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The Catholic Church
and the Great Irish Famine
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The Rev. Donal Kerr, an Irish Marist priest, is a noted scholar and Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St. Patrick's University, Maynooth, Ireland. He has held positions as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and Visiting Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is the author of numerous books and articles including: Peel, Priests, and Politics, 1841-46, published in 1982, A Nation of Beggars: 1846-52 published in 1995, and The Catholic Church and the Famine, 1996. Fr. Kerr is an external examiner for doctoral theses from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham in England and Trinity College in Dublin. He holds a BA and MA from the National University of Ireland (University College, Dublin); S.T.L. Gregorian University, Rome, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. The Vincentian Center sponsored his lecture, March 7, 1997 in Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Great Irish Famine and as part of the focus on human rights. Fr. Kerr shared his extensive research on the dire consequences of a policy when right to property was given a priority to the right to life. This lecture focused on the quest for social justice as the Catholic Church organized extensive relief efforts, maintained sacramental ministries during the Great Hunger, and other religious groups provided assistance for their brothers and sisters. For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see Donal Kerr, The Catholic Church and the Famine, (Dublin: Columbia Press, 1996).
"No imagination can conceive, no pen can describe it," wrote Bishop Francis Haly from Carlow in January 1847, "to have anything approaching a correct idea of the suffering of the poor, you should be here on the spot and see them with your own eyes!" "The scenes of horror and desolation of which the priests are daily and ocular witnesses, almost stagger belief description" wrote Archbishop Signay. These words are from the many letters of Catholic clergy who experienced the Great Irish Famine. The vivid nature of the correspondence of these men, eye-witnesses of the tragedy, brings home how horrific an experience it was. After a lapse of 150 years, it is the letters from those priests who were on the spot, saw with their own eyes and struggled to express the inexpressible, that provide the most poignant image of the catastrophe. Their letters, too, reveal, in part, the largely untold story of the Catholic Church's response to the Famine, a response that was not confined to Ireland but came from every corner of the world. It is a story of generosity and goodness that brings the light of human compassion into the darkness of suffering and death which marked Black '47 and subsequent years. The first section of this talk will recount some of those experiences of the Famine. The second section will deal with Catholic Relief in Europe and American Relief. The third section, on the latter part of the Famine, will deal with evictions, emigration and, in particular, some conflicting interpretations of the catastrophe and the role of 'Providence' in causing it. 1845-1850: Potato Blight + Laissez Faire = Catastrophe Although the main outlines of that greatest calamity of 19th century Europe are well known, a brief sketch may help to put the lecture in context. In the winter of 1845, a blight came on the potato throughout Europe. In Ireland, where for 3 million of its population of 8.5 million the potato was the staple food, it risked becoming a major catastrophe. In 1845, the catastrophe did not come, because the blight came late, the failure was 40% or less and the crop was a very good one. Furthermore, Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, promptly imported maize from America and sold it at 1 d a pound to keep prices down. In 1846, however, from 75% to 90% of the crop failed. The harvest was not plentiful and the new Liberal government of Lord John Russell (grandfather of Bertrand, the philosopher and anti-nuclear protester) decided not to import grain from abroad nor to interfere with the merchants who were up in arms against government intervention. As a result, in the winter of 1846-47 people died in thousands. In 1847, only part of the crop failed but little had been sown. In 1848, the crop failed disastrously again. This time the government decided that "Irish property," by which it meant Irish landlords, must support "Irish poverty," that is, the famine victims. Since many landlords, too, were impoverished and others were unwilling to support so many poor tenants, this meant more evictions, deaths and emigration in 1849 and 1850. It was only about 1850 or 1851 that conditions returned to near normal. The Famine, then, was not the affair of one year but went on and on over many years. Amartya Sen, the Harvard-based historian of famines, believes that "[in] no other famine in the world [was] the proportion of people killed as large as in the Irish famines in the 1840's." When the crop failed totally in 1846, the attitude of the clergy is noteworthy. Fr. Matthew, the temperance leader, immediately contacted Charles Trevelyan, the assistant-secretary to the Treasury, to tell him that the potato crop was no more than "one wide waste of putrefying vegetation" and that the wretched people were wringing their hands and wailing bitterly at being left foodless." Archbishop Michael Slattery of Cashel implored of Lord Bessborough, the viceroy, to speed up relief. "For heaven's sake," he pleaded, "let the public works begin." Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam wrote to the new prime minister, Lord John Russell, that he had now a great destiny to fulfill--"the rescuing of an entire people from the jaws of famine." Comparing the recurring Famine to the biblical seven-year famine in Egypt, Archbishop Murray of Dublin wrote: "Hitherto, Sir Robert [Peel] has been our Joseph" clearly expecting Russell, the new prime minister, to be a new Joseph. The clergy, then, like most people, confidently pinned their hopes on the government action. The line the government would take became clear from the reception Sir Randolph Routh, the commissary-general for relief, accorded to a delegation from Achill, off the coast of Mayo, in autumn of 1846. The delegation explained to Routh that because the merchants charged high prices, the people could not buy the corn, and they asked him to sell food at a lower price. His reply was that "it was essential to the success of commerce that the mercantile interest should not be interfered with." Astounded, Father Monahan, the leader of the delegation, reminded him that in the previous year the government had sold at a cheaper rate in order to keep down the price. Routh responded that that was "a mistake, for it gave bad habits to the people, and that the government was now determined not to interfere with the merchants but to act in accordance with the enlightened principles of political economy." Father Monahan asked how, in such a crisis as this, the government could be fettered by notions of political economy; political economy might be very well in its way but the people of Achill knew nothing about it. With his astonished reply, Monahan put his finger on a central issue of the Famine--how could a government insist on enforcing the principles of 'political economy,' or free trade, if its people starved? Yet the government persisted in its policy and the result was a catastrophe. John Madden, parish priest of Roscommon, wrote in desperation. "My House," he said, "is surrounded by them [the poor]...calling for Work or Food...We are doing what we can to distribute Soup. What can we do? The Applicants are so numerous; our means so limited." John O'Sullivan, parish priest of Kenmare, archdeacon of the diocese of Kerry, and an ingenious and tireless relief organizer, admitted that: "I often think of betaking myself to some other country rather than see with my eyes and hear with my ears the melancholy spectacle and dismal wailing of the gaunt spectres that persecute and crowd about me from morning until night imploring for some assistance." Fr. Coyne of Ballyhaunis wrote, "If you could see my house surrounded every day with starving countenances, you would pity me." Bishop French of Kilmacduagh told Cullen of the "yellings of the poor, on the Roads, in the streets...at all our houses." The account of his daily life by Hugh Quigley, curate in Killaloe, merits citing at more length:
People dreaded that they or their relations should be buried without a coffin and yet, because of the diseases that accompanied the Famine, were afraid to go near them. "They are lying out in the fields," wrote Bishop McNally, "and the people are so terrified that none but the clergy can be induced to approach. I yesterday sent a coffin out for a poor creature who died in a field and have just heard that no one could be prevailed to put the body in it." "My heart shudders," wrote Fr. Peter Ward, at the height of the Famine, "when I hear the cry, 'Here is a corpse,' 'here is a corpse,' 'here are three corpses devoured by wild beasts.'" Thanking Archbishop Murray for the 15 pounds he sent, Martin Harte, parish priest of Doonfey, wrote: "This day it was the cause of giving some consolation to a few individuals who had the remains of their friends unburied for four days for wants of means to procure coffins." From Kenmare, Sullivan recorded that there was "nothing more usual than to find four or five bodies on the street every morning. They would remain so and in their homes unburied, had we not employed three men to go about and convey them to the graveyard." It was the same in Cork. Father Troy of Skibereen recounted on 10 January 1847: "I went to the hut...provided with a coffin--had to creep in on my hands through an aperture. The lifeless and putrid corpse was reclining against the wall...The poor wife and one of the children endeavored to get to their knees (they could not stand) to help me to coffin his remains, but I had to beg of my curate to help us." Thomas Quinn, a County Clare priest, told the poor law inspectors, "I had together with my curate, Revd Mr. Reid, to convey by torch light two successive nights, the remains of two persons who were abandoned by their own immediate family and friends." They
hated the poorhouse for its degradation, its separation of families and
Relief Efforts Apart
from the government, voluntary societies threw themselves into relief
work. Queen Victoria gave 2,000 pounds and proclaimed a day of fast and
prayer. The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in
Ireland and Scotland, founded by Stephen Spring Rice, Lionel de Rothschild
and Thomas Baring (of Baring's bank) in January 1847, raised huge sums
of money from the generosity of the wealthier classes in England. Religious
groups were to the fore in organizing relief. The Society of Friends founded
a very effective relief service. Protestant and Catholic clergy threw
themselves whole-heartedly into relief work and the Freeman's Journal
remarked on "the perfect harmony which distinguishes the ministers of
The Church in Ireland was not rich but, through its overseas network, it maintained a flow of relief money. This largely unknown Catholic relief work kept thousands alive during the worst periods of the Famine. At first, some priests gave from their own moneys as for instance James Maher, uncle of Paul Cullen, who sold his horse and gig to raise money. [All the Cullens were remarkably generous.] Soon, however, they had to appeal for outside help. The very charitable Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, played a central role as regards the distribution of relief funds that came to him from all over Europe, and as far away as America, Africa and Australia. Among the earliest recorded gifts he received for relief were two guineas from two English Protestant lawyers in Lichfield. In Kenmare, the enterprising Archdeacon O'Sullivan, at his own risk, imported food which he sold at cost price and then used the money to import again and recommence the process and so managed to distribute cheaply L30,000 worth of food. He told a parliamentary committee: "I felt that it was unusual business for a priest to turn flour merchant, but still someone had to do it all the time." Convents everywhere provided meals and, in particular, breakfasts for the children. Sister Mary O'Donel of the Presentation Convent in Galway wrote that "We are struggling to keep on our