FAIRS AND MARKETS IN IRELAND. (Hansard, 29 April 1856)

THE EARL OF CLANCARTY

My Lords, in submitting to the noble Earl opposite the question of which I have given notice, I will, as briefly as I can, point out to your Lordships the importance of the subject to which it relates, and the claim it has to the earliest attention of Parliament. In September, 1852, a Commission was issued by the then Lord Lieutenant, for the purpose of making inquiry regarding the fairs and markets in Ireland. This step was taken, as it appears from the letter, addressed by the Chief Secretary, to the Commissioners, in consequence of the representations that had been made to the Government of the unsatisfactory state of the markets throughout Ireland, their defective management, and the irregularities and frauds practised at them under various forms. The Report of that Commission, a copy of which I have now before me, was in the following year laid upon the table of this House, and it certainly establishes both the propriety of the inquiry having been instituted, and the importance of the earliest attention of the Legislature being given to it. It exhibits a state of things most injurious to the internal commerce of the 1697 country, calculated to embarrass and discourage the fair trader, to sanction illegal impositions, and to encourage every variety of fraud between buyers and sellers. Need I say, my Lords, that such a cause of demoralisation, affecting daily the common transactions of business among the masses of the population, ought as promptly as possible to be remedied; and that where commerce is thus wanting in the requisites of legal regulation and of fair dealing, commercial enterprise is discouraged and an impediment raised against the free and proper development of the industrial resources of this country? The instructions to the Commissioners expressly enjoin them to conduct their inquiry with a view to legislation, and among the objects to be obtained in addition to the correction of all irregularities, is a machinery for supplying the Government with accurate returns of the quantities and average prices of all articles of agricultural produce annually disposed of at the several markets. The Commissioners appear to have addressed themselves very diligently to the duties they undertook. They visited the principal market towns in every part of Ireland; the facts they report they rest upon evidence they everywhere took in open court, where misrepresentation could not be regarded, and the recommendations and suggestions with which they close their Report are supported by the opinions of the most competent witnesses. I will, with your Lordships' permission, very briefly notice some of the abuses and irregularities they have enumerated, that you may be enabled to judge of the urgent importance of a legislative remedy being as promptly as possible applied. They found that tolls were collected often without warrant, and that where warranted they were wanting in uniformity owing to its being, in most of the patents for holding markets, left to the discretion of the patentee to determine what was "a fair and reasonable toll." In one town they found an advalorem toll of 2½ per cent claimed on corn; in another they found "3d. to the crown value," or 5 per cent levied as toll on the sale of frieze, an article in common wear among the peasantry. In other places toll in kind was claimed, as in Gort, where one-sixtieth was claimed on all corn sold; and at Skibbereen where "one-sixteenth part of all meal and potatoes" was claimed as toll; but, though the toll boards exhibited such charges, a fixed charge in money was 1698 generally levied. In many towns, tolls were levied on days that were not market days, and upon articles upon which toll could not legally be demanded. One instance may suffice to illustrate the extortions in this way practised at times upon the peasantry. Evidence was given before the Commissioners at Roscrea, of the collector having demanded 4d. toll on a goat, the sale of which had only produced 2s. 6d. The purchaser refused to pay, on the ground that there was no such charge in the schedule. The collector seized the goat, asserting that it came under the head of "horned cattle," and was therefore chargeable. In addition to the evil of tolls being thus variable, and often illegal, the Commissioners found that in many places tolls were exacted where the public had no accommodation of fair-green or market-place, and that the public thoroughfares were in consequence blocked up on fair and market days, by the exposure therein of live-stock and agricultural produce for the purpose of sale. All these circumstances combined gave rise, about twenty-five years ago, to an organised system of resistance which eventually resulted in the abolition of tolls, by mob force, in a great number of market towns in the provinces of Leinster, Ulster, and part of Munster. The Commissioners, however, observe, that defective as is the superintendence of the markets generally where tolls are levied, the worst markets they visited were those where tolls had been abolished owing to the total absence of supervision and control. The want of uniformity in weights and measures, and the irregularities practised in weighing, are prominently noticed in the Report, as evils requiring to be dealt with by the Legislature, a very full return is appended to the Report, showing the difference of the weights in use in the several market towns. It may suffice to notice with regard to four principal articles of agricultural produce, the variations of the same denominations of weight in use for measuring them in different towns; for example, a barrel of oats at Roscrea and Nenagh is 12 stone; at Limerick, Cork, and Dublin, it is 14 stone; at Newtown Limavady, 18 stone; at Sligo, 24 stone; at Killarney, 32 stone, and at Skibbereen and Bandon, 33 stone. Potatoes are purchased in some places by the stone of I4 lbs.; in others the stone is 16 lbs. They are also sold by barrels, 1699 consisting, in different places, of 15, 20, 