The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-02 00:00:00

THE IRISH EXODUS.
JOURNAL DES DEBATS.)

'EOM THE

" While all looks are fixed on the East. while the
`ed and feverish populations of old Europe are pre-
paring to dispute the finest country under the sun, there
is on the other side a profound current, silent and
...
irre-
sistible,

, which carries millions of men—a whole nation
—towards the west, and towards the unoccupied and
unlimited soil of the New World. When thrones fall,
when royal families wrest the sceptre from each other,
when dynasties emigrate, we call such changes revolu-
tions. By what name should we then call this emigration
en masse of a whole nation, this simultaneous transpor-
tation of an entire race, this sudden disappearance of a
whole society, which shifts all at once like the scene of
a theatre ? A neeee for this mysterious and providential
movement has been sought for in the Bible—it is called
the Exodus.' It is now customary to say ' the Irish
Exodus,' or the Celtic Exodus'—the going forth of
the Irish and the Celts, as the Old Testament says the
going forth of the Jews. And it is, in fact, a migration
like that of the Hebrew people, with women, children,
and chariots ; it is a journey in pursuit of the promised
land, of the land of abundance and plenty; it is one of
those impalses which seize the popular mind, and which
nothing can chec':. In a few years the Irishman will
have disappeared from the land of Ireland ; and yet that
land is not to 'Arlo what Egypt formerly was to the
Israelite; it is the country, the native soil, the paternal
inheritance. It was a country as beautiful and as fertile
as any in the world ; gifted with all natural riches, with
the most beautiful waters, the finest ports, and the
greenest mountains ;it was the island called the Green
Isle,' a brilliant emerald which God let fall from his
celestial diadem, and which poets lovingly called ' the
first flower of the earth, the first gem of the sea.' And
on this privileged soil there was a people as happily
gifted by nature—brilliant, amiable, witty, full of ima-
gination and eloquence—a people of artists. But with all
these presents, all these largesses of Providence, Ireland
has only succeeded in representing in modern history
the most complete type of human misery. For cen-
turies she has been an object of pity, of scandal, and of
terror for the whole world •, she has floated on her ocean
as a wrecked vessel, with the black flag hoisted. When-
ever it is desired to signalize popular misery, Ireland is
named ; even out of his own country the Irishman car-
ries with him this fatal inheritance; and in the great
towns of England there is always a separate quarter,
called Little Ireland,' which is the chosen kingdom of
poverty, famine, and death. But nevertheless, however
abandoned, famished, and wretched they were, the Irish-
man and Ireland always adored each ocher. A veritable
love existed between the man and the soil ; they so
strongly resembled each other—they were so well adap-
ted for one another ! Both of them were, so to speak,
lying fallow—both lived from hand to mouth, and warmed
themselves in the sun, doing nothing, and without care for
the morrow ! But now this old alliance is broken ; and
what specially characterizes the great movement of which
we speak is the sort of enthusiasm with which the emi-
grant bids an eternal adieu to his country. Formerly
the Irishman only tore himself with tears from his native
soil ; and now he flies from it as if it were poisoned, and
shakes its dust from his feet. How has this change been
accomplished? How has this great divorce been effected ?
To understand it, it is necessary to know that within the
last five or six years a veritable agrarian revolution and a
new division of territorial property, almost as complete as
that effected in France by the Revolution, have been
slowly and silently accomplished in Ireland. We will not
go back to the time of the Celtic Kings, nor even of
Cromwell ; we will content ourselves with going back to
the year of the famine and of typhus—that is to say, 1817.
This date is one of the most sinister for Ireland ; about
2,000,000 of persons died of famine and pestilence. We re-
member having visited Dublin at that time—it was only a
great hospital and a great cemetery. And even these ex-
pressions are somewhat ambiguous, for the people died in
the street and in the gutter, and at the doors of the crowded
hospitals ; and the survivors buried them when and how
they could. The siege of Jerusalem must be called to
mind to give an idea of the ravages which famine made
among that wretched population. The English, who, as
is known, are great amateurs of statistics, calculated
that 2,000,000 persons, in two months, gave 5,479 a day,
228 an hour, and rather more than four a minute.
Thus, in the midst of the 19th century, in the midst
