IRELAND'S TEMPORARY FOOD RELIEF REACHES ITS END

DUBLIN, 1847-09-30. — DUBLIN, Thursday.—The period assigned to the extraordinary system of food relief in Ireland reaches its close, and responsibility for the destitute passes to the ordinary machinery of the Poor Law. The kitchens established under the temporary Act have already been withdrawn by degrees; the expiration of the measure completes this change of policy. At the height of its operation, the undertaking supplied daily food to upwards of three million persons. Its termination therefore concerns not merely the arrangement of public accounts, but the means by which a considerable portion of the Irish people may obtain their next subsistence.

The Government adopted this expedient after the public works had proved an insufficient instrument against the distress. Employment upon roads and other undertakings required the hungry to labour before receiving wages, and then to purchase provisions at prices which those wages could scarcely command. The substitution of cooked food for wages brought assistance more directly to the family. Parliament accordingly passed in February the measure entitled an Act for the “temporary Relief of destitute Persons in Ireland.” Relief committees, inspecting officers and local kitchens were employed to carry it into effect, with money supplied through public advances and grants, local contributions and charitable assistance.

The scale attained was extraordinary. In July, more than three million daily rations were being issued under the temporary arrangements. So extensive a distribution required the purchase and carriage of meal, the provision of boilers and vessels, the examination of applicants, and the keeping of accounts in districts already disordered by sickness and want. The system was no security against every abuse, nor did a ration restore the strength of every person who received it. Nevertheless, it placed food within reach of multitudes who could neither find sufficient employment nor gain admission to an already crowded workhouse.

The present withdrawal must not be understood to mean that every kitchen in Ireland remained open until this morning, or that every former recipient is now without any avenue of assistance. The distribution has been reduced as the harvest approached, and the Poor Law supplies another legal means of relief. But the distinction is of grave importance: an exceptional undertaking, maintained with the resources and direction of the central authority, is being replaced by a system whose charges fall upon Irish property through the poor-rates. What was treated as an emergency affecting the whole kingdom is henceforth to be borne much more immediately by the several distressed localities.

The amended Poor Law, which received the Royal Assent in June, permits relief outside the workhouse under prescribed circumstances and enlarges the means available to the authorities. Yet permission to relieve and the possession of money with which to do so are different things. A union containing much poverty and little rateable wealth must levy heavily upon the resources that remain to it. Landlords, farmers and occupiers are thus confronted with demands arising from the same calamity that has impaired rents, diminished cultivation and exhausted savings. The districts with the greatest number of hungry people are not necessarily those with the greatest capacity to maintain them.

There is, moreover, the restriction commonly associated with Mr. Gregory's amendment: the occupation of more than a quarter of an acre may exclude an applicant from relief unless the holding is relinquished. Its defenders regard it as a safeguard against maintaining persons who retain land from which they ought to support themselves. Its operation among small cultivators presents a harsher question. A family may possess a little ground and yet have neither food nor the means of cultivating it. To require surrender before assistance may be obtained places immediate hunger against the family's remaining prospect of independent maintenance.

The improved appearance of the present potato crop offers encouragement, but it is not a sufficient account of the country's condition. A sound crop upon land planted cannot compensate every household for ground left unsown, seed consumed in necessity, or the loss of those who formerly cultivated it. Families that have sold clothing, bedding or implements to purchase food cannot recover these things merely because the markets contain provisions. Fever and other diseases have accompanied the scarcity, while emigration removes both mouths requiring support and hands capable of earning it. No prudent observer can yet strike a final balance of these losses.

For commerce, the alteration is immediate in principle even where its full consequences remain to be seen. Purchases made for public distribution have constituted a substantial demand for meal and other provisions. Their withdrawal changes the purchaser, but does not extinguish the human need. A merchant may have food to sell while a labourer's family lacks the money to buy it. Meanwhile, heavier rates threaten to diminish what farmers and proprietors can spend upon wages, improvements and ordinary trade. The market question is therefore not simply whether grain can reach an Irish port, but whether the inhabitants possess the means of commanding a share of it.

Ministers have consistently treated the exceptional arrangements as temporary, and the expense and difficulty of indefinitely maintaining so vast an establishment cannot be denied. Yet the warning delivered by Mr. O'Connell in the Commons in February retains its force: “If you do not save her, she cannot save herself.” His appeal concerned a country whose own resources were failing beneath the demands made upon them. He is no longer living to renew it. The issue now before the Government and Parliament is whether the machinery established in place of the kitchens can answer the necessity which called them into existence.

The coming weeks will supply a sterner test than any comparison of expenditure alone. Boards of guardians must find funds, collect rates and distinguish the claims of the destitute while providing against the approach of winter. The Treasury may close an extraordinary account; the want recorded in that account does not thereby disappear. Should employment and the harvest restore purchasing power, the transition may be sustained. Where they do not, the burden must fall upon the workhouses, upon such outdoor relief as is authorised, upon private charity—or upon the sufferers themselves. Ireland enters this new arrangement with her resources diminished and the adequacy of its protection still unproved.