The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People (30 page)

His own power base, however, was not wholly secure, for a grouping within his ostensibly united front began to grow restless. The leadership of the Young Ireland movement, passionate, articulate and non-sectarian, was devoted to a conception of national culture and the common good that owed much to classical philosophy: ‘It is true wisdom to raise our thoughts and aspirations above what the mass of mankind calls good to regard truth, fortitude, honesty, purity, as the great objects of human effort, and
not
the supply of vulgar wants.’
²⁸
The movement’s newspaper, the
Nation
, was founded in 1842 in order to share and disseminate this vision of an inclusive society: it was imagined as carrying forward in print form the classical ideal of a citizens’ forum. The Young Irelanders, under such leaders as the Protestant Thomas Davis, were inevitably far from enamoured of several of O’Connell’s methods – in particular, his steady deployment of Catholicism as a political weapon and his overt links to Rome. To Davis and others, religion was a private matter, and an element that nationalism could manage without.

Yet O’Connell did manage to keep his movement together, not least because the political context continued for a period to be favourable for agitation. The power of the Irish lobby at Westminster was enhanced by the Reform Bill of 1832, which produced an altered and less monolithic Commons: it was clear that henceforth the Irish voting bloc might frequently hold the balance of power. The raising of the voting bar had of course produced a whole new grievance to be exploited; and ironically, the Reform Bill itself supplied another, in that it diminished the proportion of Irish seats in the Commons. But in 1841, with an insurmountably large Tory majority at Westminster and the avenues of political possibility closing down, O’Connell shifted his attention away from Westminster-based legislative reform. His prime objective remained repeal of the Union – and now the changing political scene in Ireland was working once more in his favour. The question of land reform was opening up a new front: in particular, the absence of security of tenure for tenant farmers was a bitter grievance. This was an issue that would suppurate for the next forty years – but for the moment, it provided a useful rallying tool.

O’Connell now opted to return to his former pattern of mass meetings and popular protest. He set about convening the Monster Meetings of 1843 – events that replicated in discipline and determination the congregations of the 1820s, but on a much larger scale. A crowd of over thirty thousand gathered at Limerick in April to hear the now ageing Liberator speak; much larger multitudes came together during the course of the summer at Mullingar, Lismore, Cork and Mallow; and the largest meeting of all took place on the hill of Tara in August.
^*
‘Step by step,’ O’Connell told his listeners, ‘we are approaching the great goal of Repeal of the Union, but it is with the strides of a giant.’ The government, unsurprisingly, took fright, and in the second half of 1843 a sharp security crackdown and the prospect of uncontrolled bloodshed forced O’Connell to cancel the last Monster Meeting of the year, which was to have taken place at Clontarf in October. The setting was of course no accident: just as Tara had been the seat of the high kings and the location of a notional unified Irish nation of yore, Clontarf was the scene of what, in an evolving nationalist historiography, had been a famous victory of the native Irish over the Vikings.

In cancelling the Clontarf rally, O’Connell had blinked first – and in the process had shot his political bolt. Arrested on grounds of sedition, in February 1844 he was convicted, fined and imprisoned. He was released after three months, when the House of Lords overturned the sentence – but on his release, it was apparent that the disparate energies that he had harnessed were now dissipated. During O’Connell’s incarceration, moreover, the Tory government had granted additional reforms in Ireland, which – it was hoped – would have the effect of quietening Irish disaffection and at the same time sowing disunity in the Catholic ranks. Peel, now prime minister, complained to the Cabinet that ‘I know not what remedy there can be for such an evil as this [Catholic unrest] but the detaching from the ranks of Repeal, agitation and disaffection of a considerable portion of the respectable and influential Roman Catholic population.’
²⁹
And disunity did indeed arise: while the Church accepted the government’s proposal to award an annual grant to the seminary at Maynooth, this arrangement was anathema to many Catholics; equally, the foundation of the secular (‘godless’) Queen’s Colleges at Cork, Belfast and Galway was agreeable to many Catholics – including the Young Irelanders – but not to all members of the hierarchy and not to O’Connell either.

Daniel O’Connell died at Genoa in May 1847, in the course of a pilgrimage to Rome: his heart was sent on to the city, his body returned to Ireland for burial, witnessed by vast crowds, at Glasnevin. His presence in Irish history is substantial and vital: he had demonstrated that public opinion could be harnessed, shaped and directed towards a specific goal – and this was a lesson that was absorbed by a global audience. He had understood that modern technology could be utilized quickly and easily as a means of broadcasting a political message and achieving certain ends; and that the policies of the state, at certain times and in certain ways, could be rapidly altered and channelled in a particular direction. He had also understood that the message of Irish nationalism could be internationalized and transmitted to a watching world, in particular in the direction of a rising America; and he had tapped into a version of Irish history that linked contemporary events to a distant, misty and frequently mythical past. Wolfe Tone’s vision of an independent Irish republic, however, had been succeeded by an entirely different model: O’Connell was at ease with the notion of an Ireland under the Crown; and he had, moreover, fused Irish nationalism and Catholicism in a manner that was new and altogether defining.

