STATE OF IRELAND
Sir H. W. Barron said, he begged
to move that that the House should resolve itself
into a Committee, to take into consideration
the state of Ireland. In doing so he
would attempt to describe the distressed
condition of the great majority of the people
of Ireland, and would compare her condition
in 1845 with her condition at the present
moment. He took 1845, because it was
immediately after that year that the three
great causes to which he attributed the
present distressed condition of Ireland had
occurred. The first cause to which he
alluded was the famine, the second was
the change in the corn laws, and the third
was the disastrous poor-law which had
been inflicted in 1846.
...
This subject of emigration proved, more
than anything else, the miserable condition
of Ireland. What alarmed him most
was, that it was not the pauper that was
going; but the man who had some money
was getting together his means, and leaving
a country in which he could no longer
gain a livelihood. He agreed entirely in
what Lord Stanley said to his friends the
other night, that-
" Can it be a mark of the prosperity of a country
when tens of thousands of industrious men,
women, and children, are collecting together the
wreck of their fortunes, and flying from penury
and distress at home, and carrying with them
what they have been able to save out of their
diminished capital and property, to enrich, not
our own colonial possessions, but foreign countries,
with their industry and capital, and, in too
many cases, their blighted affections also."
Those people would not forget that it was
bad laws which had driven them from the
land of their birth. He believed that nothing
but extreme misery would drive an
Irishman away from his native land. Let
him observe that it was one most remarkable
feature connected with these poor
people, that they send large remittances
to relieve their unfortunate families at
home. He had known some of them to
send back 9l. [pounds?] or 10l [pounds?].
in as many months,
who left Ireland without paying their passage
to New York or some other American
port. However they might abuse the
Irish nation in that House and in the
newspapers, he would say that there was
not a better peasantry on the face of
the earth than the Irish peasantry; and
that fact- which he now stated with respect
to these remittances for the relief of
their unfortunate relatives and friends at
home - was worth whole volumes of eulogies.
...
The hon. Baronet
had then referred to emigration as a proof
of the distress in Ireland. Emigration
was not a very healthy symptom; but
they had had numerous Motions in that
House, not for the purpose of checking,
but of promoting emigration. If emigration
was so great an evil, the duty of the
Government would be to check, and not to
promote it.
...
His
right hon. Friend the Secretary for Ireland
had stated that there was nothing
new in the present aspect of affairs in
Ireland, or differing from other periods in
which similar inquiries had been moved
for. he must admit that the intensity of
distress was much greater now, and that
every interest in Ireland was suffering
under it; there was, however, a new feature
as present, in the depopulation of the
country, which was proceeding rapidly,
but of which Ministers seemed to think
of lightly. It was, however, a feature
well worthy the consideration of England,
when the consequences of Irish emigration
at former periods of her history were
weighed. Let them remember the consequences
as shown at Fontenoy - let them
remember the recapture of Cremona from
the Prince Eugene in person - let them
remember that America was lost to this
country by the check given by the Ulster
emigrants at the lines of Pennsylvania-
let them remember that in the late war
with that country the veteran troops of
England, flushed with their success in the
Peninsula, were met on terms of equal
issue by raw levies of Irishmen - let them
remember that the republic of Mexico fell
before an army, nine-tenths of whom were
Irish - and let them understand that the
United States were conquering, and would
conquer, the entire of the new world,
through the instrumentality of those whose
departure was viewed with indifference.