breakfasts as the only means [the children] have and to clothe the destitute orphan." In Galway, too, the Patrician Brothers, under Paul O'Connor, had set up the Orphans' Breakfast and Clothing Institute which at one stage was giving breakfast to a thousand children as well as feeding 400 to 500 poor in their homes. The Annual Report for 1847 reads: "It is resolved that while a penny or particle of food remains in the Establishment, or can be obtained by the humblest entreaty, not one of the little creatures will be cast overboard!" John Leonard, superior of the Christian Brothers in Peacock Lane, in Cork city, told his confreres, "We must feed the children we have before taught, and to do this, let us first begin with ourselves and make some sacrifices for their sakes." Thanks to "the charity of our friends in England," they were able to give one meal a day to four hundred children. The abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Mount Melleray, described the situation there: even in this isolated place, on a most ungrateful and profitless mountain, we relieve from eighty to a hundred wandering poor daily, besides thirty three families around us, who are our regular weekly pensioners and whom we have, under God, saved from hopeless starvation. To have been enabled to do even this little for the sons and daughters of God, is a luxury beyond the banquet of kings. In Rome, the rector of the Irish College, Paul Cullen, took many initiatives. Irish and British residents in Rome set up a committee to raise funds and Cullen's name is at the head of it. Pius IX, shocked by the Famine news, sent 1,000 Roman dollars to the Irish bishops in January 1847, an example followed by Cardinal Mai, the Secretary to the Congregation of the Index and Cardinal Fransoni, Secretary to the Congregation of Propaganda. Pius organized a triduum of prayer in the popular church of Sant' Andrea della Valle. On the first day the leader of the Liberal Catholics, the very eloquent Padre Gioacchino Ventura, who had great influence with Pius IX and was an ardent admirer of O'Connell, preached in Italian. On the second day, the Bishop of Montreal, where so many famine refugees were arriving, preached in French and, on the third day, Cullen preached in English. The students and staff of the Irish College did without their dinner to raise money. The students at Propaganda College gave up the medals they had won. Cullen, wrote to his brother in Liverpool appealing to him to give what he could and asked his sister to auction a valuable cross she possessed, apparently a papal gift. The Romans responded generously. Diamonds, paintings, rings and gold watches poured into the Irish College. Two Romans, after hearing Ventura's sermon made an unusual gift--2,000 cubit palms of marble. A priest gave the silver buckles from his shoes, probably the only thing he had to spare, as Cullen remarked. In March, the Pope then took the unprecedented step of issuing an encyclical appealing to the whole Catholic world on behalf of the Famine victims. Bishops everywhere were asked to appoint three days for public prayers and "to exercise your charity in exhorting your people to contribute towards the relief of the Irish people." This appeal had a great impact throughout the Catholic world. French and Italian Catholics had raised money for Ireland but, with the Pope's appeal, the bishops throughout Europe made a more-spread appeal for funds. Belgium, the Netherlands, the German states, Austria and other European countries began to contribute money for relief. Subscriptions came from the capital of Tsarist Russia, St. Petersburg and from Instanbul, where the Sultan of Turkey, who was told of the Famine by his Irish physician, responded generously. Of all the countries, the people of the United States were the most generous. State governments, mayors, bishops, priests, ex-slaves, Choctaw Indians in Oklahoma, American soldiers fighting in Mexico and Mexicans themselves all contributed. The first to organize relief in the U.S. that I came across, was Thomas O'Flaherty, parish priest of Salem, Massachusetts who, as early as December 1845, set up an Irish Charitable Relief Fund and collected over $2,000. By July 1846, the Irish papers recorded large sums sent by Irish priests to bishops and priests in Ireland. In December 1846 the Society of Friends in New York began their well-organized relief work. One of the foremost was Jacob Harvey, an Irishman who had settled in New York. They set about raising subscriptions "from the rich through John J. Palmer, President of the Merchant's Bank and [from] the poor through the Roman Catholic Bishop Hughes." The Quakers said later that for their own impressive and sustained relief operations, "the chief source whence the means at our disposal were derived was the munificent bounty of the citizens of the United States," adding that the supplies from America to Ireland "were on a scale unparalleled in history." The relief organizers remarked that it was the Irish emigrants who were the most generous in contributing to their funds. "I am happy to say that the poor laboring Irish are themselves doing their duty fully without any public meetings or addresses. They have been silently drafting their little savings to their relatives at home." Of greatest importance in keeping their relatives alive were the immense sums, running into millions of dollars, the Irish-Americans sent in the eagerly awaited "American letter," in which was often enclosed a ticket to America. "Doing fine like an American letter" became a type of proverb. It was the Irish poor who were feeding the Irish poor. Sometimes the parcels that the Quakers brought would have a label--i.e., for the people of the Claddagh. The Jewish community was also generous. The banker August Belmont, who contributed $500, and over sixty leading citizens issued an appeal for relief funds in February. On 8 March, a meeting was held in the synagogue in Crosby Street "for the purpose of taking measures for the relief of the famishing thousands of their fellow-mortals in that unfortunate and destitute country, Ireland." Reverend Jacques Judah Lyons defended the giving of aid, saying: "It is true that there is but one common link between us and the sufferers...That link is humanity!" Vice-president George