Summer of Sorrows, 1847 Gerald Keegan (published 1895) In 1847, Gerald Keegan crossed the Atlantic in from County Sligo, Ireland to Grosse Ile, Quebec, Canada, which at that time was still part of the British Empire. His diary of that journey, titled Summer of Sorrow, was published in Huntingdon, Quebec in 1895. In 1982, James J. Mangan wrote a fictionalized account based on this diary called The Voyage of the Naparima, later republished in 1991 as Famine Diary: Journey to a New World. Mangan's edition does not make the entire text of Keegan's diary available; however he does include a handful of excerpts from the original manuscript alongside his fictionalized version. A modern fictionalized version of the ocean crossing is obviously of limited use in historical research. On the other hand, the original 1895 edition, even if creatively embellished by the author, is still useful to scholars interested in eyewitness accounts. The editorial choices Keegan makes in retelling his journey for a reading audience are perhaps as valuable as a historically accurate account. More troublesome, however, is the fact that Wolfhound Press, which published Mangan's fictional account, notes that the authenticity of Keegan's diary has been called into question. Some scholars believe the diary is the work of two or more writers, possibly Keegan and an editor. These excerpts are from the 1895 diary. (The diary begins in February, 1847, but no dates are given for these excerpts from the original text.) With doubt thrown on the landlord's good faith, the poor people went on arguing among themselves until a majority decided to stand out and demand better terms. On hearing this, the agent sent word they must decide within a week. If they rejected the offer, it would be withdrawn and no new one would be submitted. My uncle had come to get my advice, 'For sure,' he said, 'you are the only scholard in the family.' I comprehended the infamous nature of the offer. The people did not own the land, but they owned the improvements they had made on it, and had a right to be compensated for them. I knew my uncle when a boy had rented a piece of worthless bog and by the labor of himself, and afterward of his wife and children, had converted it into a profitable field. Should I advise him to give it up for a receipt for back rent a free passage to Canada? I tried to find out what he thought himself. Are you for accepting the offer, Uncle? 'That depends,' he answered. 'Give me a crop of spuds as we had in the ould times, an niver a step (Mangan, 23.) One of our many tacks brought us close to me English coast. It was my first and likely to be my last view of that country. Aileen has made our cabin snug and convenient beyond belief. Her happy disposition causes her to make the best of everything. 19.-- The westerly breezes that kept us tacking in the channel gave place, during the night, to a strong east winds, before which the ship is bowling at a fine rate. Passing close to the shore we had a view of the coast from Ardmore to Cape Clear. Aileen sat with me all day, our eyes fixed on the land we loved. Knowing, as it swept past us, it was the last time we would ever gaze upon it, our hearts were too full for speech. Towards evening, the ship drew away from it, until the hills of Kerry became so faint that they could hardly be distinguished from the clouds that hovered over them. When I finally turned away from eyes from where I knew the dear old land was, my heart throbbed as it if would burst. Farewell, Erin. 22. -- Why do we exert ourselves so little to help one another, when it takes so little to please! Aileen coaxed the steward to let her have some discarded biscuit bags. These she is fashioning into a sort of gown to cover the nakedness of several girls who could not come on deck. The first she finished this afternoon, and no aristocratic miss could have been prouder of her first silk dress than was the poor child of the transformed canvas bag, which was her only garment. 23. -- This is Sunday. The only change in the routine of the ship that marks the day is that the sailors gave an extra wash down to the decks and after that they did not work except trim the sails. They spent the forenoon on the forecastle mending or washing their clothes. During the afternoon it grew cold with a strong wind from the north-east, accompanied by driving showers. Towards sunset the sea was a lather of foam, and the wind had increased to a gale. When the waves began to flood the deck, the order was given to put the hatches on. God help the poor souls shut in beneath my feet! Another came, it caught in our cable, and before the swish of the current washed it clear, I caught a glimpse of a white face. I understood it all. The ship ahead of us had emigrants and they were throwing overboard their dead. Without telling Aileen, I grasped her arm, and drew her to our cabin. Leaving the cemetery with the priest, I thanked him from my heart and ran to he quay. My heart was in my mouth when I saw on it Aileen, standing beside our boxes, and the ship, having tipped her anchor, bearing up the river. 'What makes you look so at me, Gerald? I have come as you asked.' 'I never sent for you.' 'The steward told me you had sent word by the sailors for me to come ashore, that you were going to stay here. They carried the luggage into a boat and I followed.' I groaned in spirit. I saw it all. By a villainous trick, the captain had got rid of me. Instead of being in Quebec that day, here I was left at the quarantine station. 'My poor Aileen, I know not what to do; my trouble is for you.' I went to see the head of the establishment, Dr Douglas. He proved to be a fussy gentleman, worried over a number of details. Professing to be ready to oblige, he said there was no help for me until the next steamer came. 