Appendix 1 Background Notes on Irish Economic History It is the fate of some countries ... to live in a state of almost constant suffering; such countries, like sick people, like to change position - each movement gives them the hope of feeling better. Comte de Segur, Memoires au Souvenirs People in torment must squirm. Anna Parnell, The Tale of a Great Sham The nineteenth century in England has been called the Age of Reform. In Ireland it might be termed the Age of Agitation. For more than half the century some parts of Irish civil liberties guaranteed by British law were suspended under Coercion Acts as the government responded to three armed (and abortive) uprisings, 1 the tithe war, agrarian secret societies, O'Connell's mass movements for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Act of Union, and agitation for Home Rule and land reform. For readers unfamiliar with Irish history in this troubled century a short and very general summary of the economic conditions which led up to the formation of the Land Leagues of 1879 and 1881 is provided here; many of the events and personalities mentioned are the subject of more detailed study in the chapters of this book. No attempt is made here to explore the ancient and rich civilisation of Ireland or to enter into the details of its long history of conquest by the British which began several hundred years ago and ended only in this century. By the Act of Union of 1 January 1801, the Irish Parliament which had enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy since 1782 was abolished and Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Henceforth 100 members of Parliament out of a total of 600 would be elected in Ireland to represent their country at Westminster. By 1820 all customs duties between the two countries had been discontinued and the Irish and British exchequers were amalgamated. Thus were united two utterly different economies; Great Britain was an expanding indus­ trial society, Ireland was a backward agricultural one, totally reliant on 252 Appendix 1 253 the land with no industry to drain off its surplus population. 2 Under such conditions, the Union was all to the advantage of England. The abject poverty and degraded conditions of life of the Irish peasant had been remarked on by many writers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Swift, ·de Beaumont, de Tocqueville, Arthur Young, Harriet Martineau to name but a few. 'I do most firmly believe that in no other country under the sun are there to be found men so wretched in every respect,'3 Lord Dufferin wrote in 1849 after a trip to the West of Ireland. According to the census of 1841 over 75 per cent of families in Ireland, excluding Ulster, relied on cultivation of the land for the necessities of life; including Ulster it was still a very high 66 per cent. Yet out of a population of eight million there were only 10000 actual land owners, most of whom were Protestant and of British stock. Although the land­ owners comprised only 1 per cent of the population, they held all the im­ portant administrative and political posts of the country, both nationally and locally; they were the members of parliament, justices of the peace, poor law guardians, high sheriffs and so on. An estimated one-third of all landlords were absentees, living mainly in England. The vast majority of the population on the other hand - overwhelmingly Catholic and native Irish outside Ulster- were landless tenant farmers. Although they were responsible for improvements to their holdings which in England were by custom the responsibility of the landlord, they were not entitled to financial compensation for such improvements once the tenancy was concluded. Moreover, most tenants just prior to the Famine held year­ to-year leases and were therefore subject to increases in rent or eviction at the landlord's will. In these circumstances, a tenant who had improved his land with drainage, fencing or fertilisation might find his rent was raised in consequence of the increased value of his land due to those very improvements; if he refused to pay the new rent he could be evicted from his holding without receiving any monetary compensation for his improvements. In such conditions tenants had little incentive to improve their holdings or to adopt better methods of cultivation. Since the enormous pressure of a growing population with no alternative forms of employment created a desperate need for land to support life, landlords could always find a new tenant who would agree to pay a rent which was far in excess of what the land could produce. 4 In desperation the tenant would pay everything short of the potatoes which were his family's sole food, fall into arrears and in turn become subject to eviction. 'His was the gambler's life with this difference, that a gambler has the possibility of large gains while the Irish tenant has only the prospect of a bare livelihood as his highest prize.' 5 Although evictions were relatively infrequent after the Great Clear­ ances of the early 1850s, many landlords routinely sent out eviction 254 Fanny and Anna Parnell notices which they had no intention of acting upon but which served to remind their tenants of the power a single landlord held over their lives. A mixture of awe and fear of this all too real power created a feeling of powerlessness and apathy in the Irish peasantry; they treated 'His Honour' in the Big House on whose good will their lives depended with servile obsequiousness. The exaggerated respect accorded the landlords in Ireland was very precious to them; it confirmed their belief in their own in-born superiority and in the inherent incapacity and inferiority of the Irish tenant farmers and labourers. In the words of William Parnell, 'those whom we oppress we learn to despise.'6 The rapid increase in the population of Ireland from the late eight­ eenth century up to the Great Famine of 1845-49-when it stood at eight million - had been made possible by reliance on the potato as the main, often the sole, source of food for the vast majority of the people. Easily and cheaply grown and extremely nourishing, especially when boiled in their skins and mixed with butter or buttermilk, enough of this crop could be produced on a tiny plot to feed a family. 7 Consequently, due to the pressure of a rapidly growing population; land was continually subdivided into minuscule holdings. Cottiers gladly furnished their labour to a tenant-farmer or landlord in exchange for a potato plot, labouring for the right to grow food and, sometimes, for a hovel in which to live. Labourers existed on the small wages earned during the growing and harvesting season, and were frequently unemployed and unable to find even a subsistence for their families. The countryside swarmed with beggars. The Irish peasant's hold on life under such conditions was extremely precarious. High rents left the small tenant farmer only a subsistence; he had no security of tenure in his holding and relied on a single food crop for survival; most other crops raised went to pay the rent. Any failure of the crops such as occurred in 1817 and 1822 led to widespread distress and in some areas to starvation. When potato blight hit Ireland in 1845 and the staple food supply of the peasantry was virtually wiped out in the succeeding two years, the result was a loss of one million lives to famine and famine-related illness and a further loss of one million to emigration. During most of the nineteenth century Ulster had enjoyed relative prosperity. This was attributed to its slightly wider industrial base and to the prevalence of Ulster Custom or 'tenant right' which gave compensation to tenants for improvements to their holdings when the lease was terminated. Thus they had some incentive to employ good farmings methods. They also enjoyed a certain security of tenure although they too were subject to rent increases and could be evicted if they fell into rent arrears. Since the landlord could reimburse himself for any arrears out of the monetary compensation due to the tenant, Ulster tenants who fell into arrears due to poor harvests or lowered prices for Appendix 1 255 agricultural prices could also find themselves evicted and destitute. Nevertheless Ulster tenants were better off than farmers in the rest of Ireland who, unprotected by custom or law from the worst of economic competition for the land, turned to the 'weapons of the weak'. Secret societies were formed to exert pressure on offenders against peasant solidarity. Land-grabbers- farmers who took a holding from which a previous tenant had been evicted - were a common target of agrarian violence; clearly the landlord could have no interest in evicting if he was unable to find another· tenant. Most of the violence was directed at fellow farmers and labourers, although harsh and over-exacting land­ lords and their agents could also find their hay-ricks burned or their cattle maimed in night-time raids. Murders, although rare, did occur. This sort of rough justice has always existed in agricultural societies where a large part of the population believes that the law is for the benefit of their oppressors and does not serve their own needs. 8 The secret societies were local reactions to immediate and pressing grievances, such as eviction from a holding or the exaction of onerous tithes to the established Protestant Church of Ireland. 9 They were pragmatic rather than ideological, without continuity of purpose or action.