Dallas chaired a meeting in Washington on 9 February 1847 where an appeal was launched to all the towns and villages in the country. In the same month, the Irish papers reported that New York had contributed as much as $80,000 and claimed that this was "about the same sum that has been contributed at home from all the wealthy classes of Ireland to the Central Relief Committee for all Ireland." Bishop Hughes maintained an active interest in the Famine and other Irish-born bishops also played their part. In February, William Tyler, bishop of Hartford, wrote to Archbishop Murray of Dublin explaining that, though the Catholics in this new diocese were few and poor, they promptly and generously responded to his appeal and he was sending $3,600 to the four Irish archbishops for distribution. John Fitzpatrick, bishop of Boston, read his pastoral on the Famine to his congregation and that night a relief committee was set up. By March, it had sent $20,000 to Archbishop Crolly, of Armagh. In all, the diocese of Boston subscribed $150,000. Bishops Peter Kenrick of Saint Louis, Michael Portier of Mobile and many others kept funds flowing to Ireland. Congress lent a warship, the Jamestown, on which food was so packed that the guns were removed to make room. The Irish-Americans kept coming on board to pack more stuff on so it sailed lower in the water than was intended. Then, in the record time of fifteen days, Captain Robert Forbes of Boston and volunteer sailors sailed it into Cork harbor to cheering crowds. The Quakers distributed the food through the Catholic clergy. Two months later, the Macedonian, captained by George DeKay from New York, repeated this act of mercy. The Irish Relief Committee of Philadelphia sent the John Walsh and the Lydia Anne to Derry and the St. George to Cork with supplies. Catholic relief continued right up to 1850 and the L10 ($1,300 in today's money) Murray continued to send to priests in the most distressed areas, kept many alive. It was all the more necessary then because, at the end of 1847, Trevelyan decided that the distress was over which he repeated in February 1848. The effect was to close off charity. But the Famine was quite appalling again in the winter of 1848-9. Then, in 1849, the Society of Friends, after telling the government that the relief work was beyond the reach of private exertion, wound down the Society's heroic work. The Catholic relief continued right on up until 1850. It avoided the costs and delays of official relief, and does not appear to have been misused. In South America, South Africa, India and Australia, Irish priests organized collections from their parishioners to send to their famine-stricken homeland. In Mauritius, Father Laval's account of the suffering in Ireland moved his Creole and Black parishioners to tears and they gave generously from the little they had. EVICTIONS AND EMIGRATION Soaring Evictions, Exterminations After the winter of 1847 evictions soared. A clause in the Relief Act of 1847, the Gregory clause (called after the Dublin Member of Parliament, William Gregory), barred public relief to anyone holding more than a quarter-acre of land. The number of families evicted in 1846 had been 3,500; in 1847 it doubled to 6,000. In 1848 it rose to 9,657 families. From County Mayo, Thomas Timblin, parish priest of Ballisakeery, lamenting that "hundreds of my poor parishioners must necessarily perish" revealed that besides famine and fever, there was a new threat--death through exposure: "they must as a sine qua non condition give up, not only the possessions of their small patches of land but also level their cabins, thereby leaving themselves no other shelter than that of gathering the former roofing of their cabins and placing them on the ditches, there to perish not by hunger alone but by cold." The condition of the evicted whose houses were leveled were vividly portrayed by James Dwyer, parish priest of Lackagh, Claregalway: "the parties [the evicted poor] are most hideously circumstanced, such as dying on the road side or under bridges or in sheds where a few sticks are erected for their reception, to be visited by myself who am doomed frequently to crawl on my knees into the abode of death." Fr. Thomas Brady, of Drung, near Cavan complained that: "In this parish...there are fifty farms vacant, two hundred human beings sent adrift in an inclement weather to beg or die. As I meet them on the highways, livid corpses raised from the grave, I can but give a faint idea of their wretched appearance wishing for the happy release of death. The landlords exterminate right and left." John McCullagh, parish priest of Spiddal, revealed that "the Priest is called on every other day to attend from two to five dying persons where more than fifty houses were tumbled down last winter, the persecuted starving outcasts living in ditches or in sheds." Fr. Edward Waldron, Ballinrobe, chillingly describes the result of some evictions just before Christmas: "We had the last visit from the Sheriff here two days before Christmas-day, with horse and foot soldiers and a posse of men well paid for evicting the starving tenants and tumbling houses. These poor evicted people (forty eight families) are wandering about at present as there was no room for them in the Work house and if you were to see where some of them slept at night! I can only say that it was not fit for pigs. Man made to God's image and likeness to be thus treated by fellow man, the same by nature but birth and fortune has made a distinction!!" The clergy, eyewitnesses of evictions, no longer minced their language. Archbishop Slattery complained of an "Extermination going on under the protection of the law." Bishop Keating, forced by government pressure to censure a priest of his diocese for speaking out, told Slattery in private that all the priest was doing was protesting against "the Extermination." In private, even the prime minister denounced what he called the Lynch law of the landlords. Grosse Ile: Rotting in heaps on the shores of the stranger One of the results of evictions and hunger was an enormous increase in emigration, some of it voluntary, sometimes organized and assisted by the landlords to clear their land. Many emigrants survived and prospered, but many never reached the land of their hopes. Many died at