'When will that be?' Next Saturday. A week on an island full of people sick with fever! Aileen, brave heart, made the best of it. She was soaking wet, yet the only shelter, apart from the fever sheds, which were not to be thought of, was an outhouse with a leaky roof, with no possibility of a fire or change of clothing. How I cursed myself for making captain and mate my enemies, for the penalty had fallen not on me, but on Aileen. There was not an armful of straw to be had; not even boards to lie on. I went to the cooking booth and found a Frenchman in charge. Bribing him with a shilling he gave me a loaf and a tin of hot tea. Aileen could not eat a bite, though she tried to do to please me, but drank the tea. The rain continued and the east wind penetrated between the boards of the wretched sheiling. What a night it was! I put my coat over Aileen, I pressed her to my bosom to impart some heat to her chilled frame, I endeavored to cheer her with prospects of the morrow. Alas, when morning came she was unable to move, and fever and chill alternated. I sought the doctor, he was not to be had. Other emigrant ships had arrived, and he was visiting them. Beyond giving her water to assuage her thirst when in the fever it was not in my power to do anything. It was evening when the doctor, yielding to my importunities, came to see her. He did not stay a minute and writing a few lines told me to go to the hospital steward, who would give me some medicine. Why recall the dreadful nights and days that followed? What profit to tell of the pain in the breast, the raging fever, the delirium, the agonizing gasping for breath -- the end? The fourth day, with bursting heart and throbbing head, I knelt by the corpse of my Aileen. There was not a soul to help; everybody was too full of their troubles to be able to heed me. The island was now filled with sick emigrants, and death was on every side. I dug her grave, the priest came, I laid her there, I filled it in, I staggered to the shed that had sheltered us, I fell from sheer exhaustion, and remember no more. When I woke, I heard the patter of rain, and felt so inexpressibly weary I could think of nothing, much less make any exertion. My eye fell on Aileen's shawl, and the past rushed on me. Oh, the agony of that hour; my remorse, my sorrow, my beseeching of the Unseen. Such a paroxysm could not last long, and when exhausted nature compelled me to lie down, I turned my face to the wall with the earnest prayer I might never awaken on this earth. (Written by Father Tom O'Hare.) I lifted him in my arms and carried him out of the shed. I was powerful strong when I was young, and tho' he was tall and broad-shouldered he was wasted to skin and bone. I laid him down in the shade of a tree, for the sun was hot. He didn't look at the river or the hills beyant, but fixed his eyes on a spot that I took to be a burying place. 'Go back,' he whispered, 'and bring the bag below my berth.' I went, and found a woman had already been put in the poor bed I had lifted him out of. I reached for the bag and took it to him. Pointing to a spot in the burying-place he told me to go there and I would see a grave with a cross at its head and the name Aileen cut on it. 'You can read?' 'Yes' says I. I did his bidding and coming back told him I had found the grave. 'Promise me, you'll bury me beside that grave.' I promised him. 'Open that bag and you'll find in it a little book.' I reach it to him. 'Take it,' says he, 'there are pages in it I would tear out were I able. Let it go. Save the book; ut will tell to those now unborn what Irish men and women have suffered in this summer of sorrow.' In addition to the diary excerpts, the 1991 edition of Keegan's story contains two newspaper accounts of the quarantine station where many emigrants disembarked. The Montreal Gazette, September 5, 1847: In the hastily erected emergency sheds the people were dying by the score in the crowded sheds, in the stench and the heat, desperately neglected. When there were enough attendants they were hastily tossed into shallow pits nearby when they succumbed to the fever. In all the history of Montreal there is no story so poignant. There were hundreds of orphaned children. Many of the little ones had to pulled from the arms of a parent who had suddenly died. Older ones were wandering around frantically looking for parents who were already buried in the pits. The scene in the children's shed was beyond description. From the Montreal Immigrant Society Bulletin in 1848: From Grosse Ile, the great charnel house of victimized humanity, up to Port Sarnia and all along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, wherever the tide of immigration extended, are to be found the final resting places of the sons and daughters of Erin -- one unbroken chain of graves where rest fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, without a stone to mark the spot. I do not know that the history of our times has a parallel for this Irish exodus... It was the forced expulsion and panic rush of a stricken people and it was attended by frightful scenes of suffering and death. END OF KEEGAN DIARY

Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland William Bennett (1847) Many of the cabins were holes in the bog, covered with a layer of turves, and not distinguishable as human habitations from the surrounding moor, until close down upon them. The bare sod was about the best material of which any of them were constructed. Doorways, not doors, were usually provided at both sides of the bettermost-back and front-to take advantage of the way of the wind. Windows and chimneys, I think, had no existence. A second apartment or division of any kind within was exceedingly rare. Furniture, properly so-called, I believe may be stated at nil. I would not speak with certainty, and wish not to with exaggeration – we were too much overcome to note specifically; but as far as memory serves, we saw neither bed, chair, nor table, at all. A chest, a few iron or earthen vessels, a stool or two, the dirty rags and night-coverings, formed about the sum total of the best furnished. Outside many were all but unapproachable, from the mud and filth surrounding them; the same inside, or worse if possible, from the added closeness, darkness, and smoke. We spent the whole morning in visiting these hovels indiscriminately, or swayed by the representations and entreaties of the dense retinue of wretched creatures, continually augmenting, which gathered round, and followed us from place to place – avoiding only such as were known to be badly infected with fever, which was sometimes sufficiently perceptible from without, by the almost intolerable stench. And now language utterly fails me in attempting to depict the state of the wretched inmates. I would not willingly add another to the harrowing details that have been told; but still they are the facts of actual experience, for the knowledge of which we stand accountable . I have certainly sought out one of the most remote and destitute corners; but still it is within the bounds of our Christian land, under our Christian Government, and entailing upon us-both as individuals and as members of a human community – a Christian responsibility from which no one of us can escape. My hand trembles while I write. The scenes of human misery and degradation we witnessed still haunt my imagination, with the vividness and power of some horrid and tyrannous delusion, rather than the features of a sober reality. We entered a cabin. Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible, from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs – on removing a portion of the filthy covering – perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation. Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked, scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not, nor noticed us. On some straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled old woman, imploring us to give her something – baring her limbs partly, to show how the skin hung loose from the bones, as soon as she attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge, was a young woman, with sunken cheeks – a mother I have no doubt – who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our enquiries, but pressed her hand upon her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair. Many cases were widows, whose husbands had recently been taken off by the fever, and thus their only pittance, obtained from the public works entirely cut off. In many the husbands or sons were prostrate, under that horrid disease – the results of long-continued famine and low living – in which first the limbs, and then the body, swell most frightfully, and finally burst. We entered upwards of fifty of these tenements. The scene was one and invariable, differing in little but the number of the sufferers, or of the groups, occupying the several corners within. The whole number was often not to be distinguished, until-the eye having adapted itself to the darkness-they were pointed out, or were heard, or some filthy bundle of rags and straw was perceived to move. Perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and heart-rending spectacle. Many were too weak to stand, their little limbs attenuated – except where the frightful swellings had taken the place of previous emaciation – beyond the power of volition when moved. Every infantile expression entirely departed; and in some, reason and intelligence had evidently flown. Many were remnants of families, crowded together in one cabin; orphaned little relatives taken in by the equally destitute, and even strangers, for these poor people are kind to one another to the end. In one cabin was a sister, just dying, lying by the side of her little brother, just dead. I have worse than this to relate, but it is useless to multiply details, and they are, in fact, unfit. They did but rarely complain. When inquired of, what was the matter, the answer was alike in all – 'Tha shein ukrosh' – indeed the hunger. We truly learned the terrible meaning of that sad word 'ukrosh.' There were many touching incidents. We should have gone on, but the pitiless storm had now arisen, beating us back with a force and violence against which it was difficult to stand; and a cutting rain, that drove us for shelter beneath a bank, fell on the crowd of poor creatures who continued to follow us unmitigatedly. My friend the clergyman had distributed the tickets for meal to the extent he thought prudent; and he assured me wherever we went it would be a repetition of the same all over the country, and even worse in the far off mountain districts, as this was near the town, where some relief could reach. It was my full impression that one-fourth of those we saw were in a dying state, beyond the reach of any relief that could now be afforded; and many more would follow. The lines of this day can never be effaced from my memory. These were our fellow-creatures – children of the same Parent – born with our common feelings and affections – with an equal right to live as any one of us – with the same purposes of existence,-the same spiritual and immortal natures – the same work to be done – the same judgment-seat to be summoned to – and the same eternal goal. SOURCE: William Bennett, Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland (London: C. Gilpin, 1847), pp. 25-9.