21, 24, 32, 40, 48, 64, 72, 80, 95, and 96 stones of 14 lbs. Flax is, in some markets, sold by the stone of 14 lbs.; in others, of 16 lbs.; and a cwt. of flax consists, in different localities, of 112, 120, and 124 lbs. The cwt. of pork is, in some places, 120 lbs.; in others, 112 lbs. The variations of weight in different places are aggravated by the various sytems of weighing in operation in different places, and by deductions and allowances, generally operating to the disadvantage of the seller, who, in turn, has often recourse to fraud, in order to increase the weight of whatever he brings to market. The provocation to the practice of fraud on the part of poor farmers who bring their corn to market may be further estimated by the frauds stated in the evidence, to be practised upon them in the weighing of their goods at the private stores of the merchants. A case is noticed by the Commissioners of a purchaser having been convicted of having thirty-four barrels of wheat in his store at the end of one market day, for which he had not paid the sellers, but had obtained by fraudulent weighing. Such practices, where fraud must necessarily be met by fraud, cannot but be most injurious to the morals of the community as well as detrimental to commerce. The prevalence of irregularity in the department of weighing, against which there is no summary means of obtaining redress, and from which the poorer classes are, therefore, commonly the sufferers, may be illustrated by the fact, that in some places the Commissioners found men and women placed in the scales in the absence of the standard measures of weight. It is no doubt strange and almost incredible that a state of things such as these Commissioners have reported should exist, but it is, my Lords, much more strange that such irregularities and abuses, which are not now for the first time reported upon, should have been allowed by the Government of the country to go on for years unchecked. From the year 1826 down to the present time, Parliamentary Committees and Royal Commissioners have reported upon the urgent necessity of remedial measures for this evil. The Select Committee of the House of Commons on Tolls and Customs in that year conclude their Report by stating— The subject to be one requiring the most serious and the earliest attention, and they earn- 1700 estly hope that the consolidated and amended Bill, recommended by them, would correct existing abuses, and prevent their future occurrence. In 1830 a Select Committee "on the State of the Poor in Ireland," recommended as one of their remedial measures "a correction of the abuses incidental to the system of Tolls and Customs;" and another Select Committee, appointed later in the Session of the same year, being unable to conclude their inquiry into the state of fairs and markets in Ireland before the prorogation of Parliament, "earnestly recommended the renewal of the investigation in the ensuing Session of Parliament." The conflicts of party, to which the interests of Ireland have ever been sacrificed, probably interfered to prevent the subject being again noticed until, in 1835, the Commissioners, in that year, appointed to report on the state of the Municipal Corporations in Ireland, after describing the objectionable nature of the tolls and customs within the receipt and management of Corporations, add— We canot conclude our remarks on this branch of the inquiry without observing on the necessity that appears to exist, as far as our observations extended, of a thorough revision, by legislative authority, of the entire system. Notwithstanding these concurrent testimonies to the importance of such legislative revision, the commerce of Ireland was allowed, from 1835 to 1852, to continue in that disgraceful condition which the Commissioners, whose Report is before me, have again brought to the knowledge of the Government. Founded upon the recommendations contained in their Report, I might legitimately claim on behalf of Ireland that Her Majesty's Government should this very Session frame a Bill to be proposed to Parliament. But the noble Earl would no doubt object, that it was too late for any Bill to be prepared. I am, however, enabled to anticipate that objection by reminding the noble Earl that a Bill founded upon the Commissioners' Report was introduced into the other House of Parliament at the conclusion of the Session of 1854, "prepared and brought in by Sir John Young and Viscount Palmerston." The subject, therefore, had been considered by the Government. The noble Earl was a Member of the Cabinet from whence the Bill proceeded, and, therefore, the subject cannot be 1701 new to him. True, there was a change of Government early in the following year, and, therefore, probably the Irish question was again overlooked; but let the noble Lord recollect that the great majority of those who originally framed the Bill are Members of the Government of the noble Viscount, by whom it was introduced. Why, then, I ask, was it not proceeded with? Is there any reason that a measure so considered and so introduced, should not be now taken up and proceeded with? Looking at the very serious evils prevailing in Ireland which it was designed to correct, I cannot but regard it as a wrong to the country, that the subject should have been put aside. If the Bill was a good one, which it appears to me to be as far as it goes, the interests of Ireland, especially of the poorer classes, required that it should be gone on with. If it was a bad one it ought not to have been introduced, but the subject of it, the evils it was intended to correct, was of too much public importance to be therefore neglected. I trust the noble Earl, having had full notice of the question with which I shall now conclude, will be prepared to return a favourable, if not a directly affirmative answer. I, therefore, beg to ask "Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce in the present Session any Bill founded upon the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of the Fairs and Markets in Ireland."