Liverpool, one of the main ports for those going to stay in Britain or on their way to America, and of the priests ministering to them, some ten succumbed to the deadly fever. More haunting still were the scenes at Grosse Ile, a place and a name forever linked with the Irish famine. Marianna O'Gallagher has written authoritative works on Grosse Ile, an island in the middle of the great St. Lawrence river and some 30 miles from Quebec, which had been set aside by the Canadian government as the quarantine island for immigrants and, since the fare to Canada was only one third of the fare to New York and the regulations governing the transport of passengers less strict, most of the Irish who emigrated during the famine disembarked there. Many perished at sea: of the 476 passengers, from Major Mahon's estate in County Roscommon, who embarked on the Virginius at Liverpool, 158 died and those who survived the voyage of death were, in the words of Dr. George Douglas, the Canadian medical officer at Grosse Ile, no more than "ghastly yellow looking spectres" and "not more than six or eight really healthy or able to exert themselves." Because of the ice, the Saint Lawrence river was navigable only from May to the beginning of November. In 1847, the first ship with Irish emigrants arrived on 14 May. The Catholic and Anglican clergy were quick to come to their aid and both of them handed over their churches to serve as extra hospitals. The Celtic Cross on the island records the names of forty-four priests who ministered to the famine victims. Surprisingly, many of the priests had Irish names--James Nelligan, James McDevitt, Hugh McGurk, James McDonnell, Michael O'Reilly, Michael Kerrigan, John Caulfield O'Grady, Edward Horan, William Dunne, and Michael Power--and a number of them were born in Ireland. Twenty priests caught the famine fever and six died; seven Anglican clergymen caught the fever and two died, as well as four doctors and other helpers. To diminish the risk of mortality among his priests working in Grosse Ile, Archbishop Signay wisely decided to rotate his priests, asking them to stay only a week at a time on the island. Many volunteered to stay much longer or returned a second or third time. Father Bernard McGauran of Notre Dame de Quebec, was the first priest to go there, at the head of a group of seminary professors from the Seminaire de Quebec. McGauran, a young man of 25, recently ordained, was from Ballisodare in County Sligo. He caught the fever but recovered and returned again to spend in all eighty days on the island. The Archbishop, deeply concerned about the emigrants' plight, brought priests from all over his diocese and soon seven were serving at the same time on the island. The pastoral priority of the Archbishop in this and similar letters is striking. The sick and the dying Irish were "people who have become part of his diocesan flock" and since they were in greater need he was resolved to call to their assistance priests from all over his vast diocese, even if it meant taking them away from other important work or incurring local displeasure. The Anglican bishop of Montreal, George Jehoshaphat Mountain, was equally solicitous for the emigrants and paid two visits to the island, officiating at twenty-two burials. In his letter of 3 June to Archbishop Signay, Taschereau went on to make the chilling comment: "it is a very painful thing to say and even more difficult to believe, but it is in my opinion, the expression of the truth, spoken by a captain whom I met today: 'It would be better just to send a battery of artillery from Quebec, to sink these ships to the bottom rather than let all these poor people die in such an agonizing manner: if things don't change, they will all die.'" At the official inquiry into the management of Grosse Ile held later in the year, it was admitted that far more died on the ships than on the shore; many who were healthy when they reached port caught disease from being cooped up with the dying and the dead. Father William Wallace, later rector of Fordham University, told the inquiry: "I observed to Orderly Smith, that there was a corpse in the same bed with a patient, and his reply was that in those cases they were left until the following morning." At one stage there was a two-mile long queue of forty ships awaiting permission to discharge their passengers. On shore, the sick were lodged in tents, sheds and in the Catholic and Protestant Chapels. In some sheds the beds were placed one tier above the other. Father O'Reilly appealed to the Special Committee to remove the upper tier since the sick person found it almost impossible to clamber down and once down found it still more difficult to climb back. His description was horrifying:
At least 5,500 died at Grosse Ile but many more died throughout Canada. In Montreal, some seventeen Grey nuns and seven priests and the Mayor died ministering to them; in Toronto, Bishop Power also died in the same cause. The part played by the Church, from Italy to Belgium in the old world, and from Canada to Australia in the new, showed it at its best in its use of its world-wide organization. No previous relief activity for disaster or famine had attracted such widespread, almost universal, reaction. In the United Kingdom and the United States the Quakers' organization played an important part. In Europe, the interest that Daniel O'Connell's career had aroused over the previous decades was also important. For the whole Catholic world, Pius IX's Encyclical, Praedecessores Nostros, was of the greatest significance, for it galvanized bishops all over the world to send aid and, as letters to Murray forwarding relief-moneys recounted, its publication aroused a great and active sympathy for Ireland. Of major importance, too, and of significance for the future, were the Irish abroad, who mainly through their clergy, mobilized relief. Important though this was in Europe, it was far more important in the new countries--the British Empire, the United States, South America--where a network of Irish clergy had grown up to cater for the Irish abroad. It is also a first indication of the growing influence of the Irish Church throughout the British Empire and in the United States. In Canada, it was not merely a question of raising funds but of coping with a mass of disease-ridden