Chapter Eight

Hunger

And if from one season’s rottenness, rottenness they sow again, rottenness they must reap.
¹

In 1824, the ordnance survey of Ireland was inaugurated. Beginning with the flatlands on the shores of Lough Foyle, the country was mapped comprehensively, triangle by painstaking triangle; by 1846, the survey had been completed in County Kerry. With other economic surveys of the country being undertaken at the same time, Ireland could now be said to be more thoroughly known than at any point in its history: its social trends, its economic circumstances and potential were now fully charted, tabulated, calculated. This was a land where a line might have been drawn the length of the country, from Derry to Cork: east of that line, economic circumstances were in general more favourable; west of it, less favourable. But they were nowhere especially benign: there was still little work to be had in the towns; the wellbeing of much of the population was bound up alarmingly with that of the annual potato crop; and the fate of the country hung by a thread.

Early in September 1845, as the first potatoes were being harvested across Ireland, news began to filter through to the administration at Dublin Castle: the crop was coming out of the ground rotten and putrid. The news would not have been greeted with much surprise: already in Europe that summer similar reports had passed from town to town; the phenomenon was everywhere. The disease was the potato blight,
Phytophthora infestans
, a microscopic fungus spread by wind and rain. Although previously present in the Americas, it had been quite unknown in Europe before 1842, when it was likely brought by ship to one of the continent’s Atlantic ports. Early in the summer of 1845, it was already destroying crops in Belgium and the Netherlands; by the year’s end, it had swept to the borders of Russia, Scandinavia, Germany and on to Britain and Ireland. It was only in Ireland, however, that such a high proportion of the population was so utterly dependent on a single crop.

The effect of the blight was rapidly to turn the stalks black and reduce the tubers to a stinking pulp. At first, the response in government circles was measured: the loss appeared not to be so very great; and supplies could be augmented by the bumper oat harvest that year. As the autumn went on, however, it became clear that much of the crop had failed, though some districts suffered more than others; the western seaboard and much of Ulster at this time escaped with the least damage, while a great stretch of the midlands, east and southeast suffered the greatest. A massive wave of human tragedy had broken upon Irish society.

The authorities investigated means by which the good potatoes could be safely stored: if they were kept in cool, dry, ventilated conditions, the blight might not spread and infest the entire crop. But the potatoes continued to rot as before. It was then suggested that the dug tubers be stored suspended in bog water. Lastly, farmers were advised that any surviving potatoes could be used safely for seed the following year. In the meantime, a good deal of the much-vaunted oat crop and other Irish cereal crops were sent for export as usual; and the price of the remaining oats and sound potatoes went through the roof. Peel’s administration now took steps to alleviate the developing crisis – though it did so reluctantly, as the orthodoxy of the time in British political circles dictated that the ‘natural’ workings of the economy and the market ought not to be meddled with.
^*
The government’s plan was to import cornmeal into Ireland: this would be held by local committees wherever possible, and released only when prices in the open market climbed too high. These rations, however, were no free hand-out: they would be given in return for the recipients’ participation in public works schemes, including road-building and stone-breaking.

The sulphur-yellow cornmeal – it was nicknamed ‘Peel’s brimstone’ – had been largely unknown in Ireland until this point; and it was deeply unpopular among a population accustomed to the comforting ballast provided by the potato. By the late spring of 1846, however, demand for corn had exploded and the prospect of mass starvation forced the government to open the warehouses and offer the supplies for general sale. By this point, reports were reaching Dublin of widespread unrest and spiralling crime rates in many districts: crops and cattle were being stolen from the fields; carts filled with cash crops of wheat and oats on their way to market were being stopped and ransacked by the desperate and starving. It appeared that the Irish countryside was descending into chaos.

The story of the following three years is one of savagely bad luck combined with gross government inefficiency. The potato harvest of 1846 failed even more calamitously than that of the previous year; as early as July, the fields were ravaged and blackening, and the destroyed plants emitting the stench of blight. The blight struck across Ireland – though now with especial severity in the west – and with horrifying suddenness:

On the 27th of last month [July 1846] I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3rd instant, I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrifying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly [at] the destruction that had left them foodless.
²

The situation facing the country was now immeasurably worse. After the 1845 crop failure, at least seed potatoes had remained available; in 1846, however, any remaining seed potatoes were eaten in order to stave off hunger. The Tory government – now headed by Lord Russell – refused to intervene to replenish stocks. The situation in 1847 was therefore destined to be equally bad, for there were scarcely any potatoes to plant and thus there would be no crop to reap. It is one of the ironies of the Famine that the blight was actually much reduced in 1847 so that such paltry crops as could be sown came up green and healthy and remained so. A desperate effort was then made to sow the fields again for the 1848 harvest – but a sodden summer brought blight once more and the crop was destroyed.

Prevailing economic doctrines continued largely to hold sway, so Irish cash crops continued to be exported rather than diverted to feed the population. At the same time, government strategies for dealing with the crisis were characterized by contradiction and reversal of policy. Late in 1846, the programme of public works began to wind down and it was decided that the shipments of cornmeal should also cease as soon as possible: the situation and the market in Ireland – and the two were firmly connected in the mind of the politicians – must be allowed to find their own level. In the real world, however, Ireland was lurching towards disaster: the destitute and the starving were besieging the country’s workhouses. The relief projects could not be terminated under such circumstances, economic orthodoxies notwithstanding. But government action was invariably reluctant, with much emphasis placed on the duties of the private sector in dealing with the crisis.