Outline of a Report on the Irish Question to the Communist Educational Association of German Workers in London

Note :

This outline is a draft conspectus for a report on the Irish question Marx was to make at the meeting of the German Workers' Educational Association in London on December 16, 1867. "Yesterday I read in our German Workers' Association (but three other German workers' associations were represented there, about 100 people in all) a one-and-a-half hour long report on Ireland," Marx wrote in this connection to Engels on December 17, 1867. Some members of the General Council of the International also attended the meeting. Eccarius, a Council member, who attached great importance to this report, which explained the attitude of the General Council towards the Irish national liberation movement, took notes in order to prepare them for publication (see pp. 140-42 [reference to "Record of a Speech ..."]). A copy of these notes was sent to Johann Philipp Becker, the editor of Vorbote, a monthly magazine in Geneva, which was the mouthpiece of the German sections of the International Working Men's Association in Switzerland; but it was not published.

The London German Workers' Educational Association was founded in February 1840 by German revolutionary emigrants. After the founding of the Communist League-the first international communist organisation of the working class-the leading role in the Association was assumed by the local sections of the League. Marx and Engels took an active part in the Association s activities (except when sectarian elements temporarily gained the upper hand). At the end of the fifties, Friedrich Lessner, a pupil and comrade-in-arms of Marx and Engels, became one of the leaders of the Association. The Association, which was linked with English workers' organisations, participated in the inauguration of the International Working Men's Association in 1864 and began to act as its German section in London. The Association continued to exist up to 1918.

I

What is distinctive of Fenianism? Actually, it originates from the Irish Americans. They are the initiators, and leaders. But in Ireland the movement took root (and is still really rooted) only in the mass of the people, the lower orders. That is what characterises it. In all earlier Irish movements the people followed the aristocracy or middle-class men, and always the Catholic churchmen. The Anglo-Irish chiefs and the priests during the rising against Cromwell; even James II, King of England, in the war against William III; the Protestant Republicans of Ulster (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald) ^[1] in the 1798 revolution and, finally, in this century the bourgeois O'Connell supported by the Catholic clergy, which also played a leading role in all earlier movements excepting 1798. The Catholic clergy decreed a ban on Fenianism, which it did not lift until it realised that its attitude would deprive it of all influence on the Irish masses.

II

Here is what baffles the English: they find the present regime mild compared with England's former oppression of Ireland. So why this most determined and irreconcilable form of opposition now? What I want to show-and what even those Englishmen who side with the Irish, who concede them the right to secession, do not see-is that the regime since 1846, though less barbarian in form, is in effect destructive, leaving no alternative but Ireland's voluntary emancipation by England or life-and-death struggle.

III

Concerning past history the facts are available in any history book. Hence, I shall give only a few, firstly, to clarify the difference between the present and past and, secondly, to bring out a few points about the character of those who are now called the Irish people.

a) The English in Ireland Before the Protestant Reformation

1172. Henry II conquered less than 1/3 of Ireland. It was a nominal conquest. A gift from Pope Adrian IV, the Englishman. Some 400 years later another Pope (in Elizabethan times, 1576), Gregory XIII, took back the present from the English (Elizabeth). ^[2] The "English Pale." ^[3] Capital: Dublin. Mixing of English common colonists with Irish, and of Anglo-Norman nobles with Irish chiefs. Otherwise, the war of conquest was conducted (originally) as against Red Indians. No English reinforcements sent to Ireland until 1565 (Elizabeth).

b) Protestant Epoch. Elizabeth. James I. Charles I. Cromwell. Colonisation Plan (16th and 17th Centuries)

Elizabeth. The plan was to exterminate the Irish at least up to the river Shannon, to take their land and settle English colonists in their place, etc. In battles against Elizabeth the still Catholic Anglo-Irish fought the English alongside natives. The avowed plan of the English:

Clearing the island of the natives, and stocking it with loyal Englishmen. They succeeded only to plant a landowning aristocracy. English Protestant "adventurers" (merchants, usurers), who obtained from the English crown the confiscated lands, and "gentlemen undertakers" who were to plant the ceded estates with native English families.

