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nity of fishing exists, the fish taken enters into the calculation of the rent, and the rent is raised in proportion to the opportunity of fishing, so that they cannot keep the fish for the subsistence of their families; they are obliged to sell it as part of the means of making up the rent.

In the year 1817 was there a great want of food in the district? There was.

How were the people provided with the means of subsistence? There was as great, or a greater famine in the year 1817 than in the year 1822, and many perished in that year. There was a local subscription in my district for their relief, which enabled the managers to buy in potatoes rather early in the season, and to sell them out at a reduced price; but there was more employment in 1817 than in 1822, and the reason is this, in 1817 there was a higher price for grain than the year 1822, and the farmers who were enabled to sell their grain got a better return, and were enabled to give employment to more of the poor.

Was that local subscription sufficient to assist all the peo ple? It was sufficient to save many from perishing that would have perished; others did die of the diseases contracted from hunger.

Were there many died?-A good many fevers commenced that year, and the effects of famine continued during the great part of the ensuing years; the ensuing winter and summer of the years 1817 and 1818.

For how many months did that distress for food in 1817 continue?-It continued from the month of May until the beginning of September.

Were the great body of poor entirely dependent upon cha. rity during that period?-They were.

Were there any other means of affording charity than that of subscription ?-There was some aid from the government. The question refers to private, individual charity; to what extent was that carried?—A benevolent individual in the town of Skibbereen, who had no landed property there, gave 100%.; and another benevolent individual, who had no landed property, gave 701.; but the landed gentry, with the exception of one proprietor, gave very little.

Did the farmers give potatoes and food to the people?The farmers, who had food to spare, exercised their usual charity, that is, they gave to the roaming beggars some little pittance; the whole country was swarming with persons wandering through it, women, and shoals of children following them; they went from farm-house to farm-house, and they might get at each house a potatoe or two; in many places

they were refused, because such was the scarcity and the temptation arising from the high prices, that the farmers were more stingy than they used to be in former periods.

Is it the custom for persons that have meal and potatoes, to sell it to the poor people upon credit? Yes, it is.

Making the time of payment correspond with the probable return of better times?—They sell it upon credit, at usurious prices. I have known gentlemen who speculated in that way, persons classing as such, men of 5007. or 600l. a-year, derived from profit rents, being also partly farmers, and partly in the corn trade; in the year 1822, when the current price of wheat was only 22s. a bag, those persons sold their wheat on credit, at 30s. and a guinea and a half a bag, payable at the ensuing Michaelmas; and if payment was not made at Michaelmas, the price was to be raised from 30s. to a guinea and a half; and so on, according to the delay of payment.

Did they sell potatoes on the same principle?-Yes.

Was it to the poor people that they sold this food?-They sold it to such of the poor, as could give security for the payment.

Did the poor people pay them when they were able?—Yes; I have not heard of any cases where payments were not made in that or the subsequent year; probably they were not so punctual as they would have been, had they employment.

Was not this plan of selling upon credit, a matter of accommodation to the poor ?-It was a very limited and local accommodation, because the higher prices that prevailed in Dublin and in other parts, than were given in and about Skibbereen, induced the speculators in the corn and potatoe trade, to buy up all the grain and potatoes, for the purpose of exportation; and it likewise induced the landlords to compel their tenants to send into their store-houses the whole of the grain, and part of the potatoes which the families of the tenants would want, with a view of having them sold in the Dublin market. I know the tenantry upon an estate in the neighbourhood of Baltimore, who had they been allowed to retain the potatoes and grain grown by them, would have suffered nothing from the scarcity; but in consequence of the high prices (ten pounds a ton) that were given in Dublin, they were obliged to give up to their landlords, or their agents, a greater proportion than they ought to have done consistently with the subsistence of their families; in the course of the summer, they ran short of food, and to supply themselves, they were obliged to sell every disposable article they had; they were obliged to sell their stock and household furniture. I made known the circumstance to a landlord on the occasion,

and his agent took offence at me, for stating the fact to the landlord, and soliciting some relief for the tenantry; the noble lord sent to the agent the price of two tons of potatoes, that is 201. and in consequence of that, I incurred the displeasure of the agent for interfering at all.

Is there any distress existing at present, from the want of food in that district?—I think a good deal of distress is beginning to show itself, more indeed from want of employment than from want of food; in this way, when the price of food rises, and the rate of wages does not rise in the same proportion; or when there is not employment for the whole of the people, distress exists; when food is very cheap, there is no distress, because the people are very liberal. In the last year, potatoes were down to three halfpence, and a penny a weight, that is 21 lbs.; this year they have risen to sevenpence, eight-pence, nine-pence, and ten-pence; there was as much and more employment last year than there is this year; and the consequence is, that the whole of the country, when I left it, was covered with shoals of vagrants, going about seeking relief; women and children begging.

Were the people belonging to the country, or strangers ?People belonging to the country, and some strangers too.