refugees. The Churches, for their part, rose to the challenge. The evictions in Ireland had led to the murder of some landlords and finally a rebellion resulting in the death of two people in July 1848. By 1849, English people had become relief-weary and they became most unwilling to give any more to "ungrateful" Ireland. In Ireland, on the other hand, as the crop failed again disastrously in the winter of 1848 and no help came, a conviction, in what was gradually, but in the end, widely perceived as the government's failure to fulfill its primary duty--to save the lives of its people--was emerging. Treasury official Trevelyan, who controlled government relief, had confidently stated at the end of 1847 that the Distress, as he called the Famine, was over. It persisted for another three years. When the potato failed again massively in 1848-49, the suffering from famine, disease and evictions was frightening and the ability to cope had diminished. In Cork, Brother John Leonard faced renewed difficulties in his efforts to provide a meal a day for the 300 children and had to reduce it to 90 "who being fatherless or orphans could not possibly be abandoned." In May, 1849, Bishop Egan of Kerry told the President of Maynooth College: "Only those who go among the people can form a correct estimate of their destitution. We have in Killarney five auxiliary Work House all crammed to such an excess as to contaminate the air and cause every week from 26 to 30 deaths; the mortality is principally amongst the children and the very old persons. You may frequently meet the poor Father who entered the work house with four or five children, after a time leaving with one child on his back and assigns as his reason that all the others died and he would rather starve outside than run the risk of losing the only one that as yet survive." Evictions increased. Father Ward of Partry told Bishop Briggs of Leeds:
In January, Fr. Matthew McQuaid of Kill, wrote to the Freeman's Journal, "There never was perhaps a more terrible persecution against the poor than at the present moment. There seems to be a hellish rivalry among some agents as to who will banish the most." Many in parliament and in the cabinet were shocked at the horror of the evictions but nothing was done. They evoked a reaction in Ireland. In October, two Catholic priests, Fr. Thomas O'Shea and Matthew O'Keefe, founded the first successful Tenant Right movement, in Callan, County Kilkenny, which before long was joined by a number of Presbyterian ministers. Outdoor relief was proving hopelessly inadequate as Father O'Reilly of Bangor Erris told Synnott, Archbishop Murray's very efficient relief agent:
Poverty, Providence and the Synod of Thurles The bishops assembled at the Synod of Thurles in 1850 issued an Address to the Irish People condemning the exterminator; they reflected on poverty in these words: The desolating track of the Exterminator, is to be traced in too many parts of the country--in those leveled cottages and roofless abodes where so many virtuous and industrious families have been torn by brute force, without distinction of age or sex, sickness or health, and flung upon the highway to perish in the extremity of want.... We behold our poor not only crushed and overwhelmed by the awful visitation of Heaven, but frequently the victims of the most ruthless oppression that ever disgraced the annals of humanity. Though they have been made to the image of the living God, and are purchased by the blood of Calvary, though the special favorites and representatives of Jesus Christ, we see them treated with a cruelty that would cause the heart to ache if inflicted on the beasts of the field...One of the worst fruits of the False Teaching of the age, has been to generate a spirit of contempt, hard heartedness, and hostility to the Poor. The Mammon of Iniquity, not the Spirit of Christianity; and...Avarice..., not the Charity of Jesus Christ, have furnished the principles and maxims by which they have been estimated and ranked in the social scale. While the Gospel everywhere breathes respect and love for the poor...the spirit of error...denounces them as the great nuisance of the moral world... The government was furious. Clarendon complained that the bishops were setting the poor against the rich and that the Address "is worthy of Louis Blanc for its socialist doctrines." "It was high time," he said, to inquire whether "we shall permit a set of men under the mask of religion...to stir up different classes against each other." "No language was omitted," declared Russell, a few months later when bringing in the last penal law passed by parliament against Catholics, "which could excite the feelings of the peasant class against those who were owners of the land." Yet the bishops' reproaches in the Address raised important issues. The deaths (from all causes) recorded in 1849 almost equaled the record level of 1847. Russell had no plan. That acute observer, Charles Greville, the secretary to the Cabinet, noted with horror in his account of the cabinet meetings on 9 February 1849 that the people in Ireland were dying of hunger and no one knows what to do. "All call on the Government for a plan and a remedy, but the Government have no plan and no remedy; there is nothing but disagreement among them; and while they are discussing and disputing, the masses are dying...Charles Wood [the Chancellor of the Exchequer] has all along set his face against giving or lending money...and he contemplates...that all the misery and distress should run their course." A commercial crisis in 1847 reinforced the reaction against relief and enabled Wood and Trevelyan to make economy the order of the day. Officials in Dublin, however, closer to the Famine scene, were alarmed and the viceroy, complained bitterly: "I have...expressed my fears that the doctrines of Trevelyan, whose mouthpiece C. Wood is, would prevail...C. Wood, backed by Grey [another cabinet minister], and relying upon arguments (or rather Trevelyanisms) that are no more applicable to Ireland than to Loo Choo, affirmed that the right thing to do was to do nothing--they have prevailed and you see what a fix we are in." He repeated his accusations to Prime Minister Russell that: "Wood and Trevelyan sat coolly watching and applauding what they call 