of established society, and in full European equilibrium,
there was a country in which four persons per mi-
nute died of hunger—literally of hunger. It would
have been difficult to long preserve this state of
civilisation, and besides England ruined herself in
maintaining it. After every crisis of this nature, Eng-
land regularly found herself with some millions of Irish
on her hands, and she could not abandon them, for they
were of her family. The Irishman was always for Eng-
land a poor relation ; and Balzac might have found in
him the subject of one of his most painful novels. The
great mendicant, the man eternally famished, came con-
stantly to knock at the door of the rich. Millions were
riven, but the thine had always to be recommenced.
Thus, in 1847, the English government caused soup to be
distributed in Ireland every day to upwards of 3,000,000
of persons, and employed nearly 600,000 men in the profit-
able occupation of breaking stones on the highway. But
with the Irish alms had only one effect—that of keeping
up and perpetuating pauperism. The greater the quan-
tity of soup distributed, the more were the poor multi-
plied—nay more; seeing that soup was given to them
at home, the Irish remained there. instead of going, as
before, to seek work in England. They had little social
ambition—soup was sufficient for them. Content with
their pittance, the workmen seated themselves by the
roadside with their arms folded : the fishermen
abandoned their nets and their boats, and lay down
on the shore like true lazzaroni. A man who knows
the country well, the Archbishop of Dublin, said
on this subject—' The Irishman is always on the
brink /of ruin, and contents himself purely and simply
with the quantity necessary to live on. Give that to
him, and he will not work at all.' The same Arch-
bishop offered to fishermen to equip them and give
them provisions, but he was obliged to abandon his de-
sign. ' If,' said he, provisions be given to them, they
would eat them on shore ; even if they were sent to sea
with their boats stored, they would return ashore the
first night, would bring back their provisions to their
families, and, counting on public charity, would remain
with their arms folded. One cannot confide a piece of
bread to such people.' In reading this portrait of the
Irishman drawn by Archbishop Whately, would not one
believe that he was talking of Neapolitans ? Another
writer said, also, in speaking of his countrymen
(Letters from Ireland, by Aubrey de Vere)—" What
can be done with a people who are so savage and
so devout that, if you were to give them a pipe
to smoke, they would have they imprudence to con-
sider themselves . unhappy, and would digest the
easier from not having the stomach laden—who, at
the same time, have a perfectly Oriental belief that what
must happen will happen, and who to all that join a sort
of Epicurean Platonism, mixed with a little cynicism,
which makes them find comfort in the damp straw on
which they spread themselves in the sun, abandoning
themselves to visions of a future world, which resembles
neither England nor Ireland. and which floats before
their half-closed eyes !' Here, again, we find the
true lazzaroni. We have seen that Irishman on the
port and quays of Naples, lying at full length in the
sun, living on a halfpenny a day, without caring for
the morrow, and leaving providence to act with thorough
Mussulman indifference. We should find him again,
without any doubt, on the quays of Constantinople,
looking, half asleep, at the ascending smoke of his pipe,
and dreaming. The Neapolitan and the Turk, however,
have always sunshine, and never require spirituous
drinks, while the Irishman is often cold and hungry,
and when imagination dees not feed him England must
do so. The reader sees, then, that England turned in a
vicious circle. The more money she gave, the more de-
mand increased. It was the cask of the Danaides, the
from
lawthe
for themselves
of
; mythology.thelrish
had
poorhneoEne ;
nglsioshthhaatdina
Ireland the indigent, instead of being at the charge of
parishes and of landowners, were at the charge of the
public Treasury. The English h d a a tax on incomes. the
Irish were exempt from it, andyet they cot the State
£1,000,000 a month ; and after a year of labour and com-
mercial prosperity, in which she energetically restored
her finances, England found herself obliged to make a
loan of £8,000,000 to feed, clothe, and lodge three or
four millions of Irish gaping in the air ! The excess of
evil caused the repression of it, and England felt that at
any cost she must violently shake off the ever-increasing
burden which became accumulated on her, and which
would have ended by crushing her. It was then
that the British Parliament voted measures which legis-
latively and peaceably effected a radical revolution in the
territorial property of Ireland, and changed the situation
of the country from top to bottom.