had reached the Exchequer, an amount which might be found to exceed the debt. There had been an advance for improving the Shannon navigation of 313,000l.: of this sum 269,000l. had already been repaid; there had been further repayments of 180,000l. under the Temporary Relief Act, administered under the wise and benevolent management of his admirable friend, General Sir J. Burgoyne. There had also been repaid of the most questionable of all these advances, the Labour Rate, 285,000l. under the 9 & 10 Vict., ch. 107; and 99,000l. under the 9 Vict., ch. 1; making in these two sums a total of 384,000l. But much more than this had been done. Concurrently with these repayments, there had been collected in Poor Rate in Ireland between 1838 and 1849 above 7,000,000l. which sum could not be less at the present time than 9,000,000l. This sum had bean raised by Ireland to meet the burden of her destitution in a comparatively short period, under Act of Parliament. This rate too, it should always be remembered, was a new tax. He begged to call the atten- tion of their Lordships, more especially as being acquainted with the collection of rates in England, to one fact connected with this part of the Poor Law administration in Ireland, which presented a peculiarity not unworthy of notice. Of the total sum of upwards of 7,000,000l. assessed, 94 per cent had been collected and paid, and 4 per cent was carried on, and included in the current rate, so that on the whole 7,000,000l. 2 per cent only was lost on the total amount of the rates. This was at the very time the country was suffering the calamity of famine, when her valued income had fallen off one million and a half, and her population had declined 1,659,000 in about six years. It was but doing justice to the efforts made by Ireland for her destitute population to state these facts. It would be but wisdom on the part of England to remember and acknowledge them. The same efforts were made with respect to the rate-in-aid, a tax most justly unpopular in itself, which had no warrant in experience, and which could only be justified by the exceptional nature of the case. The amount assessed was 421,990l, and of this amount 384,295l. had been received up to December, 1851, leaving only 37,600l. outstanding at the close of last year, which it was probable was paid off in full at the present moment. He stated these facts to show that Ireland had some claim on the respect as well as on the sympathy of this country, and with a view to remove the difficulty created by false impressions in respect to the exertions made by the Irish people to repay what was lent to them. After the facts he had stated, he did not consider that the Irish, then, were suing as fraudulent bankrupts. Had that been so, and had he (Lord Mont-eagle) been about to ask their Lordships to assist Ireland in rejecting the obligations of a just debt, he could not expect a dispassionate hearing; he could hardly expect that they would consider the object as fit to be inquired into; but unless it was clear the debt was due equitably and fairly, and that it ought to be enforced, that House would, he was sure, agree with him that it was necessary to give the subject a full discussion and their candid consideration. It must be admitted that the calamity of the famine pressed with peculiar severity on Ireland, in consequence of its being almost exclusively an agricultural country. Her resources had been diminished by the very circumstances which augmented the demand upon them. It was far worse in Ireland than such a calamity would have been in England—a country possessing vast commercial resources, and great manufacturing wealth; while in Ireland the whole property of the country was agricultural, with the exception of some favoured districts in the north: the destruction of the national resources had, therefore, been almost universal. The loss in a single year in the potato and oat crop had been estimated by a high authority in that House (the Marquess of Lansdowne, Jan. 25, 1847) at 16.000.000l.; or from 8,000,000 to 9,000,000 tons of food, the produce of 1,500,000 acres of arable land. He would prove what effect the famine had in depreciating the value of land from the altered valuation for the poor-law. In 1848 the land of Ireland was valued to the poor-law at 13,076,000l., in 1851 it was valued at 11,580,000l.; thus showing a reduction in that short time of about 1,500,000l. sterling, or more than 10 per cent on the wealth of the whole country; this falling off was the more striking as it took place some years subsequent to the legislative measures of Sir Robert Peel, facilitating the introduction of foreign produce. The reduction was about ten per cent on the whole of Ireland; but it had, in fact, been infinitely greater in particular districts, for the calamity had