Transcriber’s Note
Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
THE
IRISH CRISIS.
BY
C. E. TREVELYAN, Esq.
REPRINTED FROM THE “EDINBURGH REVIEW.”
No. CLXXV., January, 1848.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN & LONGMANS.
1848.
The time has not yet arrived at which anyman can with confidence say, that he fullyappreciates the nature and the bearings ofthat great event which will long be inseparablyassociated with the year just departed.Yet we think that we may rendersome service to the public by attemptingthus early to review, with the calm temperof a future generation, the history of thegreat Irish famine of 18471. Unless weare much deceived, posterity will trace upto that famine the commencement of asalutary revolution in the habits of a nationlong singularly unfortunate, and will acknowledgethat on this, as on many otheroccasions, Supreme Wisdom has educedpermanent good out of transient evil.
2If, a few months ago, an enlightened manhad been asked what he thought the mostdiscouraging circumstance in the state ofIreland, we do not imagine that he wouldhave pitched upon Absenteeism, or Protestantbigotry, or Roman Catholic bigotry, orOrangeism, or Ribbandism, or the Repealcry, or even the system of threateningnotices and midday assassinations. Thesethings, he would have said, are evils; butsome of them are curable; and others aremerely symptomatic. They do not makethe case desperate. But what hope is therefor a nation which lives on potatoes?
The consequences of depending upon thepotato as the principal article of popularfood, had long been foreseen by thinkingpersons; and the following observationsextracted from a paper on the native countryof the wild potato2, published in theTransactions of the Horticultural Society ofLondon for the year 1822, are a fair specimenof the opinions which prevailed on thesubject previously to the great failure of1845.
3
“The increased growth of the potato, notonly in these kingdoms, but almost in every civilisedpart of the globe, has so added to its importance,that any information respecting it has becomevaluable. With the exception of wheatand rice, it is now certainly the vegetable mostemployed as the food of man; and it is probablethat the period is at no great distance, when itsextensive use will even place it before thosewhich have hitherto been considered the chiefstaples of life. The effect of the unlimitedextent to which its cultivation may be carried,on the human race, must be a subject of deepinterest to the political economist. The extensionof population will be as unbounded as theproduction of food, which is capable of beingproduced in very small space, and with greatfacility; and the increased number of inhabitantsof the earth will necessarily induce changes, notonly in the political systems, but in all the artificialrelations of civilised life. How far suchchanges may conduce to or increase the happinessof mankind, is ve
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