The State of Famine and Disease in Ireland Daniel O’Connell (1846) Proceedings of the House of Commons, February 18, 1846 Mr. O’CONNELL then rose and said – I rise, Sir, to give notice that on Monday the 23rd of February I shall move for a committee of the whole house to consider the state of Ireland with a view to devise means to relieve the distress of the Irish people. That is the motion which I have to submit to the house, and I respectfully demand the acquiescence of the house in that motion. I certainly do not introduce the subject from any party motives, or for any party objects. (Hear, hear.) I would not give utterance to one partisan feeling or expression nor do I expect any party opposition. (Hear, hear). I am thoroughly convinced that many gentlemen present, who differ from me on political subjects in reference to Ireland, are as sincerely anxious as I am to relieve the distress in that country; so that this house will come fairly to the consideration of this subject, free from any of those feelings which are calculated to diminish or disfigure its advocacy. (Hear, hear). That there is the prospect of a calamitous season before Ireland is a fact which is altogether indisputable. The extent of that calamity has been disputed. For a time it was supposed that there was a prospect of our avoiding the misery we were threatened with, but I believe that all hope has now vanished; and before I sit down I shall be able to show the house that the calamity is more imminent and pressing and likely to be more awful than the house is aware. In order, however, to understand the fearful extent of the threatened calamity, it is right that the house should be reminded of the situation of Ireland previous to this visitation. The calamity with which Ireland is now threatened is not owing to any default of the people, it is not owing to any sterility of the soil, it is not even owing to any want of the abundance of the harvest. It is owing to a dispensation of Providence, which man cannot control. Our duty is to submit to the will of an All-disposing power and to perform the part of charitable Christians by endeavoring to mitigate the evils as they arise. But in order to appreciate the extent of the distress, and enable us to devise means for its relief, it is, as I have said, obviously necessary that the house should distinctly understand the previous state of Ireland. I am sorry in the performance of my duty to be obliged to state as a fact that the population of Ireland, instead of augmenting, as some have supposed, has actually been falling and wasting away – that the people have been suffering misery and distress unequalled by any other people in Europe – that the rural population and especially the agricultural labourers are as has been stated in a report to the house, almost always on the verge of famine. I propose not to call upon the house to give credit to any assertions of mine which are not corroborated by indisputable documents – I mean to show from documents of the most unquestionable character the truth of the facts which I have stated respecting the increasing misery of the Irish people. The first document to which I shall refer is the abstract of the population returns of 1821, 1831, and 1841, the accuracy of the facts are beyond doubt. From these returns it appears that the population of Ireland between 1821 and 1831 increased about a million, whereas between 1831 and 1841 they increased only about half a million. (Hear, hear). It has been attempted to account for this by emigration; but this is most unsatisfactory, for those who attempt to account for the decrease in that way give us no account of the emigration between 1821 and 1831 but confine themselves to statements of the emigration between 1831 and 1841, thus leaving out an essential ingredient in the calculation, for there is no reason to suppose that there was less emigration between 1821 and 1831 than between 1831 and 1841. With this fact staring you in the face, then, that in the course of 10 years the population has gone back half a million it will not be disputed that there is something wrong in the condition of that country. I remember that the late Sir Foxwell Buxton used to make a great impression on the house by showing how the black population decreased during slavery. This is not exactly the same case here, but the facts which I have mentioned certainly come within the same principle. (Hear, hear). I consider that nothing but distress can account for the falling off the population to which I have referred. The next public document to which I shall refer is the report of the Poor Law Commission in 1835. That commission was named by this house to inquire into the destitute state of Ireland, preliminary to the introduction of a poor law, and they reported that there were 2,300,000 of the agricultural population who were constantly in a state approaching destitution, and that for several weeks in the year they were entirely compelled to live off the charity of their neighbors. The last population returns furnish me with another argument. These returns show that 46 percent of the rural population live in habitations of a single room, and that there are frequently several entire families living in the same room. They also show that 36 per cent of the civic population lives in single rooms, and that frequently two or three families reside in the same room. Does this not present a fearful picture of destitution? (Hear, hear.) But the most important of all the reports to which I have to refer is the report of Lord Devon’s commission. This commission consisted of Lord Devon and four other persons of rank and fortune, and perhaps a better commission was never formed by a Government. It is impossible to imagine that they could be deceived, and I believe that they performed their task more laboriously. They state that from the evidence they collected on oath, and from their own observations, they found that the agricultural population of Ireland suffered great privation and hardships; that they were badly housed, badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for their labour; that in many districts the only food of the people was potatoes, and their only drink water; that their cabins scarcely protected them against the weather; that a blanket was a rare luxury to them; that their pigs and their manure constituted their only property; and that altogether they endured more suffering than the people of any other country in Europe. This is the report of Lord Devon’s committee. This is not the assertion of any agitator o r demagogue, but the distinct and emphatic assertion of men who were beyond the possibility of suspicion, and beyond the possibility of being deceived.

The Apprehended Scarcity From the Cork Reporter, 1847 Dublin, Ireland (from our own correspondent), March 20th, 1846 The Cork Reporter of yesterday has a long article complaining of the "evils of delay," and asserting, that while parties in the state and elsewhere are squabbling among themselves as to what is to be deemed the starvation test, sickness and famine are already doing their work. "The afflicting spectacle," says the Reporter, "of man and wife borne to the grave from fever was witnessed in our streets yesterday. The melancholy procession and the cry by which they were followed, sufficiently attested the class to which they belonged – they were of the poor. Three of their orphans are struggling with the same malady and remain in the same building from which they were removed. How many, let us ask, must perish before any of the four bills latterly passed is in operation, or any of the food in hand distributed? Are we to have nothing and hear of nothing but precautions? Will the Fabian policy conquer hunger and subdue in pestilence? As yet no family has had a meal of the state-imported corn. It is here – it is on the way – it is grinding – sailing – travelling from one estuary to another. It is talked of – one day it is off the harbour, another at the quays; the next it is reloaded and wafted won the river, and the last announcement left it off the coast of Dingle, where the ship that bore it loomed through the mist like the Flying Dutchman, disappearing, perhaps, to attract the anxious gaze of the watchers on some other shore. We have the substantial proof of food being really here in the daily marching and counter-marching of marines and regulars, but beyond that we have no gratification. The people do not well know how to apply or where to come to; the distant parishes have heard rumors, but yet require information. They have received hints and read letters once or twice, but there is no public proclamation of the terms on which they are to apply for sustenance. They have gone on eating or fasting on the tainted potato, imbibing mortal disease, and have sickened, died or starved, while the machinery of grand jury and other intervention was preparing. Food and employment ought to be afforded at once, instantly. We have said so over and over; we repeated the warning until we grew tired of the reiteration." After briefly noticing the fever report recently laid upon the table of the House of Commons, the Reporter thus continues: "Unsound potatoes have bred typhus. The sick are in some cases quintupled; contagion is fearful; even the word we fear to write -- cholera is apprehended. Why is this? Where is it to end? Precautions were taken. Every wise and sufficient antidote was contemplated. The plans were faultless, the scheme of the campaign against the double foe of famine and pestilence was without a flaw. Sir R. Peel assures us he had foreseen all that was to happen, but how many are they who have gone to the grave through the wards of the hospitals while he and his colleagues were quarreling and pondering, resigning