– Third Annual Report, Ireland, p. 7.
8 On 22d June, 1850.
On 3d July 1847, no less than 3,020,712 persons were fed by the public in Ireland, being about 40 per cent on the whole population – certainly, at that date, under 8,000,000. Well may the Edinburgh Review say, in reference to this astonishing subject —
"The collection in the year 1847-8 is remarkable: three times the amount of the collections of 1846-7, five times the amount of the collections of 1845-6. A tax unknown in Ireland ten years before was levied in the Year 1848 to the extent of one-ninth of the rateable property of the country, and that in a period of unprecedented depression and embarrassment. In the same year the expenditure had risen 150 per cent above that of 1847, and 500 per cent above the expenditure of 1846. The expenditure in 1848-9 exceeds that of 1847 by the large sum of £445,054."9
The diminished expenditure of 1850 is mainly owing to the reduction in the price of provisions in that year, which has caused the cost of an in-door pauper to decline from 2s. 2d., which it was in April 1847, to 1s. 2d., or nearly a half, to which it fell in autumn 1849, which it has never since exceeded. Measured by quarters of grain, the poor's-rate of Ireland, in 1850, was fully twice as heavy as it was in 1848, when the effects of the disastrous famine of 1846 were still felt.
After these broad and decisive facts, drawn from so many official sources, and all conspiring to one result, it may seem unnecessary to go further, or load these pages, for which matter abundant to overflowing still remains, with any farther proof or illustration of a thing unhappily too apparent. But as our present system is mainly calculated for the interests of our great manufacturing cities, and, at all events, has been brought about by their influence, and is strictly in conformity with their demands, we cannot resist the insertion of an extract from an eloquent speech of a most able, humane, and zealous minister of the Free Church in Glasgow on the moral and religious state of the working-classes in that vast and rapidly-increasing city, which now has little short of 400,000 inhabitants within its bounds.
"I know," said Dr Paterson, "that many congregations, not of the Free Church, both feel and manifest an anxious and enlightened concern in this cause. I do not attempt to describe their efforts, simply because I am not in a position to do them justice. I hail them, however, as fellow-labourers. I rejoice to know that they are in the field to some extent already, and I shall rejoice still more to see their exertions multiplying side by side with our own. Certain I am that nothing short of a levy en masse of whatever there is of living Christianity in the city, in all the branches of the Church of Christ which it contains, will suffice to make head against the augmenting ignorance and ungodliness, and Popery and infidelity, with which we have to deal. My other observation is for the members of our own church. Some of them will, perhaps, be startled by this movement, simply because it in adding another to our already numerous schemes – and because it may aggravate the difficulty we already feel of carrying them on. Here, they may say, is the beginning of new demands upon both our money and our time. To such a complaint I have no other answer to make but one – but it is one that seems to me to be decisive. My answer is, that this movement, whatever it may cost, is a matter of life and death. If we do not destroy this evil, it will destroy us."
These are certainly strong expressions, but they come from one well acquainted, from personal visitation in his parish, which is one of the most densely peopled in Glasgow, and second to none in zeal and ability to combat the enormous mass of destitution, crime, sensuality, and civilised heathenism with which he has to deal. And that he does not exaggerate the evil, and speaks from accurate information, not vague imagination, is evident from the details which he gives.
"I begin with the Old Wynd, which is the western boundary of the parish, and of which only the one side, therefore, is in the Tron parish. That one side contains 102 families and 504 individuals. Among that population there are possessed in all only 11 church sittings, or little more than 2 to the 100. Of the 102 families, only 14 profess to be in the habit of going to any place of worship. In the New Wynd, there are 350 families and 1976 individuals, possessing in all 66 church sittings, or little more than 3 to the 100. Of the 350 families, only 67 profess to be in the habit of attending any place of worship. Lastly, the Back Wynd contains 137 families and 752 individuals, who possess in all only 6 church sittings, or less than 1 to the 100! Of these 137 families, only 13 profess to attend any place of worship. Here, then, in these three Wynds, constituting but a section of the parish, we have a population of 3232 individuals, with only 83 church sittings, or little more than an average of 2½ to the 100. Of the 589 families of which that population consists, the enormous number of 495 families, by their own confession, are living in habitual and total estrangement from the house of God. In these appalling circumstances, it will not surprise the presbytery to learn, that in the whole of the three Wynds there were found no more than 117 Bibles – in other words, that scarcely one family in five were possessed of a copy of the Word of God."
Again he says —
"During the first ten of the last thirty years – that is, from 1821 to 1831 – the population increased at the rate of about 5000 a-year. During the second ten of these years – that is, from 1831 to 1841 – it increased at the rate of 8000 a-year. During the third ten of these years – that is, from 1841 to 1851 – it is believed, on good grounds, that the increase will average 12,000 a-year. Let any man consider these facts, and then, if he has courage to look forward at all, let him try to picture to himself the state of Glasgow when another thirty years shall have run their course. If the same ratio of increase holds on – and I know of no good reason for doubting that it will – we shall have in thirty years a population nearly equal in numbers to that of Paris; and most assuredly, if the Christian churches do not speedily arouse themselves, it will be by that time like Paris in more respects than one. We may have the numbers of the French capital, but we shall have their infidelity, their Popery, their licentiousness, and their lawlessness too. If our efforts did not keep pace with a population growing at the rate of 5000 a-year, how are such efforts to do alongside of a population growing at the rate of from 12,000 to 15,000 a-year? If in the race of the last thirty years we fell at least twenty years behind, how tremendously and how ruinously shall we be distanced in the next thirty years to come! 'If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses! And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan!'"
We select this as a picture of our great manufacturing towns, in which the greatest and most unbounded prosperity, so far as mere production goes, has prevailed, generally speaking, for the last thirty years; in which the custom-house duties have increased, since 1812, from £3000 a-year to £660,000, and the river dues from £4500 to £66,000 in the same period; but in which the sums expended in poor-rates and pauper burials were, in round numbers, —
10 Including buildings £87,000; for poor alone.
Indicating the deplorable destitution of multitudes in the midst of this growing wealth and unparalleled increase of manufacturing and commercial greatness. In the last year, out of 10,461 burials, no less than 2381, or nearly a fourth, were at the public expense.11
Of the wretched condition of a large class of the operatives of Glasgow – that employed in making clothes for the rest of the community – the following striking account has been given in a recent interesting publication on the "Sweating System," by a merchant tailor of the city: —
"The out-door or sweating system, by which the great proportion of their work is produced, has had a fearful debasing effect on journeymen tailors. Work is given out to a person denominated a "middle-man." He alone comes into contact with the employer. He employs others to work under him, in his own house. The workmen have no respect for him, as they have for an ordinary employer;