I am sorry I had to laugh to myself at this a little. Hundreds of thousands of poor Irish died in the potato famine - as anyone will know who has visited Ireland and see the graves. I think this is an example of the English massaging the facts a little! What it doesnt say is - most of the food subsidies went to the Protestants (which were mainly powerful English families and Scots) and the Catholics were left to starve. Dot xx ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> To: <IrelandGenWeb-L@rootsweb.com> Cc: <TRANSCRIPTIONS-EIRE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 6:29 PM Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Great Famine: British Government 1845-46 - PrimeMinister Robert PEEL's Response - Corn Laws > > SNIPPET: "Scenes of starvation were commonplace in Ireland by the end of > 1846, but they had been a year in the making. Actual starvation had been > averted at first, when the British government under Prime Minister Robert > PEEL moved aggressively to counter the potato famine in 1845. PEEL was an > old hand on matters Irish; he had been the government's chief secretary in > Ireland, which meant that he was responsible for implementing government > policy on the island. One of those policies was the introduction of a > police force to keep watch over the rebellious Irish, and so even today it > is not unusual to hear the police referred to as "peelers." PEEL had > received an early warning of the potential disaster in Ireland when > potatoes > on the Continent and in England failed several times before the blight was > detected in Ireland. While the potato was notoriously fickle, any report > of > its failure was bound to be greeted with apprehension, for even in > England, > the poor depended on the potato as a twice-a-day staple. In Ireland, the > poor had nothing else, as everyone from prime minister to farm laborer > knew. > An Irish newspaper referred to the potato as 'the poor man's property' -- > the only property the poor owned. William GLADSTONE, the future British > leader, understood what might happen: "Ireland, Ireland, that cloud in > the > West, that coming storm," he wrote. When it came, its winds lashing > Britain's political establishment, PEEL and his Conservative Party > government scrambled to build makeshift shelters. They quickly ordered > supplies of American corn shipped to Ireland, where the food was held in > depots for eventual sale to the Irish poor. Public works projects, > usually > consisting of road building, were devised to give employment to men, > women, > and children, many of them so weak they could barely expend the energy, > but > all so desperate that they flocked to the projects. More dramatically, > PEEL > proposed a genuinely radical and politically courageous reform. For > years, > British farmers (and, more to the point, British landowners) had enjoyed > government sanctioned protections in the form of high taxes on imported > grain. The so-called Corn Laws were a linchpin of Britain's agricultural > economy and indeed its social structure, for the land-owning aristocrats > profited immensely from protection against foreign competition, allowing > them to charge artificially high prices for their grain. Those landed > aristocrats also happened to be the core of PEEL's party. The prime > minister, however, decided that the Corn Laws would have to go, that the > emergency in Ireland demanded nothing less. Free trade would lower grain > prices and encourage shipments to Ireland, where bread and other grain > products could take the potato's place. PEEL told his cabinet that the > government could no longer in good conscience purchase corn from America > for > Ireland while a set of laws kept the price of food artificially high. His > colleagues were appalled. As reports of dreadful, though not yet fatal, > conditions in Ireland continued to pour into London, the cabinet debated, > revolted, and adjourned; then debated, revolted, and adjourned again > without > taking action, even as conditions in Ireland worsened. But this was no > act > of callousness, for what PEEL proposed was nothing short of revolutionary. > So much of what his colleagues held dear was intertwined with the Corn > Laws. > Their social, political, and economic dominance was held in place by the > artificial prosperity of government-guaranteed profits from the land. > Just > before Christmas in 1845, PEEL paid the ultimate political price for his > courage. With his own cabinet against him, he resigned. QUEEN VICTORIA > asked the opposition leader, John RUSSELL, to form a Whig government, but > he > could not do so because his own party, though pledged to reform the Corn > Laws, also was divided on the issue. PEEL once again became prime > minister > (even though a parliamentary colleague declared that he ought to die an > unnatural death) and found himself forced to work with the Whigs to win > reforms -- all in the name of saving the Irish poor. He won the battle in > June 1846, and shortly thereafter his enemies in both parties combined to > oust him once and for all from the prime minister's office. His career > was > ruined, a casualty of the Irish Famine. Under PEEL, nobody died of > starvation in Ireland, though many suffered. With the change of > administration in London, however, the situation in Ireland would change, > too. In early July 1846, a shipload of American corn was turned away from > Ireland on orders of the man PEEL had appointed to oversee relief > operations > in Ireland. Charles TREVELYAN was a devoutly religious and hardworking > young man in his late thirties, and while he owed his assignment to PEEL's > patronage, he strongly disagreed with his approach to easing the crisis. > In > TREVELYAN's eyes, the Famine quite literally was a God-sent opportunity to > reorder Irish society. With PEEL out of office, TREVELYAN began to put > his > own stamp on Britain's response to Ireland's misery. He and the new prime > minister, John RUSSELL, were much more compatible. As the new potato crop > neared harvest in late July 1846, all seemed well, and it appeared as > though > the suffering would soon be at an end. TREVELYAN began shutting down > relief > operations in anticipation of an abundant harvest. Like so many of his > peers, TREVELYAN believed that government should not meddle with the > marketplace, for the market was nothing less than a reflection of God's > will. As TREVELYAN closed up the food depots, he argued that it was "the > only way to prevent people from becoming habitually dependent on > government." Almost overnight, in early August, the promised harvest, the > anticipated salvation, was ruined. The potatoes of Ireland turned black > and > rancid, and the fields smelled of death itself. Disaster had returned, > and > now the suffering would be fatal thousands of times of over. A police > official wrote: 'A stranger would wonder how these wretched beings find > food ... They sleep in their rags and have pawned their bedding.' > Landlords > began evicting their tenants, sending families into the countryside with > nothing save the rags they wore on their backs. The eviction process was > stark in its brutality: An eviction party, usually accompanied by > constables, arrived to serve notice and, to underscore the point, pull > down > the roof of the tenant's cottage. The Irish countryside was filled with > scenes of families, desperate and weeping, scrambling to retrieve what > they > could as the eviction party proceeded with its work. After the cottage > was > razed, most had nowhere else to go. And it was just beginning. The > bureaucrats and politicians in London, charged as they were with seeing to > it that the Irish people did not become dependent on government > assistance, > took a decidedly unemotional view of the suffering. TREVELYAN continued > with the work he had begun in midsummer, when the potato crop had held > such > promise. He continued to shut down government-run food depots and public > works projects ...." -- Excerpts, "The Irish In America," Coffey & Golway > (1997). > > Check out the Ireland GenWeb website at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ > It is a good place to get help with your family research. > Help wanted: County Coordinators > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > IRELANDGENWEB-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > >