More good news from the Famine front
Jim Carroll

On May 15 there was much less, and on the 13th Coffin had written urging that opening should be postponed until further supplies had come in.14
Nevertheless, the opening took place. Routh directed Coffin to restrict issues as far as possible, to make no 'regular supply daily or monthly', to consider each issue as 'single in itself and dependent on the merits and truth of each separate representation', and to instruct all officers to 'distinguish between the usual scarcity of the season and the present extraordinary dearth'.
A rush followed; at about id. a pound the Government Indian corn was by far the cheapest food available, and depots everywhere were besieged. At Limerick, Coffin was writing two or three letters a day to relief committees to explain why demands could not be met; 'I am instructed not to promise any specific supply'; 'the aim of the depots is to maintain an equilibrium of prices, they are not intended to feed the whole population and are not adequate to do so'; 'Meal is not sold as the sole or even the principal resource for the period of want. . . .' These and similar letters were received by the com¬mittees throughout Ireland with angry indignation. 'They univer¬sally thought,' Coffin told Trevelyan, on June 4, 'all their demands would be filled and they had only to send a carter to the depot with money in his hand as to an ordinary shop.'15
Trevelyan's intentions were very different. Irish relief was to be restricted to a single operation; the government Indian corn, pur-chased at the orders of Sir Robert Peel, was to be placed in depots by the Commissariat, sold to the people—and that was the end. There was to be no replenishment, even if there was a sum of money in hand from sales; once supplies had been disposed of relief was over. In several letters, written with unusual boldness, Routh begged Trevelyan to allow further purchases. The demand on the depots was 'immense', far heavier than anything that had been anticipated, and it was increasing every day; surely the depots should remain open until September. The new potato crop would not provide any food whatsoever for the people before the middle of September at the earliest, while 'lumpers', the huge, coarse potato called the 'horse' potato, on which the people mainly depended,
would not be ready until the end of that month. Trevelyan refused; relief was to be brought to a close; possibly some depots might shut down a little later than others, but issues must shortly cease. By the end of June, 1846, government supplies were all but exhausted; on the 24th of that month, 5,000 bushels of Indian corn were all that remained in Cork and, at that, were unground,16 while in remote districts the people were starving. The revenue cutter, Eliza, making a visit of inspection, on June 22, to the Killeries, a wild district of mountain and deep ocean inlets in the far west, was implored for food by a boat-load of skeletons. The Commissariat officer at West-port, supply centre for the Killeries, had been instructed to send no more meal to the region because the depot was becoming empty.
One man, stated the officer in command, was lying on the bottom of the boat, unable to stand and already half dead, the others, with emaciated faces and prominent, staring eyeballs, were evidently in an advanced state of starvation. The officer reported to Sir James Dombrain, Inspector-General of the Coastguard Service, who had served on relief during the famine of 1839, and Sir James Dombrain, 'very inconveniently', wrote Routh, 'interfered'. He 'prevailed' on an officer at the Westport depot to issue meal, which he gave away free; he also 'prevailed' on the captain of the Government steam¬ship, Rhadamanthus, to take 100 tons of meal, intended for West-port, to the Coastguard Station at the Killeries. 'The Coast Guard with all their zeal and activity are too lavish,' wrote Routh to Trevelyan.17
Almost on the same date Coffin at Limerick wrote Trevelyan an urgent letter. He could not answer for the consequence if the depots were closed. 'Only issues of food,' he declared, 'keep the country peaceful . . . Only for the Government meal thousands would be now dying by the road side.' In a private letter to Routh, Coffin confessed himself bewildered and depressed. Intelligent, well-intentioned and widely experienced though he was, the state of Ireland baffled him. 'I sincerely hope August will see us out of our troubles,' he wrote; '. . . the most anxious and unsatisfactory task I ever undertook, working in the dark... I have often felt I could not go on any longer.'18
Nevertheless, on June 25, Routh received directions to carry out 'the closing measures of our present service'; supplies were to be transferred from less destitute to more destitute districts, demand cut down by raising prices, and the relief scheme wound up.
In a private letter to Routh, Trevelyan attributed the enormous demand on the depots to the low price at which the meal was sold; above all, to the fact that it was sold to persons suffering from distress, normal at the time of year, and not solely to persons whose distress was caused by the potato failure. Indiscriminate sales had 'brought the whole country on the depots, and without denying the existence of real and extensive distress', the numbers were beyond the power of the depots to cope with; they must therefore be closed down as soon as possible.19
Meanwhile, across the Channel, in London, dramatic events were taking place, and a change of Government was imminent.
