THE POOR LAW COMETH
"Neither ancient nor modern history can furnish a parallel to the fact that upwards of 3 millions of persons were fed every day in the neighbour¬hood of their homes, by administrative arrangements emanating from and controlled by one central office."1
Charles Trevelyan

The foregoing was the glowing praise that Charles Trevelyan bestowed on the operation of the Soup Kitchen Act, much of which he had diligently overseen and for which he felt entitled to take credit. What he did not state was that he had subsequently moved on to play a leading role in the operation of the Irish Poor Law Extension Act of 1847, which effectively undid much of the ben¬efit of the soup kitchens and brought an incalculable amount of suffering and death upon the starving.
The Poor Law Extension Act was the spawn of two conflicting ideolog¬ical parents: one maintained that Irish property should pay for Irish poverty; die other that, for both ideological and economic reasons, relief should not be given outside the workhouse walls. To provide outdoor relief, according to the moralizing political economists, would be both "demoralizing" and ruinous, given the numbers involved. These doctrines were so rigorously ad¬hered to that in some cases they even led to the ending of food distribution within the workhouses.
The workhouse in Cashel, County Tipperary, was suffering from "fright¬ful overcrowding" as Christmas 1846 approached and they had to turn away five hundred people who were eligible for admission but for whom there was no room. Because of their eligibility, the workhouse authorities, as was done elsewhere, gave the five hundred one meal a day inside the workhouse, arguing that this could not be considered outdoor relief because the food was eaten inside the workhouse. Officialdom would not accept this plea and said the practice had to stop.
However, back in London realization had set in that the work scheme had been a disaster and that something fresh had to be attempted. Barely a month after Cashel was forced to deny the starving five hundred, Lord John Russell announced a policy reversal. It made way for an expansion of the poor law to allow for the introduction of outdoor relief later in the year.
This legislation depended first on an impossibility and second on a cru¬elty. The impossibility lay in the principal assumption underlying the poor law extension, namely that it would be paid for out of the rates (local taxes) collected in Ireland. The doctrine on which this decision was based, that Irish property should pay for Irish poverty, would have been better phrased "Irish poverty must support Irish property."
The ruinous state of the country generally and that of the landlord class in particular has already been described. Even before the failure of the po¬tato, in 1844, the Conservatives, who were never in any danger of being accused of excessive tenderheartedness where the collection of Irish taxes was concerned, had taken part in a spectacular demonstration of the dif¬ficulties of extracting blood from a stone. In Mayo only one-quarter of the rates nominally due were collected even after the rate collectors had been provided with the following backup: two companies drawn from the Sixty-ninth Regiment, one troop from the Tenth Huzzars, fifty police, police inspectors, and two magistrates—backed up by two revenue cutters and a major warship, the Stromboli. This was not an isolated case. In the same year it had taken the deployment of seven hundred troops to collect the rates of neighboring Galway
This use of the army and the navy to collect rates had been debated in the House of Commons. The Whigs were fully aware of the difficulty of rate collection and the general situation regarding destitution in Ireland. What Trevelyan knew, chancellor of the exchequer Charles Wood knew. It would be an absurdity to suggest that the pair somehow managed to keep the prime minister and their cabinet colleagues in the dark over Ireland. Trevelyan, whatever his other faults, could not be accused of laziness. Every detail concerning relief had to be brought to his attention. In order to deal with a mountain of paperwork and the decision making this necessitated, he moved into a flat away from his wife and family so that he could work undisturbed, even over Christmas. He censured Sir Randolph Routh for wanting to take holidays at Christmas so that he could attend the vice-regal festivities, pointing out the "impropriety of appearing in public when the lives of such multitudes of persons depend on your unremitting exertions."2 Events were to prove, however, that Trevelyan's concern on that occasion was based not so much on sympathy with the "multitudes" as on public rela¬tions considerations.
For, as that grisly year of 1847 wore on, Trevelyan decided that the situ¬ation had improved so much that he could now take a well-earned holiday and in mid-August took his family off to France. Before going, in prepara¬tion for the coming into effect of the Poor Law Extension Act, which had become law on June 8, he oversaw the closing down of the soup kitchens and ordered the ending of the sale of meal from government depots. The in¬struction to these depots was clear: "Ship off all, close your depot and come away" Any meal remaining in the depot at the time of closure was either sold at market prices or, if unsold, removed in a government ship.
Trevelyan's view was that government relief had made the people worse, not better, and that the time had come to "try what independent exertion will do." By the beginning of October, the last soup kitchen and food depots in even the most distressed areas had ceased operations. Trevelyan described the cessation as follows: "The multitude was again gradually and peacefully The ringing declaration on rates was in part make-believe, in part a fig leaf for the true Treasury policy of getting rid of surplus population to make way for that longed-for "new ownership" that would create larger farms and would substitute cattle for potatoes. The real situation throughout much of Ireland where rates were concerned was eloquently, if despairingly, described by Colonel George Vaughan Jackson, a good resident Mayo landlord who was doing his best to maintain both his estate and his tenants in appalling circumstances. He wrote, "No men are more ill-fated or greater victims than we resident proprietors, we are consumed by the hives of human beings that exist on the properties of the absentees. On my right and my left are properties such as I allude to. I am overwhelmed and ruined by them. These proprietors will do nothing. All the burden of relief and employment falls on me. 11
The following month, on December 16, 1847, Lord Sligo, another landlord, wrote to The Times explaining what the poor law meant in prac¬tice: "On the express condition that they should make no provision for the future.... There are now therefore, at this moment, in obedience to the law. 26,000 people in Westport who are destitute of food, fuel and clothing.... The long account of money spent will not feed the crowds of destitute, the rates cannot do it, and if the union be left to that fund alone, these myriads must perish by famine."
The government had a most precise and up-to-date awareness of the truth of the situation described by Lord Sligo and Colonel Vaughan Jacksor Lord Clarendon himself bore out the truth of their observations, telling Sir George Grey the home secretary, that unless financial aid was forthcoming, "I dread some calamity . . . some hundreds dying all at once of starvation, which would not only be shocking but bring disgrace on the Government."14
However, he received nothing but contempt in response to his ap¬peal. Grey replied, "It may be that if numerous deaths should occur the Government would be blamed ... but there is such an indisposition to spend more money on Ireland, that the Government will assuredly and severely be blamed if they advance money to pay debts."