'the operation of natural causes.'" It was all too much for Edward Twistleton, the chief commissioner of the poor laws in Ireland, who resigned, claiming that the indifference of the British parliament was leading to a policy of extermination. Russell was not in control of his cabinet, where, ultimately, the responsibility lay. Yet as he pointed out to Clarendon, the problem went deeper than cabinet opposition: "the great difficulty...respecting Ireland is one which does not spring from Trevelyan or C. Wood but lies deep in the breasts of the British people. It is this--we have granted, lent, subscribed, worked, visited, clothed the Irish, millions of money, years of debate...the only return is calumny and rebellion--let us not grant, clothe...any more and 'see what that will do.'" The cabinet merely reflected British public opinion as expressed by the press, parliament and people and it was one of national misunderstanding, indeed of hostility to Ireland! The bishops' defense of the poor, had identified a prevailing attitude, at once economic, moral and theological. Economic: Political economists insisted on non-interference with economic development and market forces even if it meant suffering for the poor. Moral: Adopting a moralizing attitude they laid the responsibility for the distress on Irish indolence. Theological: they were convinced that the Famine came from the Hand of Providence and for a certain purpose. Trevelyan, whose influence was paramount, summed up this attitude when he said that the Famine was "the judgment of God on an indolent and unself-reliant people." It was "the cure...applied by the direct stroke of an all wise Providence in a manner as unexpected...as it is likely to be effectual!" As God had "sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated." In other words, the Famine was God's will and we should not alleviate it too much. Although many in Britain thought like him, in Ireland the clergy and others, who were closer to the scene, totally rejected this ideology. In 1846, Father Mullins of Clarenbridge, recounting that 75 parishioners perished in six months, exclaimed agonizingly: "How is all this desolation to be accounted for? Surely it was not caused by the visitation of an angry Providence, but by the crying injustice of our earthly rulers!" As regards the "Hand of Providence," Bishop Hughes had warned "Let us be careful not to blaspheme Providence by calling this God's famine." The bishops in the memorial which they handed to the Viceroy in October, 1847 rejected the moralizing view of blaming the Famine on "the indolence of the peasants;" and laid it instead on the "penal laws" which had deprived the people of the rights to property and denied them the fruits of their labor. In 1848, Father Nicholas Coughlan, complaining of "the unworthy death of some 800,000 honest men" declared emphatically: "as to this heavy scourge coming from holy Providence, I believe none of it; I rather believe it comes from beyond the [Irish] channel..." In horrified terms, William Bennet of the Society of Friends reported: "They are dying like cattle off the face of the earth, from want and its kindred horrors. Is this to be regarded in the light of a Divine dispensation and punishment?" Asenath Nicholson, an American visitor, wrote that "God is slandered, when it is called an unavoidable dispensation of His wise Providence, to which we should all humbly bow, as a chastisement which could not be avoided." Now, finally, in their Address in the synod of Thurles, the bishops examined Trevelyan's ideology and found it wanting. The sharpest differences emerged on the attitude to the poor. They had already, in their memorial to the viceroy in 1847, rejected any attempt to blame the Famine on "the indolence of the peasants," laying it instead on the 'penal laws' which had deprived the people of both property rights and the fruits of their labour. Now again, in the Address, they insisted that those "flung upon the highway to perish" were not indolent, but "virtuous and industrious families." Behind that failure to halt evictions and protect life they discerned an attitude which they considered alien to the Gospel--a contempt for the poor whom many of the governing class saw as a drag on the process of the United Kingdom and "the great nuisance of the moral world..." The bishops, instead, reminded Christians that the poor "were made to the image of the living God and are purchased by the blood of Calvary," and "the special favourites and representatives of Jesus Christ." Earlier on, Father Spratt, the founder of two relief organizations, demanded more food of the government officials "for their starving fellow creatures, who were created by the same omnipotent God, and are as much entitled to live as themselves" and Father Edward Waldron insisted that the poor, too, were "made to God's image and likeness" and should be so treated. The contact with the poor, who formed a majority of their faithful, made the Catholic clergy sensitive to their plight. It is arguable, too, that the bishops and clergy represented an older, more accepting attitude to the poor, whereas the attitude becoming prevalent in Britain reflected, in part, a more modern post-industrial revolution attitude and a different work-ethic. Emigration was now running at about 5,500 a week. The clergy grieved to see the people go but as that inveterate nationalist, Fr. Maher, declared, he would rather see his people "alive in Illinois than rotting in Ireland." Archdeacon O'Sullivan told a parliamentary committee that while he hated with all his soul the loss of the best blood of Ireland, he had advised every man to emigrate because he believed that every man must place his own life and happiness, and of his dependents before other loyalties. Clarendon exulted: "Priests and patriots howl over the 'Exodus,' but the departure of thousands of papist Celts must be a blessing to the country they quit...English and Scots settlers have arrived." By 1852, the future for Catholic Ireland looked bleak. The death by hunger, fever and exposure of a million of its faithful, the mass emigration and the initial, and loudly-trumpeted, success of the Protestant Crusade appeared to threaten the existence of "Catholic Ireland." The Famine and the United States The Irish Famine had many repercussions in the United States which can be only touched on here. Its impact on the Catholic Church was considerable. There is only one decade in American history when the Catholic population almost tripled in size. In round terms, in 1840 Catholics were about 660,000 but by 1850 it had jumped to 1.6 million, an increase due to the million emigrants, nearly three out of four of whom were Irish. Not merely did the numbers of Irish Catholics increase enormously but so also did the composition. Before the Famine, most came from Leinster, South Ulster and Sligo. Now most came from Munster and Connacht. Many were Irish-speaking with an Irish culture. Were the people who came the poorest of the poor? No. The poorest died at home in Ireland. Those who could got as far as Liverpool. The slightly better off went to Canada. And those who were paid for by the landlords went to Canada--cheaper and still the Empire. Those who came to the United States had normally to raise the money themselves and it was higher than to Canada. Of course, many made their way from Canada to Boston and New York. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, the vast majority of those who set out for the United States, arrived safely. The real "coffin ships" were the ships that set out for Canada in 1847 where the death rate was extraordinarily high and where thousands died at anchor near Grosse Ile in the gulf of Saint Lawrence. Did the Irish who came to the United States already blame England for the Famine deaths or, as some say, did that resentment come only with John Mitchell and the Fenians? It is a matter of speculation. Yet even during the Famine, there were a number of priests, bishops and others, who blamed England for the high mortality, long before Mitchell's The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) appeared in 1860. The American visitor, Asenath Nicholson was one. Edward Twistleton, the chief commissioner of the poor laws in Ireland, was another. On 8 February 1848, Fr. Maher, Cullen's uncle, put this question forcefully to the Lord Lieutenant, "Can the people be saved?" Then he pointed out grimly: "If the Russians or French threaten our possessions in the Mediterranean; if the Americans...approach the frontiers of British Canada; if property, for which we are never tired legislating, were endangered, would the millions be forthcoming to protect them?" Another question that could be asked concerns the emigration. Was it a safety-valve? Cormac O'Grada, a leading Famine and economic historian, shows conclusively from comparisons with modern famines that this was the case. Over a period of five or six years, from 1845 to 1851, the eyewitness accounts of priests and bishops from different parts of Ireland and from abroad, provide some insight into what the Famine meant for the victims. The cumulative effect of their accounts, so similar in many ways, is to deepen one's realization of the horror of that terrible experience. The first reaction of the clergy--total trust in the government--gave way in the autumn of 1846 to disillusion and disbelief. This was followed by despair and hopelessness as, in the early spring of 1847, they looked on helplessly while the Famine swept away whole families, town lands, and people in the thousands. They witnessed many of the ties that bound society together come under threat as neighbors were left to lie uncoffined and unburied in the fields and ditches, a prey to wild fowl and animals. By 1848, evictions and assassinations, and the recriminations they generated, brought to the surface an anger with the government. Yet, committed to their role of counseling peace and fearful of the evils rebellion might bring, they had opposed the ill-prepared rebellion of 1848. When the Famine struck hard again in 1849 and government failed to take any worthwhile measures to relieve the people, this anger grew to find expression in the protests against the Queen's visit, and, in particular, in the increasing militancy in the bishops' recriminations. From 1847 on, they had criticized the inadequacy of relief, the mismanagement in the workhouses, and the misuse of relief funds for proselytism. More significantly, they had rejected the blame for the crisis which the British press and public opinion continued to cast on the peasant. The real blame was that the subordinate rights of property were given priority over the more fundamental right to life. Then, in their Address for the Synod of Thurles, they went further, fiercely denouncing the evictions taking place under the protection of the law, as no other than the "track of the Exterminator." At the root of this "contempt and hard-heartedness," they identified a perception of the poor as "a moral nuisance." To this ideology they opposed a more compassionate one, citing the Gospel as everywhere breathing respect, love, and commiseration for the destitute as the "special favorites and representatives of Jesus Christ." Research by present-day historians of the Famine--Christine Kinealy, Cormac O'Grada, Peter Gray, Jim Donnelly and others--sadly attest that, after 1847 particularly, the government of the day did not do anything like enough, to prevent the deaths of so many Irish people. Yet if the United Kingdom government was grievously at fault then, today we in the developed countries have a far greater margin to feed the starving than that government had in 1847. Millions of innocent people still starve to death--North Korea is only the most recent tragic example. If we are to learn anything from our history it must open our hearts and our resources to the unfortunate starving with whom, in the words of the Reverend Jacques Lyons, we have the common bond of humanity--we are children of the one God. Although more could have been done to prevent so many cruel deaths, on a practical level, the Catholic Church's world-wide relief work was a striking achievement and it reflects credit on its members, lay and clerical, Irish and foreign. On the spiritual level the priests, at deadly risk to themselves, brought the victims, in the words of Bernard O'Reilly, who attended so many dying on the boats and on the shores at Grosse Ile, "the supreme consolation of an Irish Catholic--the last rites of his Church."
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