James I. Ulster. (Jacobite plantation, 1609-12.) British undertakers, "to stock the confiscated, stolen lands with Irish." Not until 1613 are Irish considered English subjects; previously they were looked upon as "outlaws" and "enemies." The Irish Parliament ^[4] governed only the Pale. Persecution of Catholics.

Elizabeth settled Munster, James I Ulster, but Leinster and Connaught have not yet been purged. Charles I tried to purge Connaught.

Cromwell. First national revolt of Ireland, its 2nd Complete Conquest. Partial Re-cal onisation. (1641-60.)

Irish Revolution of 1641. August 1649 Cromwell landing Dublin. (Followed by Ireton, Lambert, Fleetwood, Henry Cromwell.)

In 1652 the 2nd Complete Conquest of Ireland completed. Division of spoils: the Government itself, the "adventurers" who had lent £360,000 for the 11 years of war, the officers and soldiers, by the Acts of the English Parliament, 12 August, 1652, and 26 September, l653. ^[5] Smite the Amalekites of the Irish Nation hip and thigh, and replant the re-devastated land with new colonies of brand-new Puritan English.-Bloodshed, devastation, depopulation of entire counties, removal of their inhabitants to other regions, sale of many Irish into slavery in the West Indies.

By engaging in the conquest of Ireland, Cromwell threw the English Republic out the window.

Thence the Irish mistrust of the English people's party.

c) Restoration of the Stuarts. William III. Second Irish Revolt, and the Capitulation on Terms ^[6]

1660-1692.^[7]

The British were then more numerous in Ireland than at any other time. Never higher than 3/11, never lower than 2/11 of the Irish population.

1684. Charles II begins to favour the Catholic interest of Ireland, and to enlist a Catholic army.

1685. James 11 gives full rein to the Catholics of Ireland. Catholic army increased and favoured. The Catholics soon began to declare that the Acts of Settlement must be repealed and the proprietors of 1641 re-established. James calls some Irish regiments to England.

1689. William III in England. 12 March, 1689: James landed at Kinsale at the head of Irish soldiers. Limerick capitulates to William III, 1691. Shameful violation of the treaty, already under William III, still more under Anne.

d) Ireland Defrauded and Humbled to the Dust. 1692-July 4, 1776

a) All notions of "planting" the country with English and Scotch yeomen or tenant farmers were discarded. Settling German and French Protestants attempted. French Protestants in the towns (woollen manufacturers) flee the English protectionist and mercantile system.

1698. The Anglo-Irish Parliament (like obedient colonists) passed, on the command of the mother country, a prohibitory tax on Irish woollen goods export to foreign countries.

1698. In the same year, the English Parliament laid a heavy tax on the import of the home manufactures in England and Wales, and absolutely prohibited their export to other countries. She struck down the manufactures of Ireland, depopulated her cities and threw the people back upon the land.

The Williamite (imported lords) absentees. ^[8] Cry against absentee landlords since 1692.

Similar legislation of England against Irish Cattle.

1698: Molyneux pamphlet for the independence of the Irish Parliament (i.e., the English Colony in Ireland) against the English. ^[9] Thus began the struggle of the English Colony in Ireland and the English Nation. Simultaneously, struggle between the Anglo-Irish Colony and the Irish Nation. William III resisted the shameful attempts of the English and Anglo-Irish Parliaments to violate the treaties of Limerick and Galway.

b) Queen Anne. (1701-13; George until 1776.)

Penal Code ^[10] built up by the Anglo-Irish Parliament with assent of the English Parliament. Most infamous means to make Protestant Proselytes amongst the Irish Catholics by regulations of "Property." A code for the transfer of "Property" from Catholics to Protestants, or to make "An glicanism" a proprietary title. (Education. Personal disabilities.) (No Catholic able to be a private soldier.) To teach the Catholic religion was a transportable felony, to convert a Protestant to Catholicism an act of treason. To be a Catholic Archbishop-banishment, if returning from banishment-act of high treason; hanged, disembowelled alive, and afterwards quartered.

Experiment to coerce the mass of the Irish nation into the Anglican religion. Catholics deprived of vote for members of Parliament. ^[11]

This Penal Code intensified the hold of the Catholic Priesthood upon the Irish people.

