The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150911   Message #3614476
Posted By: Jim Carroll
02-Apr-14 - 05:17 AM
Thread Name: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
Subject: RE: BS: Irish Potato Blight- Cause found
"I have produced quotes by historians disputing culpability."
No you haven't - how could you if you haven't read any of them.
But not the point anyway.
You have been presented with facts on Britain's behavior in Ireland - nobody has disputed them - or if they have, you have not even attempted to deny them - they are facts.
I know you have no opinion about history, nor have you any knowledge
The Irish Famine is a historical topic - if you are not interested, go away and stop trolling a subject you have admitted having no interest in
Some more facts from yest again more historians.
Jim Carroll

Episode 183
'GIVE US FOOD, OR WE PERISH'
When the potato blight struck for a second time in 1846, every part of Ireland was affected. Father Theobald Mathew, after travelling from Dublin to Cork, wrote to Charles Trevelyan, head of the Treasury, on 7 August:
I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction.... The food of a whole nation has perished.
What should the government do? Trevelyan devised a new system of public works in August. To fit in with Trevelyan's free market philosophy, warmly shared by the Whig government, the works were not to compete with capital¬ist enterprise, and they were confined to building walls, roads, bridges, cause¬ways and fences. The new relief works were to be financed entirely out of rates—Irish property was to pay for Irish poverty. It was not until October that this cumbersome bureaucracy (eventually numbering 12,000 officials) could issue tickets giving employment to those considered sufficiently destitute.
Commissary-General Sir Randolph Routh suggested that the Irish ports should be closed to stop the further export of corn. This proposal was firmly rejected by Trevelyan, who told Routh on 3 September: 'Do not encourage the idea of prohibiting exports, perfect Free Trade is the right course.' For once, Routh dared to disagree with his superior. By the end of the harvest 60,000 tons of oats alone would have left the country, he explained. But Trevelyan, fully supported by Prime Minister Lord John Russell, vehemently opposed such a radical step: 'We beg of you not to countenance in any way the idea of prohibiting exportation.... There cannot be a doubt that it would inflict a permanent injury on the country.'
All this time the depots providing subsidised Indian corn, set up by Peel's Tory government in the previous year, were being closed down. Too late in the day Trevelyan decided to attempt to buy com abroad. The harvest across Europe in 1846 had been very poor, and there was no surplus for sale. The American maize harvest had already mostly been bought up. Even if corn could be purchased, it would not be ready for transportation until December, a month when American rivers were mostly frozen over. And yet oats, wheat and barley, grown and harvested in Ireland, continued to be shipped out of the country across the Irish Sea.
On 3 October 1846 the Repeal journal, the Vindicator, made a simple appeal:
'Give us food, or we perish,' is now the loudest cry that is heard in this unfortunate country. It is heard in every corner of the island—it breaks in like some awful spectre on the festive revelry of the rich—it startles and appals the merchant at his desk, the landlord in his office, the scholar in his study, the minister in his council-room, and the priest at the altar. 'Give us food, or we perish.' It is a strange popular cry to be heard within the limits of the powerful and wealthy British empire.... Russia wants liberty, Prussia wants a constitution, Switzerland wants religion, Spain wants a king, Ireland alone wants food.
Lord John Russell's government opposed such a simple solution: the starving must buy food with money earned on public works. But there were agonising delays before many of the relief schemes opened. The relief works were hampered by a shortage of handcarts and wheelbarrows, a lack of engineers to direct operations, and heavy falls of snow. The longest and most severe winter in living memory had begun.
During the first weeks of 1847 the weather deteriorated even further. From the north-east blew 'perfect hurricanes of snow, hail and sleet' which caused the famished labourers on the relief works to collapse from exposure.
On 17 January George Dawson, wrote from Castledawson, Co. Londonderry, to Sir Thomas Fremantle, a former Irish Chief Secretary:
My dear Fremantle,
... I can think of nothing else than the wretched condition of this wretched people.... I do not exaggerate when I tell you that from the moment I open my hall door in the morning until dark, I have a crowd of women and children crying out for something to save them from starving. The men, except the old and infirm, stay away and show the greatest patience and resignation. I have been obliged to turn my kitchen into a bakery and soup shop to enable me to feed the miserable children and mothers that cannot be sent away empty. So great is their distress that they actually faint on getting food into their stomachs.... Death is dealing severely and consigning many to an untimely tomb.... I see enough to make the heart sick.... Hundreds will die of starvation.
And, as we shall see, during that terrible winter of 1846-7 conditions were even worse in the west and the south.