Bread and Scorpions
In 1846, Daniel O’Connell stood up in the House of Commons to draw attention to the Great Hunger in Ireland, and to plead for a swift response.
1846
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In 1846, Daniel O’Connell stood up in the House of Commons to draw attention to the Great Hunger in Ireland, and to plead for a swift response.
1846
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Between 1845 and 1851, repeated attacks of potato blight led to the deaths of a million Irishmen from starvation and disease and the emigration of a million more. Had Parliament listened to Irish MP Daniel O’Connell, the worst of the Great Hunger might have been avoided; but that would have required the courage to ease up on the reins of power.
abridged
EARLY in October [1845] it was known that the potato crop, on which almost one-third of the population depended for their existence, had rotted in the ground: everywhere nothing but a mass of decaying, stinking vegetable matter. Fortunately the cereal crop was above the average, and there was every prospect, if Government interposed with an embargo on the exportation of grain, that the calamity with which the nation was menaced might be partially averted. Warnings reached Government from all quarters.
O’Connell himself was the first to sound the alarm. Speaking at a public meeting on 28th October, he insisted on the necessity of closing the ports without delay,* of taking measures to prevent the precious grain being misused for purposes of distillation and brewing, and of importing rice from the Carolinas and Indian corn from America.* To pay for the extra supplies, he suggested a tax of fifty per cent,* on the rentals of all absentee landlords, and ten per cent, on all resident ones. For himself, he at once began to lay up large stores of rice at Darrynane for the benefit of his tenants.
* That is, closing them to exports. “There is in the country at this moment” wrote Lord Cloncurry (1773-1853) on February 9th, 1846, “corn more than enough to feed our entire population.” But the grain was going to England. In 1815, the Corn Laws had all but closed the UK’s ports to grain imports from abroad, and English consumers, unable to buy cheaply from America, paid top prices for Irish grain. The Irish, being generally poorer, missed out. On February 17th, Daniel O’Connell read Lord Cloncurry’s letter out before the Commons. “While the country produced such abundance” he told them “the inhabitants were starving. So blessed was she by Providence; so cursed by man!”
* The Carolinas, North and South, were one of the British Empire’s chief sources of rice prior to American independence, and by 1839 they accounted for some 60% of the rice grown in the USA. ‘Indian corn’ is flint corn, a hardy variety of maize formerly cultivated by Native Americans.
* In his long address to the Commons on February 17th, 1846, O’Connell asked for twenty percent. He also suggested a programme of railway construction, matching taxpayer funds to private investment pound-for-pound. Lord George Bentinck’s bill to lend the Irish £16m for railway construction was defeated in the Commons; from that date, O’Connell’s delicate health went rapidly downhill.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What cause the Great Hunger of 1845-1851?
The failure of Ireland’s entire potato crop.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The potato crop failed. People were starving. There was grain enough for everyone.