The poor people fell into habits of indolence.

During the palmy days of Protestant ascendancy and Catholic degradation, the Protestants did not encroach upon the Catholics in numbers.

e) 1776-1801. Time of Transition

a) Before dealing with this transition period, what was the result of English terrorism?

English incomers absorbed into the Irish people and Catholicised.

The towns founded by the English Irish.

No English colony (except Ulster Scotch) but English landowners.

The North American Revolution forms the first turning-point in Irish history.

b) 1777 the British army surrendered at Saratoga Springs to the American "rebels." British cabinet forced to make concessions to the Nationalist (English) party in Ireland.

1778. Roman Catholic Relief Bill (passed by the Anglo-Irish Parliament). (Catholics were still excluded from acquiring by purchase, or as tenants, any freeholds ^[12] interest.)

1779. Free Trade with Great Britain. Almost all restraints put upon Irish industry swept away.

1782. The Penal Code still further released. The Roman Catholics allowed to acquire freehold property for life, or in fee simple, and-to open schools.

1783. Equal rights of the Anglo-Irish Parliament.

Winter 1792-93. After the French Government had annexed Belgium and England resolved upon French war, another portion of the Penal Code was released. Irish could become Colonels in Army, elective franchise for Irish Parliament, etc.

Rebellion of 1798. Belfast Republicans (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald). Irish peasants not ripe.

Anglo-Irish House of Commons voted for the Act of Union passed in 1800. By the Legislature and Customs Union of Britain and Ireland closed the struggle between the Anglo-Irish and the English. The colony itself protested against the illegal Act of Union.

1801-1846

a) 1801-1831. At this time (after the end of the war ^[13] ) a movement for emancipation of Catholics under way among Irish and English (1829).

From 1783 legislative independence of Ireland, shortly after which duties were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with the intention of enabling some of her people to employ some of their surplus labour, etc.

The natural consequence was that Irish manufactures gradually disappeared as the Act of Union came into effect.

etc. The linen industry (Ulster) did not compensate for this.

"The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives, has been destroyed; the 3,400 silk looms have been destroyed; the serge manufacture, which employed 1,491 operatives, has been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of Rathdrum, the blanket manufacture of Kilkenny, the camlet trade of Bandon, the worsted manufactures of Waterford, the ratteen and frieze manufactures of Carrick-on-Suir have been destroyed. One business alone survives! ... That fortunate business-which the Union Act has not struck down-that favoured, and privileged, and patronised business is the Irish coffin-maker's." (Speech of T.F. Meagher, 1847.)

Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she was crushed and reconverted into a purely agricultural land.

After the latest General Census of 1861:

Therefore (1861) approximately 4/5 purely agricultural, and actually perhaps 6/7 if market towns are also counted.

Ireland is therefore purely agricultural: "Land is life" (Justice Blackburne). Land became the great object of pursuit. The people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land, at any rent, or starvation. System of rack-renting.

"The lord of the land was thus enabled to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard of the payment of £5, 6, 8, and even as much as £10 per acre. Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolising land jobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water."

State of popular starvation.

Corn Laws in England create a monopoly to a certain extent for the export of Irish corn to England. The average export of grain in the first 3 years following the passage of the Act of Union about 300,000 qrs,

1820 over 1 million qrs,

1834 yearly average of 21/2 million qrs.

Amount to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees (1834), over 30 million dollars (or 7 million pounds sterling). Middlemen accumulated fortunes that they would not invest in the improvement of land, and could not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in machinery, etc. All their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment. An official document published by the British Government shows that the transfers of British securities from England to Ireland, i.e., the investment of Irish capital in England, in the 13 years following the adoption of free trade in 1821, amounted to as many millions of pounds sterling, and thus was Ireland forced to contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up "the great works of Britain."

Many pigs and export of same.

1831-1841. Accretion of Ireland's population from 7,767,401 to 8,175,238

O'Connell. Repeal Movement. Lichfield-House Contract with Whigs. ^[15] Partial famines. Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, Coercion Acts.

IV The Period of the last 20 years (from 1846). Clearing of the Estate of Ireland

Earlier, repeated cases of partial famine. Now famine was general.