Repeal of the Corn Laws was proving Peel's downfall. He was regarded with detestation by the Protectionists, who formed a large part of his own Party, and the Whigs, forced into the mortifying position of supporting their chief enemy, who had, they considered, stolen their principal measure, were consumed with vindictive fury. The ingenious mind of Benjamin Disraeli devised a way to bring Peel down. Whigs and Protectionist Tories must combine. Nothing could be done, as far as the Bill to repeal the Corn Laws was con¬cerned, since the Whigs could hardly vote against a measure with which they had been identified; but if the second reading of the Irish Coercion Bill, introduced by Peel in February, was opposed by a combination of Whigs and Protectionist Tories, the defeat of Peel was assured. There were difficulties, since both Lord George Ben-tinck, leader of the Protectionists, and Lord John Russell, the leader of the Whigs, had previously voted in favour of the Irish Coercion Bill; but scruples were overcome 'with boldness and dexterity'.
The momentous night was June 25, and by a curious coincidence, as the debate on Irish Coercion was in progress, messengers entered the House of Commons, returning with the Bill repealing the Corn Laws, which had just received the assent of the Lords. The debate was interrupted while 'Mr. Speaker, amidst profound silence, announced that the Lords had agreed to the . . . Bill... without any amendment'.
A few hours later the House divided on Irish Coercion; Disraeli's scheme succeeded, and Sir Robert Peel fell, defeated by a majority of 73 votes. His resignation was officially announced on June 29, 1846.
The majority which defeated Peel had no connection whatsoever with the real situation in Ireland. Indeed, the apathy of the House
of Commons with regard to Irish affairs was seldom more marked than during the discussions on the Coercion Bill. During the debate on the first reading Mr. Fitzgerald, Member for Tipperary, noted there were 'not half a dozen gentlemen on the benches opposite'; and when the Bill was debated for the second time there were not twenty-five Members present, and the number never rose to more than forty. As was said at the time, the majority which defeated Peel had 'as much to do with Ireland as Kamschatka'.20
The new Whig Government, under Lord John Russell, was more to Trevelyan's taste than Peel's administration. As a government servant he had no politics, but in private life he was a Whig, and his relations with Sir Robert Peel had not been happy. On July 6 he wrote in a private letter to Routh, 'The members of the new Govern¬ment began to come today to the Treasury. I think we shall have much reason to be satisfied with our new masters,' and he added, on the 13th, 'Nothing can be more gratifying to our feelings than the manner in which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer has appre¬ciated our exertions.'21
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Wood, who succeeded as Sir Charles Wood, Bt., in December 1846 and was later created first Viscount Halifax, was congenial to Trevelyan. To a solid mind, he united a fixed dislike both of new expenditure and new taxes, and was a firm believer in laissez faire, preferring to let matters take their course and allow problems to be solved by 'natural means'. Head of an ancient Yorkshire family, he united love of liberty with reverence for property, a strong sense of public duty, lack of imagination and stubborn conservatism. Humanitarianism was not among his undoubted virtues. Charles Wood remained in office, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, for six years, and came increasingly under Trevelyan's influence. The two men were alike in outlook, conscientiousness and industry, and Charles Wood brought Trevelyan a further access of power in the administration of Irish relief.
Winding up relief was now pushed on vigorously, and on July 8 Trevelyan rejected a shipload of Indian corn. 'The cargo of the Sorciere is not wanted,' he wrote to Mr. Thomas Baring; 'her owners must dispose of it as they think proper. Mr. Baring sent congratulations 'on the termination of your feeding operations'. But Routh, in Ireland, was depressed. He sincerely hoped that con-gratulations might not prove premature; the pressure on the depots
was still increasing. 'This is a worse month than June,' he wrote.22
Trevelyan, however, had an urgent reason for wishing to get Sir Robert Peel's relief scheme for the 1845 failure cleared up and out of the way. He disagreed with it in several important respects, and during the last few weeks a new and alarming probability had become evident—there were unmistakable signs that the potato was about to fail again.
As early as February 16, 1846, new potatoes had been shown at meetings of the Horticultural Society in London 'in which the disease had manifested itself in a manner not to be mistaken', and on February 20, a question had been asked in the House of Commons. In reply Sir Robert Peel admitted that the potatoes 'exhibited the disease of last autumn', but added that they had been grown from sets of potatoes which were themselves slightly diseased.
Whether blight reappeared or not, however, the outlook for the potato crop was poor. Distributing seed potatoes had proved im-practicable. Immense quantities would have been needed, 'nearly a ton an acre', wrote Trevelyan, and there was neither an organization to buy such huge amounts nor means of conveying and distributing them.23
In April, Mr. E. B. Roche, Member for Cork, had warned the House of Commons that thousands of people were eating seed potatoes as a result of the refusal of the Government to open the depots; and on July 10 Routh reminded Trevelyan, 'You must remember we kept back all issues during the winter making the people consume their potatoes.' Routh estimated that the acreage of potatoes planted in 1846 was about one-third less than in 1845, and since the quantity of potatoes grown was never sufficient, except in a very good year, scarcity in the coming season was inevitable, unless the crop was overwhelmingly good.24
An overwhelmingly good crop, however, was what the people of Ireland persisted in expecting. There was a belief that plenty followed scarcity; the Irish temperament is naturally optimistic, and hope ran high. During May and June the weather was warm and the plants grew strong; on June 10 the Commissariat officer at Clonmel reported that the crop of early potatoes 'looks most abundant. It is generally supposed here that the crops have never looked better at this season'. On the 26th the Freeman's Journal
'most luxuriant'. In the spring there had been 'icy continuous drenching rain', but now the weather was 'most pro¬pitious for growing crops'.
True, on July 3 the Freeman's Journal noted reports of 'a few cases of potato disease', but 'not enough to cause any excitement' and, later, 'exaggeration' was rebuked: 'Every spot and blemish' was being 'magnified' into incipient disease.
Routh, however, who was receiving daily reports from every part of the country, could not be optimistic, and on July 14 he told Trevelyan, 'Disease is reappearing'. Three days later he wrote a letter of solemn warning: 'The reports of the new potato crop are very unfavourable. All letters and sources of information declare disease to be more prevalent this year than last in the early crop.' It was too soon to speak of the main crop, the 'people's crop', but he judged that most of the early crop had already been lost.25
Trevelyan considered these ominous facts as the strongest possible argument for winding up the present relief scheme with all possible haste. If Government relief was still available when the people became aware that another failure had occurred they would expect to be fed. 'The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on Government,' he told Routh, on July 17, 'is to bring the operations to a close. The uncertainty about the new crop only makes it more necessary.' In a second letter he wrote, 'Whatever may be done hereafter, these things should be stopped now, or you run the risk of paralysing all private enterprise and having this country on you for an indefinite number of years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer supports this strongly.' Routh received instructions to close the Commissariat depots on August 15.
Had the decision rested with Routh he would not have closed the depots in the face of a second failure. However, he shrank from opposing Trevelyan; the training of a lifetime forbade it, and his admiration for Trevelyan's capacities was great. He tried therefore to convince himself that Trevelyan's policy was just and wise. 'The apprehensions for the new crop make it all the more necessary that we should close our present labours on August 15,' he wrote to some of his senior officers on July 20,'. . . so as to allow the Government time to make up their opinion as to the future, for if we were to remain at our stations and depots until the end of September when the fate of the late crop will be determined, it might be difficult to relieve us, and the authorities might be forced into a continuance of the same measures without a fair opportunity of consideration.'26
Trevelyan next turned his attention to the Board of Works. Of the bodies concerned with relief, the Board of Works had been the least satisfactory; not only Trevelyan, but Routh, declared 'the Board of Works has been a failure'; and on July 20, Trevelyan wrote, privately and peremptorily, to the chairman of the Board, Colonel Jones, telling him that the Board was to be reorganized. The reconstruction had been already drafted in a Treasury minute, and was, wrote Trevelyan firmly, 'as good as settled'.
The minute, dated July 21,1846, directed the closing of all public works, save in exceptional circumstances, on August 15, and also directed the reconstruction of the Board and the augmentation of its staff 'to meet the increased magnitude of the coming exigency'. Proper plans and estimates for works under the recent Acts were to be prepared now, in anticipation of the new emergency, in order that the confusion of the previous season might be avoided.
The Board of Works received the Treasury minute with indig¬nation. It was not possible or reasonable to stop works, without warning, at only three weeks' notice. How could works be left in their present state? Many roads were actually dangerous to the public; was this to be ignored? Local distress was already more urgent than ever, and immense new destitution was known to be impending.27
The Government gave way. An attempt was made to limit ex¬penditure, but in fact what amounted to a general renewal of relief works took place. Trevelyan became exasperated, and so much annoyance was evident in his letters that Routh ventured to remon-strate. The Board of Works, admittedly, had been a failure, but he was not sure, he wrote, on August 3, that the relief committees had been unsatisfactory: 'Pray if you put forth any public documents on the subject speak carefully of the Committees whose assistance you will certainly require next year. Praise if you like, but do not find fault, at least publicly; they are very sensitive and so are all the Irish.' Whatever their shortcomings, the relief committees had collected £98,003 by July 31, 1846, the largest sum ever raised in Ireland for the relief of distress; to this, £65,914 ioj. od. was added by the Lord-Lieutenant out of public funds, as the Government contribution.28
The Government had now accepted the fact that a second failure of the potato was about to occur, and Trevelyan was preparing plans. He was determined to pursue a new policy, a policy which all but reversed that of Peel.
Trevelyan and Charles Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had decided that, in the second failure, there was to be no Govern-ment importation of food from abroad and no interference whatso¬ever with the laws of supply and demand; whatever might be done by starting public works and paying wages, the provision of food for Ireland was to be left entirely to private enterprise and private traders.29
The new policy was received by officials in Ireland with dismay, and on August 4 Routh pressed Trevelyan to import food, now and at once. 'You cannot answer the cry of want by a quotation from political economy. You ought to have 16,000 tons of Indian corn . .. you ought to have half of the supply which you require in the country before Christmas.' How great a quantity would be needed, wrote Routh, would be determined this month, when the main crop began to be dug.30
No preparations, however, even if preparations had been made on double the scale urged, could, in fact, have saved the Irish people from the fate which lay before them. Before the depots could be closed or the public works shut down, almost in a night, every potato in Ireland was lost. 'On the 27th of last month,' wrote Father Mathew to Trevelyan, on August 7, 'I passed from Cork to Dublin and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the third instant 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 that had left them foodless.'
'I shall never forget,' wrote Captain Mann, a Coastguard officer employed in relief service, 'the change in one week in August. On the first occasion, on an official visit of inspection, I had passed over thirty-two miles thickly studded with potato fields in full bloom. The next time the face of the whole country was changed, the stalk remained bright green, but the leaves were all scorched black. It was the work of a night.'31
Sir James Dombrain reported that, in a tour of eight hundred miles during the first week in August, 'all is lost and gone'; the horrible stench from the diseased potatoes was 'perceptible as you travel along the road'; in Cork, on August 3, the stench from rotting potatoes was 'intolerable'. On August 7 Colonel Knox Gore, Lieutenant of County Sligo, found 'from Mullingar to May-nooth every field was black', and on August 8 the steward of the Ventry estates wrote that 'the fields in Kerry look as if fire had passed over them'. Failure was 'universal' in Ulster by August 7, and in Longford, Galway, King's County, Westmeath and Co. Dublin every potato was completely blighted.32
Disaster was universal. The failure of 1845 had, to some degree, been partial; the loss, though serious, had been unequally distri-buted, and the blighted areas 'isolated and detached'. The country, in Routh's words, had been 'like a checker board, black and white next door', and Trevelyan, summing up the first failure, was able to describe it as 'a probationary season of distress'.33
The difficulties experienced in administering Sir Robert Peel's relief scheme were due to the state of Ireland, the poverty, the unemployment, the annual semi-starvation which millions custom¬arily endured. It was these unfortunate wretches, 'the old habitual mass of want in Ireland', the 'fixed tide of distress which never ebbs' who, besieging the relief committee rooms and surging on to the public works in tens of thousands, had broken down the administrative machinery.
In the first failure, with the exception of the potatoes, the harvest had been above the average, and though distress was greatly intensi¬fied, yet thanks to the relief scheme the people in many districts had been better off than usual. Trevelyan, with whom John Ball agreed, wrote, 'In the first failure the people suffered less than in ordinary years, owing to the pains taken to prevent them from feeling want.'34
In the summer of 1846 the situation was very different. The harvest, generally, was poor, and the people were at the end of their resources. Every rag had been already pawned to buy food, every edible scrap had gone. The people were weakened and despairing. 'A stranger,' wrote a sub-inspector of police from County Cork, on August 4, 'would wonder how these wretched beings find food . . . Clothes being in pawn there is nothing to change. They sleep in their rags and have pawned their bedding.'35
The whole face of the country was changed. 'From the Giants Causeway to Cape Clear, from Limerick to Dublin, not a green field is to be seen.'Violent thunderstorms occurred: 'electricity'—lightning—was seen playing over the blackened fields, torrential rain fell, the country round Dublin was flooded, and an 'extra¬ordinary dense fog' was seen by Routh on August 6 to descend over blighted areas, 'cold and damp and close without any wind'.36
It is, declared a leader-writer in The Times on September 2, 'total annihilation'.