How the British government responded to the Great Hunger in Ireland

Relief and lack of response from the crown during the Irish Famine years.

The decision to leave Ireland to its own resources following the harvest of 1847 proved to be disastrous. It also demonstrated that the Act of Union, enforced on Ireland only fifty years earlier, meant little in reality.  For members of Young Ireland, the failure of both the Irish landlords and the British government to protect the lives of the poor pushed them reluctantly to a path of rebellion, culminating in a small, unsuccessful rising in Ballingarry in July 1848.  However, nationalists were not the only people dismayed at the seeming indifference of the British government to the Irish poor.  In October 1847, the Earl of Clarendon wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Wood:

“I hope Lord John Russell will not persist in his notion that Irish evils must find Irish remedies only, for it is impossible that this country will get through the next eight months without aid in some shape or another from England – it may be very difficult – very disagreeable. Irish ingratitude may have extinguished English sympathy, and the poverty of England may be urged against further succour to Ireland, but none of these reasons will be valid against helpless starvation.”

Clarendon’s  warnings were unheeded, with many politicians in London continuing to justify minimal intervention by laying the blame for the situation on the Irish poor themselves, their laziness and their ingratitude. Clearly, the Irish people were not regarded as equal partners with the Union even at a time of crisis.

After 1847, hunger and disease were compounded by the increasing problem of homelessness. The tax burden imposed by the amended Poor Law had created an incentive for landlords to evict tenants, while the draconian “Quarter Acre Clause” had forced tenants with small plots of land to make the stark choice between giving up their holdings or facing starvation. At the same time, the additional responsibilities placed on the Poor Law proved to be untenable in a number of unions, forcing them to stop providing relief, or doing so at an inadequate level. Faced with a deteriorating situation, the government, through the channel of Charles Trevelyan, the scrupulous, but parsimonious Secretary of the Treasury, made small, piecemeal grants to unions considered to be most in need. Again, Clarendon made his colleagues aware of the consequences of this policy, warning that the outcome would be “wholesale starvation” that would not only be “shocking, but bring deep disgrace on the government.” 

The unpopularity of giving even small amounts of assistance to Ireland resulted in a further change in policy – but one that confirmed the desire to make Irish suffering a burden on Irish taxpayers. In 1849, the “Rate-in-Aid” was introduced.  It provided for a fixed tax to be placed on each Poor Law union in Ireland, which would then be redistributed to the poorest unions by Trevelyan. The new tax conformed to the principle that the tragedy was an Irish, not an imperial, responsibility. The new tax was unpopular throughout Ireland, but was especially disliked in the northeast of the country, which was recovering from the Famine, helped by a revival in the linen industry. The strongest opposition to the new tax, however, came from two Englishmen close to the government. Clarendon believed that it undermined the idea of a United Kingdom, and would serve to increase support for separation from Britain. While  Edward Twistleton, who had been the Irish Poor Law Commissioner since 1847, resigned in 1849 on the ground that the tax was an unfair burden on Ireland, which he could not implement  “with honour.” Over the previous two years he had disagreed frequently with the policies he was overseeing, and had had many angry encounters with Charles Trevelyan over the parsimony with which the Treasury had released funds. Before leaving office, he informed Trevelyan that as he and his colleagues had repeatedly been denied sufficient funding, they were “absolved from any responsibility [for] deaths which may take place on account of those privations.” A few weeks later, he told a parliamentary committee that deaths, even in the poorest unions, could have been prevented “by the advance of a few hundred pounds.”

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