Harriet Martineau's Writing on the British Empire, vol 4

Deborah Logan,Antoinette Burton,Kitty Sklar,Patrick Brantlinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000558883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The literary presence of Harriet Martineau pervades 19th-century English and American culture. This edition makes her work available, and focuses on her writings on imperialism. It should be of interest to scholars of colonialism, women's writing, Victorian studies, sociology and journalism.

II. LETTERS FROM IRELAND (1852)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003113546-2

My journey to Ireland will be one of deep and painful interest. I have been urged to explore 'the famine and Exodus districts,' - I have such introductions, - and such a vehicle for conveying what I shall have to say, that I mean to do the thing thoroughly, - in as far as my most solemn attention and exertions may enable me.¹

Martineau's account of her 1852 Ireland tour in the Autobiography focuses more on her relationship with and admiration for Frederick Knight Hunt than on the journey itself. In retrospect, however, she was aware even then of the impending illness that would curtail her travels permanently. 'It was on the occasion of that long journey, which extended from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay, and from the Mullet to Wexford', she notes, 'that I first felt the signs of failure in bodily strength which I now believe to have been a warning of my present fatal malady [heart disease] ... I found, and said at the time, that this must be my last arduous journey.'² Because for Martineau journalistic writing was comparatively untaxing, 'The writing of those Letters was a pure pleasure'. However, during a journey she estimates at over 1,200 miles, she produced the letters at an average rate of about three or four per week which, 'in addition to the fatigue of travelling and of introductions to strangers [was] too much for me'.

The individual 'Letters from Ireland' were published in the Daily News from 13 August through 14 October 1852; they were collected and published in volume form by John Chapman later that year. Her preface to the collected edition stresses the spirit of spontaneity typical of all her writing and particularly appealing in a travel narrative. She offers the letters, simply, 'for what they are a rapid account of impressions received and thoughts excited from day to day'.³ But that quality of spontaneity, seen in her resistance to rewriting and editing, is possible only after extensive study, thought, observation and intellectual processing. For this, she acknowledges the Dublin Statistical Society, Belfast Social Inquiry Society and Professor Hancock of Dublin for providing material designed to promote 'the benefit of Ireland'. Throughout her career and in the interest of scientific method, Martineau employed statistics (taken from census data and Parliamentary Blue Books) to assist in her cultural observations and travel writing as well as her 'treatment of economical questions'. More subjectively, her unsparing criticism of 'priest-craft' and religious animosity in Ireland reflects her agnosticism as well as her recent work on Comte's Positive Philosophy.⁴

The letters' topics vary from geographical and agricultural to social and economic themes. Agricultural schools and model farms are of interest, as are flax cultivation and linen manufacture, public works like railroads and bridges, and the restoration of decimated forests. Unfortunately, Ireland's small gains in some respects created new concerns, for instance the tendency of the rising generation to emigrate rather than to invest itself in the revitalisation of Ireland. Another issue is the disjunction between the new industrial technology and people's standards of living, seen in Martineau's praise of the increase in public works while observing that many Irish live in cabins 'with windows that will not open, and doors that apparently will not shut'.⁵ A primary topic is land reform, including absentee landlordism and the tenant-right question. Some of this discussion resonates with the tale 'Ireland', wherein tenants' improvements to their rental property were subject to being seized, taxed or confiscated. When, having been cheated out of his lease, Dan Mahony destroys all his improvements to cabin and land, he breaks the law but asserts a perverse moral victory by leaving the property as worthless as when he had first moved in. The episode illustrates Martineau's general concern about 'Irish Industry', wherein she aggressively defies racist stereotypes condemning the 'shiftless' Irish by demonstrating that the spirit of ennui characterising the Irish poor stems from unrelieved futility and hopelessness rather than inherent depravity or bad character.⁶

One letter is devoted to the situations of Irish women, primarily women's work in the context of Ireland's economy. Martineau observes that despite the fact that 'women's labour is universally underpaid, ... it is the industry of the women which is in great part sustaining the country'.⁷ But such 'female industry' is not without complications, in terms of both national and domestic economy. First, women's work highlights a worrisome 'economical symptom' by creating chronic unemployment for Irish men, since women perform virtually all the jobs the men do, and they work for less. Second, in terms of domestic economy, Martineau bemoaned the general decline in domestic standards resulting from women leaving the home (as either home-makers or domestic servants) for more lucrative factory work. Finally, not only are women underpaid, they are grievously overworked: 'it will be very long indeed before they get a holiday, or find their natural place as housewives'.⁸ Modern readers may well object to that last phrase, yet the point is as relevant today as when it was written: women throughout the world still lack comparable worth, still struggle for economic parity, and still hold two jobs - the paid, in the marketplace, and the unpaid, in the home.