and resuming office? We repeat our question: what is the number of dead we must first count over before food will begin to be distributed?" And by way of bearing out the foregoing remarks, the following correspondence is quoted: Mayor's office, Cork, March 11, 1846. To His Excellency William Lord Heytesbury Lieutenant Governor and General Governor of Ireland, Dublin Castle My Lord – I take the liberty of addressing your Excellency in compliance with a resolution adopted by the trustees of the Poor Relief Fund of this city, and as the chairman of the meeting held on Friday last. It is unnecessary for me to go into the numerous and most painful details of the deep distress of the poor of Cork, and of its alarming progress; but I am directed lay before your excellency the humble prayers of the committee, that immediate measures may be taken for a general issue and sale of Indian corn and oatmeal to the poorer classes, who are at this moment for the most part subsisting on rotten potatoes, and among whom disease is already making fearful ravages. I have the honour to be, my Lord Your obedient and humble servant A.F. ROCHER, Mayor of Cork Dublin Castle, March 14, 1846 "Sir, I am commanded by the Lord Lieutenant to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 12th, and to acquaint you, that by his Excellency's directions, your communication, with its accompanying resolutions of the trustees of the Poor Relief Fund of the city of Cork, has been sent to the commissioners for inquiring into all matters relating to the failure of the potato crop, for their consideration. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant. Richard Pennefather With respect to the scarcity or failure of the potato crop, another Cork paper (The Constitution) contains the flowing cautious statement: "Amid all the talk which we hear about potatoes, we find nothing to guide us to a satisfactory estimate, or even conjecture, as to the actual supply in the country. On one hand we have nothing but fearful forebodings -- the stock is exhausted and famine stares us in the face; on the other, we are told of stores that will bring us safely through the season, and that the noise about scarcity is only a political device. Applied to different districts there may be truth in both. Throughout the controversy we have endeavored to steer clear of extremes. We have given no credence to the exaggerations of even officials information, but have endeavored to set before our readers as they came in our way, such accounts as from the opportunities of the writers, appeared most worthy of attention. We believe the fact to be that in some places there is a sufficiency – in others, the reverse; and we are not without hope that with the precautions taken by Government, we shall be able to struggle on until the new crop comes in. But on the part of the poor, the struggle will be severe. Even at present, the price is beyond their reach; but this is in a great measure owing to the habit of forestalling. The potatoes are purchased before they enter the market, and there retailed to the consumer at an enormous profit. Thus while they bring in the market from 9d to 11d per weight, they are selling from the boats at 7 d... During the week a gentleman, observing four cartloads of fine-looking potatoes in the street, asked the owner the price. The answer was, 'Sir, we couldn't sell them under sixpence' yet though offered at those terms, they had been brought from within a mile of Mallow. The consumer, however, was probably nothing better for the moderation of the owner, for we dare say they fell into the hands of the forestaller, and were by him sold at nearly double the sixpence. We mention these facts, as it is well that, while we take all prudent precautions to meet any danger of which there may be reasonable apprehension, people should be warned against lending themselves to either pecuniary or political designs by exciting fears and spreading alarms for which there is no foundation." A MEETING The proceedings of an anti-famine meeting, held at Mallow on Saturday, were diversified toward their conclusion by the following dialogue: EDMUND WALSH, a working farmer, addressing the meeting from one of the galleries, said that he was turned out of his land by Mr. Pierce Nagle, though he had paid his rent, and it was the adopting of such courses as this toward the poor tenants that injured the country. REV. MR. McCARTHY – How many were ejected from that property for the last 10 years? WALSH – I suppose 50 or 60 families. MR. McCARTHY – Is this Mr. Nagle, of Annakissy? WALSH – It is. MR. McCARTHY – Were they put out for non-payment of rent? WALSH – No; they all paid their rent; I was only a yearly tenant, and my term was expired. MR. McCARTHY – Is your rent paid? WALSH – It is, Sir. MR. GIBSON thought such matters as these were worthy of inquiry, but this was not the place to entertain them.

