Karl Marx

[Draft of an Undelivered Speech on the Irish Question]

I

Introduction. The Execution.

Since our last meeting, Fenianism, the subject of our discussion, has entered a new phase. It has been baptised with blood by the English government. The political executions in Manchester remind us of the fate of John Brown at Harpers Ferry.
{1}
They open a new period in the struggle between Ireland and England. The entire Parliament and the Liberal press responsible. Gladstone. Reason: to preserve the hypocritical appearance that it was not a political but an ordinary criminal affair. The impression produced in Europe is quite the opposite. The English are evidently endeavouring to uphold the Acts of the Long Parliament. They claim a divine right to fight the Irish on their native soil, while every Irishman who fights against the British government in England is to be treated as an outlaw. Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. State of siege. Facts from the Chronicle. Organisation of “assassination and violence” by the government. Episode with Bonaparte.

II

The Question

What is Fenianism?

III

The Land Question

Decrease of the population

1846
}

In 25 years a decrease of 2,650,693

In 1801 Ireland had a population of 5,319,867

1841 — 8,222,664

1866 — 5,571,971

2,650,693

1855 — 6,604,665
}

In 11 years a decrease of 1,032,694

1866 — 5,571,971

1,032,694

The population has not only declined, but at the same time the number of deaf-mutes, blind, invalids, lunatics and idiots has risen in proportion to the population.

Increase in livestock from 1855 to 1866

In the same period 1855 to 1866, livestock increased as follows: horned cattle by 178,532 head, sheep by 667,675 head, pigs by 315,918 head. If we take into account the simultaneous decrease of horses by 20,656 head and equate eight sheep to one horse, the
total increase of livestock
amounts to 996,877 head, i.e., about one million head of animals.

Consequently, 1,032,694 Irish have been replaced by about one million head of horned cattle, pigs and sheep. What has become of these Irish? The emigration statistics provide the answer.

Emigration

From 1 May 1851 to 31 December 1866, 1,730,189 people emigrated. Character of this emigration.

It was caused and is being further promoted on an ever-increasing scale by the
throwing together
or consolidation of leases (eviction) and the simultaneous conversion of arable land into pasture.

From
1851-1861
the total number of leases decreased
by 120,000, while the number of farms of 15-30 acres increased by 61,000 and that of farms over 30 acres by
109,000 (together 170,000). The
decrease was almost exclusively at the expense of the extinction of leases of under one to under 15 acres. Lord Dufferin. The increase merely means that the reduced number of farms consists to a considerable extent of larger farms.

How the process affects:

a) the people

The condition of the
mass of the people
has deteriorated and is approaching a crisis similar to that of 1846. The relative overpopulation is today as great as before the famine.

Wages
have risen by no more than 20% since the potato famine. Potato prices rose by almost 200%, the prices of necessary means of subsistence on average by 100%. Professor
Cliffe Leslie
writes in the London Economist of 9 February 1867:

“After a decrease of the population by 2/5 in 21 years, the normal wage is now, throughout almost the whole island, only 1 sh. a day; for a shilling one can buy today no more than for 6 d. 21 years ago. Through this rise in the price of daily foodstuffs the labourer is worse off than 10 years ago.”

b) the land

1) Decrease of cultivated land

Decrease in grain crops:
1861-1866: 470,917 acres

Decrease in green crops:
1861-1866: 128,061 acres

2) Decrease of yield per acre for each crop

The wheat yield declined, but still higher was, calculated precisely, the percentage decrease over the period from
1847
to
1865
for: oats 16.3; flax 47.9; turnips 36.1; potatoes 50. Some years show a sharper decrease, yet on the whole it has advanced gradually since 1847.

Since the exodus, the land has not been manured and has been exhausted, partly through the senselessly carried-out consolidation of the leases, partly because under the corn-acre system the tenant for the most part left it to his labourers to manure the land for him. Rent and profit can rise even when the yield of the soil declines. The total product may decline, but the portion of it converted into surplus product and falling to the landlords and the larger tenants, instead of to the labourers, has grown larger. But the price of the surplus product has also risen.

Consequently the result: Gradual expulsion of the native population, gradual deterioration and exhaustion of the nation’s life source, the soil.

The process of consolidation

This process has only just begun; it is advancing by giant strides. The consolidation first affected the leases of under one to under 15 acres. Even when all leases under 100 acres have disappeared, this consolidation will still be far from having reached the same level as in England. The situation in 1864 was as follows:

The
total area of Ireland
including
bog and waste land
: 20,319,924 acres.

Of this,
3
/
5
or 12,092,117 acres are still leases under 1 to under 100 acres, held by 569,844 tenants;
2
/
5
or 8,227,807 acres are leases of 100 to over 500 acres, held by 31,927 persons. Consequently, reckoning only the tenants and their families, 2,847,220 people are driven off.

This system is the natural consequence of the famine of 1846, accelerated by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the now systematically rising prices of meat and wool.

Clearing of estates in Ireland, which transforms Ireland into an English agricultural district, separated from England by a broad moat, without landlords, who sit with their retinue in England.

Change in the character of English rule in Ireland

The state merely a tool of the landlords. Eviction is also used as a means of political punishment. (
Lord Abercorn
. England.
Gaels in the Scottish Highlands.
) Earlier English policy: supplanting of the Irish by English (Elizabeth), Roundheads (Cromwell). Since Anne in the 18th century, only England’s protective tariff measures against its own Irish colony have been characteristic of economic policy; within this colony
religion
is turned into a title to property. After the
Union,
system of rack-rents and middlemen, yet the Irish, though oppressed to the utmost, remained possessors of their own soil. Present system: quiet, business-like extirpation, government merely a tool of the landlords (and the usurers).

From this altered situation:

1.
Characteristic feature of Fenianism: socialist movement, movement of the lower classes.

2.
Non-Catholic character of the movement.

Priests were leaders as long as the struggle for Catholic Emancipation and its leader, Daniel O’Connell, occupied the leading place in the Irish movement. Ridiculous Papism of the English. High Catholic clergy against Fenianism.

3.
No representative leader in the British Parliament.

Peculiarity of O’Connell’s movement of physical force. Disintegration of the Irish party in Parliament.

4.
National character.
Influence of the European movement and English phraseology.

5.
America, Ireland, England
three scenes of action; leading role of America.

6.
Republican movement
, because America a republic.

I have now set forth the characteristic features of Fenianism.

IV

The English People

A matter of humanity and justice, but above all a specifically English question.

a)
Aristocracy and Church. Army.
(France, Algeria.)

b)
Irish in England.
Influence on wages, etc. Equalising of the character of the English and the Irish.
The Irish character.
Purity of the Irish. Efforts for education in Ireland. Decrease of crime.

Convicted in Ireland

| | Brought before the courts | Convicted |
|---------------------|----------------------------|-----------|
 17,678 | 10,454 |
 4,326 | 2,418 |

The decrease in the number of persons brought before the courts in England and Wales since 1855 is partly attributable to the Criminal Justice Act of 1855, which authorises magistrates, with the consent of the detained, to impose short prison sentences themselves instead of committing them to the sessions for trial.

Birmingham. Advance of the English people. Infamy of the English press.

c)
Foreign policy.
Poland etc. Castlereagh. Palmerston.

V

The Remedy

Futility of minor parliamentary motions. Mistake of the Reform League.
Repeal of the Union
 — a demand of the English democratic party.