Is it not the practice, when a scarcity is apprehended, for the people, for a considerable time, to live very sparingly?— It is.

To what extent will they carry that practice, with regard to eating a sufficiency of proper food?-Instead of eating three meals a day, they will eat but two; and instead of two meals a day, they will live upon one; I have known the families of farmers live upon one meal a day.

For any considerable time?—A month or six weeks.

Is there much sickness in consequence of this scarcity?— In general, fever and dysentery; though I must say, that in the year 1822 there was less sickness than in any other period of distress, and the reason of that appears to be, the ample and timely supplies received from England.

Has any plan occurred to you by which these occasional famines could be relieved; any general plan of providing for the poor ?-I conceive the great cause of scarcity and distress is, that there is nothing to draw off the surplus population from exclusive dependence on the soil for support; they must consequently look to land alone for the means of employment. The land proprietors have taken up an opinion latterly, that the cause of their distress is the over-stocking the land with people; and as the leases fall in, they get rid of the surplus population by turning them out entirely from their lands.

Those poor people, not getting employment, either erect temporary habitations like sheds on the highway, or they come into towns and crowd themselves into small apartments, perhaps four or five families would live in a garret or small hovel, huddled together there, without clothes or bedding, or food, living upon the chance of employment in the town as labourers. That employment they cannot procure. It is only three weeks or about a month ago, that I saw on an estate, to which I alluded before, a certain farm that had forty families residing on it, thinned in this manner.

What was the extent of it?—I suppose it might be 500 acres, including the bad land; a great deal of bad land upon it. Those forty families consisted of 200 individuals. When the lease fell in, in pursuance of the general system adopted amongst the landlords, twenty-eight or thirty of those families, consisting of 150 individuals, were dispossessed; they were allowed to take with them the old roofs of the cabins, that is the rotten timber and rotten straw; and with those they contrived to erect sheds upon the highway. The men could get no employment, the women and children had no resource but to go to beg; and really it was a most affecting scene to behold them upon the highway, not knowing where to go to. This system is becoming prevalent, and therefore I conceive the cause of distress to be the excess of population with want of employment; and there being no legal provision for securing subsistence for those poor people that are thrown as destitute vagrants upon the world.

Have not potatoes been a very considerable export from the district of Skibbereen for many years past?—They have.

To Cork and Dublin ?-To Cork and Dublin, and Waterford and Limerick also.

If it were not for the exportation of potatoes from that district, do you not think there would be sufficient food to feed the population of that district?—Yes, if all the potatoes removed there, except in cases of failures of crops, which is a matter of frequent occurrence; but if exportation were discouraged, potatoes would not be grown to the extent they

are.

The question refers to the average of years?-Upon an average of years I think there would.

Do you think in any year, even a year of the greatest distress, there has not been sufficient potatoes grown in the district for the consumption of the population, had they all remained in the district ?-I apprehend not; I think in the year 1822 there would not have been a sufficiency.

Did you make a statement with regard to an alteration in

the mode of letting land similar to that which you have now made to the Committee, in a letter to the London Tavern committee?-I did.

Will you look at that letter, and see whether it is a copy of your's? This is a part of the letter. It is this." The mid"dleman being bound by contract to make good engagements "which the change of times disables him to fulfil, cannot "exercise towards the tenant that lenity which he does not "himself experience; hence he is forced to exercise against "the occupier a severity from which in many instances his "natural disposition revolts. But the occupier is the last and "greatest sufferer. After an unavailing struggle for some "time to retain a house and holding for his family, by parting with every thing in the hope that times might mend "and prices rise, he is finally dismissed from his farm, stript " of all he ever possessed, and forced to seek shelter in some "lane in the next town, in the hope of subsisting as a day"labourer.

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"The redundant population of this island is looked upon by them as a main cause of the decreasing value of land, and of the inability of tenants to pay rent; it has therefore become a favourite object with the owners of land to thin the population on their estates, under the idea that being too numerous, they consume the whole produce of the land, and leave nothing for the owners; yet if this plan be acted upon, as it is beginning to be extensively, what is to become of the people? they have not the means to emigrate, nor can they get land or employment at home. A poor man thus dismissed with his family, from his dwelling and land, with perhaps one or two cows, a few sheep or a horse-the whole of which may not, at existing prices, be worth five pounds,—seeks, in the first instance, to procure a lot of land from some middle man, who has cleared the farm of the pauper tenants whom he had previously ruined, and who is induced to take him as tenant, because he possessed a cow, a horse, or some sheep; the rent is such as the middle man chooses to impose, the tenant being willing to promise any thing rather than go into a town, where he knows he cannot find employment, and hoping to get subsistence for a year or two, on his new holding; but at the end of a year, all that he has is seized for his new master, and he is ultimately compelled to seek an asylum in some hovel in town, trusting for his support to the precarious chances of daily labour.

Are there a great number of persons, throughout the country, circumstanced like those you have just described ?-The

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