Another important topic worthy of its own letter is 'Irish workhouses', whose inmates 'are altogether a different class or race'⁹ from those in England. Poor laws, paupers, rate-payers and work-relief are topics Martineau wrote about frequently, and she was vigorously outspoken in her condemnation of charity or hand-outs as a 'pernicious' remedy for complex economic problems. Differences between the workhouse cultures in Ireland and England stem from the latter's tendency to over-use and exploit the system and the former's reluctance to enter the institution in the first place. Chronic poverty results in a breed of workhouse inhabitants she terms a 'deteriorated generation, - sickly or stupid, or in some way ill-conditioned',¹⁰ made weak and dependent by charity and the vague delusion that their needs will always somehow be taken care of. But Irish workhouse inhabitants defy this stereotype, being 'ready to die rather than enter the workhouse'.¹¹ Acknowledging that poor-relief is one of the great conundrums of the period, she concludes that workhouses will continue to be a necessary remedy until a better system is devised: 'we cannot conceive what would have become of the people without the workhouses; and ... we cannot conceive what is to become of the workhouses unless some productive industry ... is ere long established'.¹²

Letters from Ireland repeatedly emphasises Ireland's potential for prosperity simply through learning to utilise its natural resources: 'there is, in short, every conceivable material of human welfare, if only the people had the means of obtaining and using them'.¹³ Protestants and Catholics can agree on one crucial point, at least: what Ireland needs most in order to prosper is settlers and the capital they bring with them. This point incorporates two ideas: first, Martineau's criticism of Irish capitalists who invest in England rather than in their own country; and second, her implication that English settlers would provide not only capital but an agricultural model superior to Ireland's.¹⁴ The series concludes with the typical Martineau device of appealing to the historical past in order to envision a more optimistic future: 'There was a time when Ireland gave light - intellectual and moral - to the nations of northern Europe. ... She had a reputation for scholarship and sanctity before England and Scotland were distinctly heard of. Few nations then stood so high as the Irish; and few have ever sunk so low as she has since sunk.'¹⁵ With relentless optimism, she predicts 'a new life which is full of hope', despite the mass emigration and empty cottages standing in mute testimony to the decimation of the economy, the population and the culture. One of Ireland's greatest natural resources is its people, and 'there is no need to speak of the fine qualities of the Irish character; for they are acknowledged all over the world'.¹⁶ Give them work, she urges, give them wages, and give them time to sort out the new circumstances facing post-famine Ireland. Finally, and most importantly, give them access to an education that is suitable for and relevant to modern society. From 'Ireland' in 1832 through Letters from Ireland in 1852 to Endowed Schools of Ireland in 1858, it is education to which Martineau consistently appeals as the long-term 6remedy for the social, economic and political ills comprising the Irish Question.

LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

Preface

These Letters were communicated to the 'Daily News' during my journey to Ireland this last autumn. A reprint of them, as a volume, has been asked for, and I now obey the call. My readers will take them for what they are - a rapid account of impressions received and thoughts excited from day to day, in the course of a journey of above 1200 miles. I have thought it best not to alter them, either in form or matter. There would be no use in attempting to give anything of the character of a closet-book to letters written sometimes in a coffee-room, sometimes in the crowded single parlour of a country inn, - now to the sound of the harp, and now to the clatter of knives and forks, and scarcely ever within reach of books; therefore have I left untouched what I wrote, even to the notices of passing incidents as if they were still present, and references to a future already fulfilled.