not been uniformly felt, but it had fallen with much more severity on Munster and Connaught than on Ulster, which had stood its ground bravely, and on Leinster, which had not suffered to the same extent. From 1848 to 1851 the rental of Munster and Connaught had sustained a loss of 1,026,000l. on a valuation of 5,199,000l., which was of about twenty per cent, or nearly double the general loss on the whole of Ireland. This would be still more felt in considering lesser districts. Clifden Union had fallen in value from 20,400l. to 13,600l.; Loughrea from 83,000l. to 57,0002.; Tuam from 71,000l. to 57,983l.; and the depreciation would be still greater, as he believed, in the electoral divisions. There was, again, another and a more painful criterion of the results of famine, afforded by a comparison between the census of 1841 and that of 1851. This admitted of no mistake. The population, which had increased at the rate of 14 per cent between 1821 and 1831, and at the rate of 5 per cent between 1831 and 1841, had fallen twenty per cent between 1841 and 1851. There were now 1,600,000 fewer living persons in Ireland, than there had been in 1841; and the existing population was actually less than it was thirty years ago. He admitted that much of this decrease had been caused by emigration: this was not altogether a healthy emigration. In too many instances a prejudicial emigration had lately taken place from Ireland. There were numerous cases in which emigration might be an advantage both to the country from which it proceeded, and to that to which it set. But when the emigrants removed from their native country a larger portion of capital than was retained by the population as compared with the numbers taken, and left, it was evident that such an emigration must be prejudicial; if emigration removed more in numbers than it withdrew of capital, the case was reversed. Now, the class that had left Ireland were often the class she ought to retain, and they went to a country which did not require the introduction of capital so much as the introduction of labour. The people of Ireland had gone out to a considerable extent, and they had taken with them more than their proportionate amount of capital, enterprise, and industry. The depopulation, like the depreciation of value, was most unequal. In Connaught, it showed a decrease of 28 per cent; in Leinster, of no more than 15. He would now return to the debt, having proved the reduced resources of the country. An Act, the 13 Vict., c. 14, was passed, granting a sum of 300,000l. to relieve the most distressed unions in Ireland from the demands of the contractors, and to secure the repayment of the advances so made. This was consolidated with the other demands, and was dealt with by the 13 Vict., c. 14, the Act to which he now called their attention. This consolidated debt consisted of the following sums:—

1. Workhouse Building Leases £1,122,706
2. Temporary Relief Act. 783,128
3. Labour Rate Act. 2,046,785
4. Advances for Public Works 170,232
5. Contractors' Debts 300,000
Total Debt. £4,422,851
This is proposed to be repaid by an annuity of 245,061l., for terms extending to forty years, interest being charged at 3½ per cent, increasing the sum to be paid from upwards of 4,000,000l. to 7,000,000l. The statute under which these annuities are created gave power to the Treasury of a most extraordinary kind. At the end of every clause, and repeated sometimes three or four times in one clause, there was a provision that the matter should he settled as the Lords of the Treasury should see It. There was no power reserved for Parliamentary revision, and no appeal. The Act of 1850 was objected to by many noble Lords during its progress through their Lordships' House; but being a Money Bill, they had no means of proposing any amendments; and if they had stopped the Bill altogether, they would have deprived the people of Ireland of the relief they were fairly entitled to expect, and which was included with the other clauses. The first Treasury Minute was founded on the laborious calculations of very able men: it required the respective sums to be repaid, in some cases in forty, some in twenty, some in fifteen, and some in ten years. That Minute was directed to be carried into effect at various times in the last year, and sealed orders were sent to the different boards of guardians, imposing heavy and most unequal annuities on the unions, electoral divisions, and even on the separate townlands. Those orders were received like a thunderstroke. The boards of guardians preferred the reasonable request that they should be informed of the particulars of the debt claimed. The least that in reason could be expected was, that the party making the claim should inform the party required to satisfy it what were the purposes to which the money