Famine Memorial - Dublin
Relations between Britain and Ireland
The relationship with Britain was problematical. Though both countries were united under the Act of Union and the whole of the United Kingdom was now a free trade area, Ireland was not really considered part of Britain. This point is made eloquently by Isaac Butt, Professor of Political Economy in Trinity College Dublin:
What can be more absurd, what can be more wicked, than for men professing attachment to an imperial constitution to answer claims now put forward for state assistance to the unprecedented necessities, by talking of Ireland being a drain on the English treasury. The exchequer is the exchequer of the United Kingdom. … If the Union be not a mockery, there exists no such thing as an English treasury. … How are these expectations to be realized, how are these pledges to be fulfilled, if the partnership is to be one of loss and never of profit to us? if, bearing our share of all imperial burdens—when calamity strikes upon us we are to be told that we then recover our separate existence as a nation, just so far as to disentitle us to the state assistance which any portion of a nation visited with such a calamity has a right to expect from the governing power? If Cornwall had been visited with the same scenes that have desolated Cork, would similar arguments have been used? [Isaac Butt, Dublin University Magazine 29 (April 1847) 514; repr. in Colm Tóibín & Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish famine: a documentary (New York 2002) 185]
As the American economist and historian, Joel Mokyr, writes:
Most serious of all, when the chips were down in the frightful summer of 1847, the British simply abandoned the Irish and let them perish. There is no doubt that Britain could have saved Ireland. The British treasury spent a total of about £9.5 million on famine relief. … Financed largely by advances from London, the soup kitchen program, despite its many inadequacies, saved many lives. When the last kitchen closed in October 1847, Lord Clarendon wrote in despair to the Prime Minister, Russell: “Ireland cannot be left to her own resources … we are not to let the people die of starvation”. The reply was: “The state of Ireland for the next few months must be one of great suffering. Unhappily, the agitation for Repeal has contrived to destroy nearly all sympathy in this country”. … A few years after the famine, the British government spent £69.3 million on an utterly futile adventure in the Crimea [the Crimean War,1853–5]. Half that sum spent in Ireland in the critical years 1846–9 would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. It is difficult to reconcile this lavishness with claims that British relief during the famine was inadequate because the problem “was too huge for the British state to overcome”. … The contribution of Westminster to the relief of this horror was a pittance. … It is not unreasonable to surmise that had anything like the famine occurred in England or Wales, the British government would have overcome its theoretical scruples and would have come to the rescue of the starving at a much larger scale. Ireland was not considered part of the British community. [Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland starved: a quantitative and analytical history of the Irish economy, 1800–1850 (rev. ed. London 1985) 291–2]
Donnchadh Ó Corráin
23 January 2006