The issue of the Letters in this form enables me to render one acknowledgment which I was rather uneasy not to be able to make at the time - an acknowledgment of my obligations to the members of the Dublin Statistical Society and of the Belfast Social Inquiry Society,¹ whose tracts, before interesting to me by my own fireside, were of high value in my journey, by directing my observation and inquiries. They not only taught me much, but put me in the way to learn more. When I had the honour of meeting Professor Hancock in Dublin,² and told him how freely I was using his ideas in my interpretation of Irish affairs, he made me heartily welcome to all such materials as might be found in his tracts, saying that all that any of us want is that true views should spread, for the benefit of Ireland. He can afford to be thus generous; and I, for my part, must request my readers to ascribe to him, and the other economists of those societies, whatever they may think valuable in my treatment of economical questions in this volume; the rest is the result of my own observation, inquiry, and reflection, on the way. H.M., The Knoll, Ambleside, December 20th, 1852.

Letter I. Lough Foyle and Its Environs. August 10, 1852

Travellers usually enter Ireland by Dublin; and Dublin being a good deal like other large cities, and having the varied population of a capital, there is so little that is distinctive at the first glance, that the stranger exclaims, 'I thought I was in Ireland; but where are the Paddies?'³ The Paddies, and the true signs of the times in Ireland, may be better seen by dropping into the island at almost any other point of the coast. For some reasons, it may be well to begin by steaming into Lough Foyle, and landing at the famous old Derry, whose prefix of 'London' seems rather an impertinence when one is fairly among the Paddies. It is true that, by entering Ireland from this point, the traveller's attention is first given to districts of country which have for centuries been managed by Englishmen, and largely peopled by Scotch, - it is true that the lands of the great London corporations cannot be taken as specimens of Irish tillage and management;⁴ but it may be well to see, in the first instance, what the Irish peasantry can be and can do in a region where the peculiarities of land proprietorship in Ireland are suspended or extinguished. It may be well to see first some of the most prosperous parts of the country, in order to carry elsewhere the hope that the use of similar means may produce a similar prosperity. There are quite enough of the Catholic peasantry dwelling on the lands of the London Companies to give the stranger a good study of the Paddies, and moreover to show what the relations of the 'mere Irish' [indigenous] may be with the residents of English and Scotch descent.

After entering Lough Foyle at Portrush, we were struck by the extent of cultivation on both shores. Fields, green or tinged with the yellow of the harvest month, divided by hedgerows into portions somewhat too small for good economy, stretched over the rising grounds which swell upwards from the Lough. Here and there are labyrinths of salmon-nets, marking the fisheries of the Companies. Then follows an odd spectacle - a low embankment and railway, apparently through the water, near the south-east shore, enclosing an ugly expanse of mud or shallow water. There was a company established in London a good many years ago for the purpose of reclaiming large extents of land from the bed of Lough Foyle; and this is the point which the operations of that company have reached, - or, as we fear we must say, where they have for the present stopped. The undertaking cannot be called a failure. By the terms made with the Fishmongers' Company, that corporation was to have 500 acres of the reclaimed land; and of this 250 acres have been cropped for five years, and have proved fertile to the last degree. This bit of experience has proved useful. Looking towards the Lough from any high ground for miles inland, one sees level tracts of a peculiar yellow or brownish soil. These are the 'slob lands,' retrieved from the shallow waters. Antiquarians and naturalists are of opinion that this method of procedure is simply a continuation of what has been done for many ages, by natural or artificial means. The heaps or mounds of gravel, earth, and stones which are found scattered over the bog districts which are stripped of peat are called 'derries;' and here, once upon a time, flourished clumps of oaks, rearing their heads over the forests of firs which filled up the intermediate spaces. Below the roots of the bog firs, now dug out for sparkling fuel in the rich man's house, and for torches or candles in the poor man's cabin, are evidences that the waters once covered all the low grounds, and that the habitable portions of the whole district were only the rising grounds and 'derries,' which were so many islands and promontories stretching out into a world of waters. Thus the changes going on are not new, though proceeding more rapidly continually. The reclamation is not only from the Lough. The bog is incessantly lessening. Two thousand acres have been brought under tillage on the estates of one of the London Companies. There is plenty of lime in the district, and the Lough furnishes any amount of sea shells for the carriage. As the peat is cleared off, the subsoil is fertilized by these means, and presently repays cultivation. To the farmers whose lands lie along rivers and railways it must answer well to import coal, and spare for more profitable works the labour hitherto spent on cutting and drying peat; but the people who live in the mountains, away from means of transport, will doubtless burn peat, and nothing else, till the bogs are wholly exhausted, - a period which seems already within sight.