had been applied. This information, however, had not been fully afforded, and even gross imputations had been thrown upon the Boards of Guardians in Ireland, as if they had refused to pay their just debts, because they had respectfully asked to be informed of what items the sums demanded of them consisted. He (Lord Mont-eagle) thought that the Treasury had made a serious mistake in issuing those orders without having first carefully ascertained not only the arithmetical correctness of their award, but their power of enforcing it; or, in other words, the equity of the claims, and the power of the distressed unions to pay. This was neglected. Many different Boards vehemently protested against the Minute, and some of them went further in their language than he could himself have recommended, or was disposed to justify. These awards and sealed orders were necessarily reconsidered in Whitehall. The result was that the Treasury, finding upon inquiry that the charges were too great to be enforced, were obliged to issue a new Minute, dated the 21st of October last, which altered the whole principle of their previous awards. It involved an abandonment of that principle in 860 electoral divisions. The principle of this second award was, that when the union expenditure had amounted to 4s. in the pound, the claim for the annuity ceased altogether; and in other cases the claim was reduced, so as to bring the rates within the 4s. in the pound. This had certainly given relief to many of those districts of Ireland which were the most distressed; and he presumed that though limited to only one year, the principle was necessarily applicable to future years. It was open, however, to a manifest objection: in unions where the law was administered by the owners of the property, there was a temptation held out that, by raising their rates beyond 4s. in the pound, they might escape the payment of the annuity. He had hitherto dealt with this debt generally. He now came to the main point—he meant the question of the advances which had been made under the Labour Rate Acts. The sum that was claimed as the balance of this debt was 2,456,785l. That sum was so excessive, that no individual in his senses could ever have dreamt of enforcing the repayment of the whole amount originally advanced. The proposal to take repayment by annuity was therefore made for the benefit of the lender, not the borrower, who in his equivalent annuity is loaded with interest for forty years at 3½ per cent. While they were not unmindful of the concession which had been made, these debts, their Lordships should be reminded, were not contracted by local authorities, but by officers appointed by the Government; and when landowners and occupiers felt it necessary to call the attention of the public officers to abuses prevailing under the system, so far were they from receiving such representations with candour or courtesy, that they were told to mind their own business, and were reminded that the officers of the Government were alone responsible. It had been alleged that the country gentlemen of Ireland had sought to direct the operations of the public works' system to their own benefit; but so far from that being the case, works had been forced upon the country contrary to the desire of the owners and occupiers of land—works which were entirely the acts of the Government. These works were, in many cases, began and continued at the desire and under the authority oft officers of the Government. Their Lordships would be surprised to hear the manner in which in some instances the system was made to work. To his own knowledge a special session was on one occasion called, as suggested by the officer representing the Board of Public Works; an additional charge upon the county was recommended solely for the purpose of completing certain works already in progress. The necessary order was made by the session; but what was the fact? The board never completed the works in question, the whole money raised under the order being applied to the squaring of accounts relating to former undertakings. In making this statement he did not intend to cast any imputation upon the gentlemen who were at the head of the Board of Public Works. He attacked the system. It was impossible, with so unmanageable an establishment, having 15,000 officers employed under them, and there being no less than 750,000 labourers subject to their authority, that the system could be worked without irregularity and abuse. Better men than the Commissioners did not exist. But they were called on to discharge functions infinitely beyond all human powers. Under these circumstances he (Lord Monteagle) thought he had said enough to prove to their Lordships that the subject was one worthy of inquiry. The noble Lord then moved the appointment of a Select Committee.