This new period was ushered in by the potato blight (1846-47), starvation and the consequent exodus.

Over one million die, partly from hunger, partly from diseases, etc. (caused by hunger). In nine years, 1847-55, 1,656,044 left the country.

The revolution of the old agricultural system was but a natural result of the barren fields. People fled. (Families clubbed together to send away the youngest and most enterprising.) Hence, of course, the pooling of small leaseholds and substitution of pasturage for crop farming.

However, soon circumstances arose whereby this became a conscious and deliberate system.

Firstly, the chief factor: Repeal of the Corn Laws was one of the direct consequences of the Irish disaster. As a result, Irish corn lost its monopoly on the English market in the ordinary years. Corn prices dropped. Rents could no longer be paid. In the meantime, the price of meat, wool and other animal products increased steadily in the preceding 20 years. Tremendous growth of the wool industry in England. Pig-raising was partly connected with the old system. Now, chiefly sheep and horned cattle. Deprived of the English market now, as by the Act of Union of her own.

Contributing circumstances that made this systematic:

Secondly: Reorganisation of agriculture in England. Caricature of same in Ireland.

Thirdly: The despairing flight of starving Irish to England filled basements, hovels, workhouses in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow with men, women, children in a state almost of starvation.

Act of Parliament passed (1847-48) that Irish landlords had to support their own paupers. (The English Pauper Law is extended to Ireland.) Hence, the Irish (especially English) landlords, mostly deep in debt, try to get rid of the people and clear their estates.

Fourthly: Encumbered Estates Act (1853?).

"The landlord was ruined, for he could collect no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid of which property could be summarily disposed of at a public sale, and the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it."

Absentee Proprietors. (English capitalists, insurance societies, etc., thereby multiplied, equally former middlemen, etc., who wanted to run their farms on modern economic lines.)

Eviction of farmers partly by friendly agreement terminating tenure. But much more eviction en masse (forcibly by crowbar brigades, beginning with the destruction of roofs), forcible ejection. (Also used as political retribution.) This has continued since 1847 to this day. (Abercorn, Viceroy of Ireland.) African razzias (razzias of the little African kings). (People driven from the land. The starving population of the towns largely increased.)

"The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time.... Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the latter, the 'crowbar brigade' advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses. ... The sun that rose on a village sets on a desert." (Galway Paper, 1852.) (Abercorn.^[16] )

Let us now see how this system affected the land in Ireland, where conditions are quite different from those in England.

Decrease of Yield per Statute Acre of Every Crop

1847-1865 per cent: the exact decrease: oats 16.3, flax 47.9, turnips 36.1, potatoes 50. Some years would show a greater decrease, but on the whole it has been gradual since 1847.

Though Ireland exported considerable quantities of wheat in the past, it is now said to be good only for cultivating oats (the yield of which per acre also continuously decreases).

In fact: 1866 Ireland shipped out only 13,250 qrs of wheat against 48,589 qrs shipped in (that is, almost fourfold). Meanwhile, it shipped out approximately one million qrs of oats (for £1,201,737).

Since the exodus, the land has been underfed and overworked, partly from the injudicious consolidation of farms, and partly because, under the corn-acre system, ^[17] the farmer in a great measure trusted to his labourers to manure the land for him. Rents and profits (where the farmer is no peasant farmer) may increase, although the produce of the soil decreases. The total produce may diminish, and still greater part of it be converted into surplus produce, falling to the landlord and (great) farmer. And the price of the surplus produce has risen.

Hence, sterilisation (gradual) of the land, as in Sicily by the ancient Romans (ditto in Egypt).

We shall speak of the livestock, but first about the population.

Decrease of the Population

1801: 5,319,867; 1841: 8,222,664; 1851: 6,515,794; 1861: 5,764,543. If the trend continues, there will be 5,300,000 in 1871, that is, less than in 1801. I shall now show, however, that the population will be lower still in 1871, even though the emigration rate remains constant.

Emigration

Emigration accounts naturally for part of the decrease. In 1845-66 there emigrated 1,990,244, or approximately 2,000,000 Irish. (Unheard of.) (About 2/5 of the total emigration from the United Kingdom in 1845-66, which was 4,657,588.) In 1831-41 emigration approximately equalled half the accretion of population during the decade, and after 1847 it was considerably higher than the accretion.

However, emigration alone does not account for the decrease of the population since 1847.

Decrease of the Natural Annual Accretion of the Population

The accretion (annual) in 1831-41 was 1.1 per cent, or about per cent a year. If the population had increased in the same proportion in 1841-51, it would have been 9,074,514 in 1851. In fact, however, it was only 6,515,794. Consequently, the deficit was 2,558,720. Out of this figure, emigration accounted for 1,274,213. That leaves 1,284,507 unaccounted for. Over a million, but not the whole deficit of 1,284,507, died in the famine. Hence, evidently, natural population growth decreased in 1841-51.

This is borne out by the decade of 1851-61. No famine. The population decreased from 6,515,794 to 5,764,543. Absolute decrease: 751,251. Yet emigration in this period claimed over 1,210,000. Hence, there was an accretion of nearly 460,000 during the ten years. Because 751,251 + 460,000 = the number of emigrants = 1,211,251. Emigration claimed almost triple the accretion. The rate of accretion was 0.7 per cent per year, hence considerably lower than the 1.1 per cent of 1831-41.

The explanation is very simple. The increase of a population by births must principally depend on the proportion which those between 20 and 35 bear to the rest of the community. Now the proportion of persons between the ages of 20 and 35 in the population of the United Kingdom is about 1:3.98 or 25.06 per cent, while their proportion in the emigration even of the present day is about 1:1.89 or 52.76 per cent. And probably still greater in Ireland.

Physical Deterioration of the Population

In 1806, with a total population of 5,574,107, there was an excess of males over females by 50,469, whilst in 1867, with a total population of 5,557,196, there is an excess of the females over males. At the same time not only a relative, but an absolute increase in the number of deaf-mutes, blind, insane, idiotic, and decrepit inhabitants. Contrasting 1851 with 1861, whilst the population had decreased enormously, the number of deaf-mutes had increased by 473, on their former total of 5,180; the lame and decrepit by 225, on their former total of 4,375; the blind by 1,092, on their former total of 5,767; the lunatic and idiotic, by the immense number of 4,118, on their former total of 9,980; mounting up, in 1861, notwithstanding the decrease in the population, to 14,098.

Wages

Wages have not risen more than 20 per cent since the potato famine. The price of potatoes has risen nearly 200 per cent, and 100 per cent on an average of essential food products.

Professor Cliffe Leslie, in the Economist of February 9,1867, says:

"After a loss of two-fifths of the population in 21 years, throughout most of the island the rate of wages is now only ls. a day; a shilling does not go farther than 6d. did 21 years ago. Owing to this rise in the ordinary food the labourer is worse off than he was ten years ago."

Partial famines especially in Munster and Connaught.

Bankruptcy of shopkeepers is permanent. Market towns, etc., fall to ruin.

The Results of This Process

In 1855-66, 1,032,694 Irishmen replaced by 996,877 head of livestock (cattle, sheep and pigs). That, in fact, was the accretion of livestock during that period, with the decrease of horses (20,656) compensated by eight sheep (to one horse), which are therefore subtracted from the accretion.

Consolidation of Farms

From 1851 to 1861 the total decrease of farms was 120,000. (Though the number of 15-30 acre farms and farms of 30 acres and over increased.) Thus, the decrease affected particularly farms of one to under 15 acres.

In 1861 about 3/5 of the area (Ireland's total area: 20,319,924 acres) or 12,000,000 acres was held by 569,844 tenants who worked plots of one up to less than 100 acres, and about 2/5 (8 million acres) by tenants with over 100 and 500 acres and over (31,927 tenants).

The process of consolidation in full gear. Ulster. (Cultivation of flax; Scottish Protestant tenants.)

The Times, etc., officially congratulates Abercorn as Viceroy on this system. He, too, is one of these devastators. Lord Dufferin: over-population, etc.^[18]

In sum, it is a question of life and death.

Meagher, Hennessy,^[19] Irishman. ^[20]

V United States and Fenianism