The Rebels of Ireland (113 page)

The next evening, Nuala brought home some milk. “It's good for the fever,” she said. “I told my merchant it was for my sisters, to build them up.”

“Does he know about Father?”

“Are you mad? He wouldn't touch me if he knew. And then…” She made a face. “No more food.”

Two days later, the patches on her father were almost black. In the evening, he became delirious, mumbling incoherently. His eyes were open, but Maureen knew he did not see her. Around noon the next day, however, he became lucid again.

“Bring Daniel to me.”

She shook her head.

“Just to the door. Only for a moment.”

Reluctantly, she complied. Eamonn propped himself up against the wall.

“Daniel, your father has a sickness. I may not see you again. Do you understand?”

The boy stared wide-eyed into the shadowy room but did not know what to say.

“You will be looked after by your sister, and always try to help her,” his father went on. “Will you do that for me?” Daniel nodded. “And one day, when you are grown, you will be strong, and never be sick, and then you will be the man of the family, and look after Maureen and your other sisters. Do you promise me that also?”

“Yes,” the little boy whispered.

“Good. You are a good boy, Daniel, and I'm very proud of you.” He looked to Maureen. “That'll do.”

At that moment, Daniel tried to rush to his father, but Maureen managed to catch him just in time.

When they were back in the other room, Daniel turned to her.

“I will look after you, Maureen. I promise I will. Forever and ever.”

“I know you will,” she said, and kissed him. Then she went back in to help her father. He seemed suddenly very tired.

“I'll speak to the girls together this evening, when Nuala's back,” he said.

But by that evening, he was delirious again.

He continued that way for another day. Then he seemed to pass into a kind of stupor. His eyes were open very wide, and his breathing was shallow. Maureen wasn't sure what to do. It was Nuala who brought the priest, who, after giving him the last rites, told them, “I don't think it will be very long now.”

Maureen found that he had gone when she went in to him the following morning.

In the month of June in the year 1847, a wonderful thing occurred.

The Irish Famine came to an end.

True, the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped blight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.

Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The Famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.

And the British public had had enough of the Irish Famine. After all, everyone had done their best. When a voluntary fund to relieve Irish and Scottish distress had been set up that spring, Queen Victoria herself had contributed two thousand pounds, and the donations
had soon reached nearly half a million pounds sterling—a huge sum, far surpassing even the value of relief goods sent across the Atlantic in over a hundred ships by the Irish and their sympathisers in America. The government itself had spent millions. By early summer, moreover, the soup kitchens were frequently able to provide a nourishing mixture of maize, rice, and oats, and there was more than enough to go round. The food shortage had been stemmed.

But at great cost. This expenditure of taxpayers' money could not go on indefinitely. Surely by now, reasonable Britons supposed, the Irish should be able to start putting their own house in order. Speeches were made denouncing government waste. Newspapers carried articles about misplaced humanity: one must not, these articles pointed out, be too kind to the Irish, or it would sap their self-reliance.

Faced with such general sentiment, and with an election in prospect, the government decided to do what governments have always done: “If you can't win a war, then you'd better declare a victory.”

After all, this year's potatoes appeared to be free of blight, and the Irish grain harvest promised a bumper crop. The fact that the poor Irish had no money to buy any grain was a detail that could be overlooked. The market would take care of such things.

And so an excellent scheme was hit upon. In June that year, a bill was passed in the British Parliament that would reorganise the relief of distress in Ireland entirely. The Poor Law Extension Act was a brilliant instrument. From now on, all those in need of help could apply to the local workhouse, in which they could be either incarcerated or fed. The able-bodied, of course, would not be fed. There were some safeguards, so that this generosity would not be abused. Those who had a vegetable patch for self-support would be turned away. And the men, at least, would be obliged to break stones for, say, ten hours a day, in order to discourage trivial applications for food. But by these means, the costs would fall upon the local Irish authorities, where they belonged. And by this was the stroke of legislative genius, as soon as this was done—by the end of the summer,
say—the present costly soup kitchens could be closed down and the suffering English taxpayer be relieved.

The Irish Famine, therefore, had been legislated away. Since it was no longer official, it did not exist. Or if it did, it was a local Irish problem. It was a tribute to the flexibility of the Union.

Thus the British government could face the electorate with a sense of confidence and of duty done.

Stephen Smith was most surprised, one day in July, to see Mr. Samuel Tidy standing thoughtfully in the street, watching the soup kitchen. He went over to him at once. And the Quaker was evidently quite as surprised to see him in turn. He listened carefully as Stephen gave him a quick account of how he came to be there, then informed him that he had come to Ennis himself to see what the Quakers might be able to do to help. Since Stephen was to be at the house of Charles O'Connell that evening, he suggested that the Quaker should come, too, since Charles O'Connell would certainly be delighted to welcome him.

He and Daniel O'Connell's cousin had seen a good deal of each other recently. Though he had been well aware that the great man was unwell, Stephen had been shocked when, in May, the Liberator had died trying to make a pilgrimage to Rome. He had naturally called upon Charles O'Connell at once, and they had often dined together since. Charles had been trying to persuade him to resume his political life, but Stephen wasn't sure he wanted to.

The three men dined quietly together. O'Connell apologised for the somewhat simple fare, but though it was not lavish, the meal was perfectly adequate. “It's quite remarkable, really,” Charles O'Connell remarked, “how little life for the richer merchants and the local gentry has changed. The gentry are still entertaining in their houses—quietly, I grant you—but you can still dine and play at whist in any of the country houses around. Indeed, it's terrible to say it, but this famine has been a blessing to many of the estates in
the county, because it gives the landlords and the larger farmers an excuse to clear out numbers of unwanted tenants. I had one man tell me: ‘I've persuaded some of my people to emigrate to America. I'm better off paying their passage and getting the land back.' So there you are, Mr. Tidy. English or Irish, it makes little difference: the richer sort have one set of interests in this matter, and the poor, who are suffering, another. You may say that the situation should never have developed in the first place.”

“I certainly would,” agreed the Quaker.

“But it has, and there are those who say that there is no way out of our difficulty until we have first gone through this terrible period of readjustment.”

“By which,” added Stephen with feeling, “they mean starvation. For that is what the British government is now proposing.”

“You think the British will deliberately starve the Irish poor?” asked the Quaker.

“Not exactly. But I think that every measure they have introduced has been misconceived. I was helping administer the public works scheme before this. Men were being paid a starvation wage to perform useless tasks, so that they could buy food which wasn't there. It also cost the government a great deal—far more than it would have done to feed people. The entire system broke down, and so they introduced soup kitchens. In some of the more remote areas of Clare, by the way, the soup kitchens took so long to get started that whole villages starved in the meantime. At this moment, starvation has been averted. But in two months, the kitchens will be closed and the workhouses will try to take over.”

“This concerns me greatly,” Tidy said.

“It should. Do you know how many people we are feeding, at present, in County Clare? A hundred thousand. Do you know how many workhouse places there are in the county? Three thousand. What is to become of the remaining ninety-seven percent? No one can tell me. Here in Ennis,” he went on bitterly, “I can feed thirty-five thousand—many of them able-bodied, by the way. The work-
house is being enlarged. Its new capacity will be just over one thousand.” He made a gesture of despair with his hands.

The Quaker looked at him with quiet amusement.

“I see you have changed since I first met you, Mr. Smith,” he remarked. “You were very much a political man, then.”

“Can the Quakers help?” Stephen asked. “It was Quakers, I believe, who first introduced the very idea of soup kitchens.”

“We can help,” Tidy said, “but we are cautious. There is always the fear, you know, that we would be perceived at trying to proselytise—which, I can assure you, we never do.”

“Ah,” said Charles O'Connell, “you mean ‘soup conversions.'”

Stephen had heard of these: Protestant clergymen or ministers offering food to the starving if they would abandon their Catholic faith.

“I can't say that I've ever seen such a thing myself,” he stated. “Does it really happen?”

“It is rare,” replied the Quaker. “But I have seen it.”

“So what might you do?” Stephen wanted to know.

“We shall probably try to work with the local parishes. Send them supplies—food, clothing, and so forth—and let them make the distributions as they see best. We have facilities down in Limerick. The shipments would come from there.”

“I pray to God that you will,” Stephen told him. “By the autumn, the scale of the problem will be huge.”

They discussed further the various ways in which the Quakers might be able to send aid, and how far it would be possible to reach other parts of Clare. Whatever the Quakers could do, it was certainly not going to combat more than a part of the problem ahead.

After they had talked of this for some time, and knowing their host's interest in the subject, Tidy asked O'Connell about the coming election.

“It'll be a lively business, for sure,” he told them. “The borough election comes first, and that's already sewn up. O'Gorman Mahon, that acted as proposer for my cousin back in '28, is standing, and
the local tradesmen love him. He's mad as a hatter, actually. God knows what he'll do in London. But his opponent is so crushed already, he's about to withdraw. Then comes the county election. One seat is already spoken for, but the second will be interesting. For we have no less a personage than Sir Lucius O'Brien contesting it.” He grinned. “And I'm acting as his agent.”

Sir Lucius O'Brien was certainly no ordinary candidate. The most important of all that mighty clan, direct descendant of King Brian Boru himself, and the owner of the huge Dromoland Castle estate down towards Limerick, Sir Lucius was one of the greatest of the old princes of Ireland remaining in the west. There was only one problem.