THE EARL OF DERBY

My Lords, it is not my intention to enter into any discussion with regard to the details into which the noble Lord has just now so fully gone. He has stated very fairly the different circumstances and the different charges which made up the sum of these annuities, and I am ready to agree with him, in the first place, that he has laid down a sufficient ground for an inquiry, at all events into the question of the propriety of the enactment, or of that portion of it, at least, which appears to give encouragement to an extravagant expenditure, for the purpose of evading the just payment of debts due—I mean that portion of the enactment by which it is provided that annuities shall cease to be paid, not in that particular union, but in any electoral division of a union where the annual amount of expenditure shall reach to a certain height. I think that this is a question which certainly deserves consideration; and, on the other hand, I think it deserves consideration whether there may not be some allowance made on this occasion, and particularly in cases relating to that class of charges which have mainly been incurred, as the noble Lord stated, by extravagant expenditure. Undoubtedly there has been, perhaps unavoidably, a considerable waste; it may be true, also, that these works have not been so beneficial to Ireland as they might have been, and. that they have not been conducted under the control, of local authorities; but, at the same time, it must be recollected that these works undoubtedly were undertaken for the purpose of maintaining and keeping alive the people of Ireland, who, had they not been undertaken, must either have been maintained in idleness, or left without subsistence. I entirely concur with the noble Lord to the full extent, that it is right that parties should have full particulars of the amounts, the repayment of which is demanded from them. I have myself made some inquiries with regard to a portion of those charges, and though I experienced no difficulty in obtaining a statement which fully satisfied me, yet I think there may be some difficulty in obtaining such a statement as the noble Lord requires. This, however, is a point for the consideration of a Committee which should fairly and impartially examine into the case. On the one side, I am glad to hear my noble Friend declare that he has no intention, upon the part of Ireland, to ask for a remission of the debts justly due from the people of that country, for which they have not only had value received, but from the original expenditure of which the country itself has greatly benefited; and, on the other hand, I am quite sure that your Lordships are prepared to give a deliberate and fair consideration to the claim arising out of the expenditure of sums over which the population of Ireland have exercised no control, more especially if, on the inquiry of a Committee, it should be proved that great abuses prevailed in the expenditure of that money. At the same time, I must beg your Lordships and my noble Friend to bear in mind, that if there have been abuses in the expenditure, there have been, on the other hand, large sums gratuitously conferred upon the people of Ireland, which ought, at any rate, to fee taken as a kind of set-off against a portion of those sums, in the management of which my noble Friend contends there have been abuses. It does not follow that, because you may prove a certain amount of abuse, you are, therefore, to claim on the part of Ireland an allowance proportionate to the full extent of that abuse. Undoubtedly, on the one side, the involuntary and compulsory nature of those charges ought with fairness to be taken into consideration; but, on the other hand, we ought to take into consideration with equal fairness the amount of assistance which Ireland, in her utmost need, has received from the liberality and generosity of this portion of the country. I think it would be the duty of a Committee to examine into and to sift these accounts, to strike a balance fairly and justly, and then to report to Parliament the result of their deliberations, with a view to take such further measures as the equity of the case shall seem to require. Under these circumstances I shall offer no opposition to the Motion of my noble Friend: on the contrary, I think the subject is one upon which an inquiry will be most fitting and advantageous.

THE EARL OF GLENGALL

said, he thought the appointment of a Committee would be received with satisfaction in Ireland. The question which the House had to consider was this. Here were four millions and a half of money to be paid by the Irish people, but seven millions and a half were charged, including the interest —so that by some means or other the four millions and a half had been swollen up to seven millions—rather a Jewish rate of interest—and he thought it fortunate for those who attempted to put the claim in force that the usury law had been repealed. Last year not less than 1,100,000l. was raised by poor-rates in Ireland, besides which these advances and rates-in-aid had to be paid; and he looked upon it that it was morally and totally impossible for those unions and districts—he might call them counties—which were charged 5s., 6s., 7s., and 8s. in the pound, to stand against the pressure of such an enormous amount of taxation as that—5s., 6s., or 7s. in the pound? Why, where was the pound? In his opinion the pound was not there at all, because the lands were completely devastated, and whole tracts of country were, in consequence of the weight of taxation, left without either a beast or a blade of corn. In the west of Ireland (especially in a great part of Munster) the land was in a condition of absolute waste; and so long as the crops and stock were liable to be seized at any moment for the poor-rate, the county cess, the rate-in-aid, or the tithe, so long, he feared, would that waste continue. Men talked of 5s. in the pound as if that was not very much after all; but the reason no more was imposed: was, because the Irish unions were able to pay no more. To maintain their poor, indeed, they required 25s. and 30s. to the pound. The consequence was, that they could not support their