After passing the salmon-nets we came upon a fine tract of woodland, on the north-west shore of the Lough, where it stretches down from the ridge of the low hills to the very seaweeds which the tide washes up. Some good houses peep out from among the trees. It was not till we had travelled some distance inland that we learned to appreciate that tract of woodland. The woods have shrunk and disappeared over whole districts where formerly they were cherished for the sake of the large exportation of staves, and use of timber which took place under the old timber duties. When the demand for staves died off, and even the Companies found that their own carpenters could put down floors for them as cheaply by buying foreign timber as by employing labour in felling and seasoning their own trees, there was, for a time, a somewhat reckless consumption of wood. But now the process of planting is going on vigorously and the last ten years have made a visible change. In the moist lands the alder flourishes, attaining a size which we never before saw. Larch and fir abound, and great pains are taken with oak plantations. Huge stacks of bark for the tanners may be seen here and there; and the wood is readily sold as it is felled.

The changes in the productions and exports are worth notice. Formerly there was much linen manufacture here; but that is over: Belfast seems to have absorbed it. A good deal of flax is grown, and sold to Belfast; but the clack of the loom is scarcely heard. Again, there was a great exportation of pigs and pork prior to 1846; but the potato-rot has almost put an end to pig-keeping. Scarcely any cured pork is sent out. Live cattle are an article of increasing export, - the fat to Liverpool, and the lean to various parts for fattening. Almost all the oats and other grain raised are now exported, the people finding it answer to sell their oats, and eat Indian meal, which they import from America. One consequence of this is a marked improvement in their health. The disgusting diseases which attended upon an almost exclusive oaten diet have disappeared; and certainly a more healthy-looking population than that about Newtown-Limavady we do not remember to have seen. There is a large export of butter, eggs, and fowls. On the whole, the change is visible enough from the old manufacturing to the modern agricultural population; and it is very interesting to the observation of an English visitor.

From the site of the new Catholic chapel on the estates of the Fishmongers' Company a wide view is obtained, extending from the high lands of Donegal on the other shore of the Lough to the Coleraine mountains. Within this space the divisions of the soil indicate pretty accurately the classes of its inhabitants. After the Rebellion, the victors drove the Catholics into the mountains,⁵ and the alluvial lands - all that was fertile and valuable - were taken possession of by the English and the Scotch Presbyterians. The arrangement was so marked and decisive that the mountaineers are called 'Irish' to this day. For a long time past the 'Irish' have been creeping down into the low grounds. At first, the Protestants emigrated in a much greater proportion than the Catholics; and a Protestant farmer often left a Catholic substitute in his farm. Now, the Catholics are beginning to emigrate in much greater numbers; but, as the Protestants go on emigrating also, so that the total population is in course of reduction, there is more and more room left in the low country for the mountaineers, who find themselves able to come down, and hold their ground among the thriving Presbyterians. We find here little or nothing of the feuds which divide the two classes in too many places. We find, on the Fishmongers' property, schools where children of all faiths sit side by side on their benches, as their respective pastors do in their committee-room. The priest, the clergyman, and the Presbyterian minister act together, on the National system, in perfect harmony. Some zealous young priests awhile ago insisted that the Catholic children should read the Douay version of the Scriptures.⁶ The clergyman and agent wisely consented, stipulating only that it should be the Douay version, without note or comment. It was presently found inconvenient to use it; the priests declared that really the difference to the children was so small as not to compensate for the inconvenience, and they themselves proposed to return to the use of the accustomed books. No Ribbon Society⁷ exists among the Catholics in this neighbourhood; and nothing seems to be needed in the way of precaution but a little watchfulness against infection brought by navvies and other strangers, and a careful impartiality between Catholics and Protestants in matters of business, and moderation in spirit and language on political matters, on the part of official men and magistrates. We find a Company building a handsome Catholic chapel, and their agent presenting its painted window; we find the gentry testifying that, while the Protestants are certainly the more industrious people, the Catholics are more honest and the women more chaste, - facts which are attributed to the practice of confession by those who are best aware of the evils belonging to that practice. On the whole, Catholic servants are preferred as far as the mere domestic work is concerned; that is, the female servants are Catholics. But it is not denied that the very safest - those who are living, and have lived for thirty years, on good terms with...