The Irish Question (lead editorial) From the Times of London, 1847 London, February 10th, 1846: Every day the Irish question is becoming more oppressive. Stale it has been for a long time. But it is not the oppressiveness which is born of triteness -- it is not the wearisomeness of a "tale ten times told," at which we repine. This majority of all human subjects must soon become too trite for the fastidiousness which repels everything but what is fresh, exciting and unaccountable. It is the condition of our being that we should perpetually retrace an infinite circle of similar events. Temptation, sin and suffering are but the same "stale" objects presented in different colours and viewed in different aspects through each revolution of succeeding ages. Poverty is stale. Misfortune is stale. Death is stale. Yet from things so old and so familiar as these is the creativeness of imagination expected to furbish up forms and combinations at once natural and new. And of these things -- old as they are -- there is enough in the present picture of Ireland to keep alive the first feelings of alarm, of pity and of fear. It is not the reiterated perusal of "deaths from famine," and new "cases of starvation," that can deaden generous hearts to sympathy with the people, where these and the exertions of the Englishman from one end of the island to the other, preove that the monotony of calamity has not dulled their feelings nor dimmed their perception of its horrors. Its very duration is with them a motive power of energy. The hand of charity has become more bountiful as the cause which set that charity in action appears more distant than ever from its cessation. Yet the general question of which is but an element, is become more oppressive than ever. Why is this? Why does the horizon seem to grow blacker and more louring each time of watching?... We have been united to Ireland for forty-seven years by the ties of legislative association. During that time Ireland has enjoyed all the privileges that England enjoyed… During these 47 years she has contributed to the public revenue not more than one-sixth of the whole -- from several of the more oppressive taxes she has been entirely absolved -- she has devolved on England a debt contracted before the union, the interest of which equals or nearly equals all that she now remits to the Imperial Treasury; she costs annually half of what she yields in the way of taxation -- yet notwithstanding these facts she claims an alternate tones of supplication and menace that her poor shall be supported by our bounty, her improvidence corrected by our prudence, and her self-sought necessities alleviated by our mortgaged wealth. Her representatives tells us at one moment, as Mr. O'Connell told us on Monday -- that we ought to behave with the charity of a Christian country, irrespectively of national distinctions and prudential reflections, proportioning our bounty and the enormity of an unusual infliction and the numbers of complaining multitudes. At another moment they tell us, as Sir W. Barron and Captain Osbourne told us, in Parliamentary languaged, and as the Irish members of the "Reform" Smoking room yell out in language neither Parliamentary nor civil, that do what we can, we are only doing what we ought; that Ireland expects as a right that we should from the last scruple of "mechanic wages" pay down the cost of Irish imprudence and mitigate the acerbity of Irish wretchedness. In a word, between the evictions of a plausible mendicancy and an extortionate vehemence, nothing is left but to tax English labour for uncounted years to come, and to pay Ireland three times over the value of its fee simple, to gratify the prayers of her gentler, and the demands of her noisier, delegates. Is is worthwhile doing this? JOHN BULL is very good natured. He does not like the sight of pining indigence; but he detests shuffling, and bullying a great deal more. He hates to see men shirk the duties of their station and fortune. He would give a helping hand to those who set about their work in a season like this with energy and resolution. He would throw his coin freely into the coffers of some commissariat of charity if he saw that those who were on the spot and native to the place had done their duty and given their share. But to be told that he is to pay for the delinquencies of others -- that they who are the natural guardians of their own poor appeal to him -- that property worth 13,000,00l a year is to be let off comparatively scot free, between the jugglers of mortgagees, lessees, and creditors: and then, after all, to be abused and reviled for not doing instantly that which he sees no reason not doing instantly that which he sees not good reason for doing so at all is a thing which excited his bile against the impudence of Celtic agitators, but also against their English cohorts; and thus begins to ponder the question: "Of what use is this union to England?" It is a critical symptom when quiet citizens begin to speculate on such matters. We of course shall be abused, as we have been, for striking this key. This is a mere matter of course and we are prepared for it. Only we beg to assure the Irish landlords most strongly that we are not in league with the merchants of London, to raise a cry for the purpose of the hammer. We have no such mischief in our thoughts. Besides, it would be useless if we had. The London merchants are too shrewd to think of speculating in Irish property. It must be very different in Ireland from what it has been before London merchants would invest their fortunes in it. None but an Irishman would think of reviling us for that which if true would have entitled us to his best thanks. For no man could confer a greater blessing on that unhappy country, than by introducing into a body of proprietors, who at the same time practised the virtues of prudence and good management, and acknowledged the duties of their position.

Created by campion@lclark.edu
Updated: May 2008