poor, and thus the country became a vast waste, and nobody would buy the properties in those parts. True, the Encumbered Estates Courts were invented for the purpose of introducing new settlers into the west of Ireland; but it was an indisputable fact, that that was the very district to which new settlers did not go. At one time a plantation in the west of Ireland was talked of, and certainly in carrying out such a scheme the difficulty of supplanting the old population would not have to be encountered; for the old population were dead, or gone to America, and not a beast was to be seen in the country, nor a human being for miles together. In such a state of things, therefore, the actual amount of rates which were levied was no test whatever with regard to the wants and requirements of the poor. Last year there were 780,000 persons in the Irish workhouses —a greater number than they contained I in the year 1841. Thus pauperism in Ireland might be said to be increasing. And why was that? Simply because there was no employment for labour in that country. Nobody wanted labourers now that the cultivation of corn and grain had been given up. The people were, therefore, compelled to go into the workhouses, and there, fed upon Indian meal, which produced dysentery, they died at the rate of a thousand a week! That was the result of what was called the system of supporting the poor, introduced by Mr. Nicholls, which had been lauded as such an admirable system. The reason of this want of employment had been thus described by Sir Robert Peel: "I do not believe," said he, "that so large a number can be reduced from comparative comfort to indigence and destitution from any other cause than by the displacement of so large a quantity of labour employed in the cultivation of wheat." Now, in 1850, there were 139,000 Irish acres of wheat under cultivation in Ireland less than in the year 1847, and the value of that was 1,300,000l From 1841 to 1845, of grain generally, there were exported from Ireland into England 14,600,0000 quarters; but from 1846 to 1850 there were only 7,500,000 quarters, or exactly one-half the quantity exported in the preceding period. Of wheaten flour Ireland exported to this country 779,000 quarters in 1845; but in 1850 the quantity had fallen so low as to be only 168,000 quarters. Again, coming to the great trade in bacon and salt pork, in 1847, Ireland exported to England 480,000 pigs; but in 1850 the number was 109,000 only. So that, in these three items alone, they had sustained an absolute loss that might be estimated at 3,000,000l. or 4,000,000l. annually. In such circumstances as these, it was utterly impossible to go on. In fact, the country was in a state of ruin and depression, which it was perfectly awful to contemplate. Then there was the salt beef and provision trade, in which hundreds of thousands of pounds were at one time annually spent for the Navy contracts. But all was now gone; and why? Because, following out the principles of free trade, the late Board of Admiralty preferred sending to Galatz, in Wallachia, for their beef, instead of to the city of Cork. He trusted, however, that the new First Lord of the Admiralty, who was a Protectionist, would have the kindness in future to deal with the city of Cork. The fact was, that in Ireland they had been endeavouring to accomplish an impossibility by making the poor support the poor; and in the attempt they had reduced all classes to pretty much the same level. It was said that the property ought to support the poverty of the land; but, unfortunately, they had destroyed the property and left only the poverty. Take the principal towns in the United Kingdom—take even London itself—there had been as many failures within the last three months as had ever occurred before in the most disastrous periods of their commercial history. In the main streets of the principal towns numberless shops were closed. He was speaking recently to a Leeds manufacturer, who was one of the largest woollen merchants in the world, and he told him (the Earl of Glengall) that there was not a single place to which he went in the way of his business that he did not find the one general cry of great distress. Everywhere he found shops closed which had once carried on a most flourishing trade. Now this was as much an English question as an Irish one, and he wished their Lordships would look at it in that sense. Before free trade was made the policy of this country, the people of Ireland used to export to England about 10,000,000l. worth of produce, and received in return between 10,000,000l. and 11,000,000l. of English manufactures—in fact, about 1,000,000l. was the balance of trade between the two countries. The Chambers of Commerce in the seaports of Ireland had lately published a report in which it was stated that there was a falling-off during the last few years of English manufactures sent to Ireland of over 4,000,000l. It might seem a singular fact, but so it was, that there was not a single manufacture consumed and used in Ireland, with the exception of the linen trade in the north, that did not come from England. Every article that they could name, from the steam-engine to the commonest nail that was put into a man's shoe, came from England into Ireland. It was idle to say that the landlords had done all this mischief by compelling the people to run away from the country. It was the policy of the last few years that destroyed the Irish market, and the free-traders themselves were the losers by it. Now it was impossible for them to go on any longer in this way. The more Ireland was distressed, the more they seemed disposed to tax her. The system of Dr. Sangrado was considered the best for Ireland; he bled and bled until the patient died, and then he said that the patient died because he did not bleed him enough. So with Ireland—the more distressed she was the more they thought they ought to bleed her. When he saw the bone and sinew of the country leaving her, and when he reflected upon the misery that prevailed, he felt quite disgusted at this state of things.

Motion agreed to. Committee named: Petition referred to the said Select Committee.

House adjourned till To-morrow.