Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The sources of financial and political instability
- 2 The economic-policy reforms of Sir Robert Peel
- 3 Famine relief before the crises of 1847
- 4 Famine relief during and after the crises
- 5 The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
- 6 Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire’s other famine in 1847
- Conclusion: Britain’s biggest economic-policy failure
- Bibliography
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
5 - The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The sources of financial and political instability
- 2 The economic-policy reforms of Sir Robert Peel
- 3 Famine relief before the crises of 1847
- 4 Famine relief during and after the crises
- 5 The intentions and consequences of redistributive relief policy
- 6 Ireland and Mauritius: the British Empire’s other famine in 1847
- Conclusion: Britain’s biggest economic-policy failure
- Bibliography
- Index
- People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History
Summary
If you had gone through the Irish Famine as I did, you would I think agree with me. In vain I strove to make them do something for themselves, I reconstituted the supply of money – but I begged, prayed, and urged and tried to force them by every means in my power to help in at least managing the relief, not a bit of it. It was entirely thrown on the Govt. officers … We could not let the people starve – but we had to find the means of administering food to hundreds of thousands, unassisted by any Irish residents, high or low.
Halifax (Sir Charles Wood in retirement) to William Gladstone (as prime minister), 16 December 1870.The effect of the law was to reduce the middling and struggling classes to abject poverty. Their cattle and stock were distrained for rates to support pauperism, and then they became paupers themselves. He knew, himself, the case of a gentleman who had a large estate lying waste and profitless. The tenants [themselves also] all emigrated to America with the rent, and everything they could scrape together, and the owner of the land could not even let the land as pasture for cattle, lest the stock should be seized for payment of poor-rates. Such was the position of this gentleman, who was now dependent upon private charity for support. He believed that the working of the present law, as far as it respected the mode of administering relief, and the circumstances under which it was given, operated as a penalty upon industry, and an impediment to the cultivation of the land.
Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, 11 May 1849.As the previous chapter has shown, the year 1847 was a turbulent one for London’s money markets. In Ireland it is one that has become infamous as the worst point of the famine. ‘Black ‘47’ is not only referred to by historians but in popular discourse too. A recent film about the famine, Black ‘47, has immortalised the suffering on the ground in Ireland that year. Yet like all historical myths, the reality is more complex. As Peter Gray has recently noted in the Cambridge History of Ireland, there were some economic signs in 1847 that ‘provided the illusion that the Famine emergency was now over’.
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- The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis , pp. 184 - 228Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022