“At any rate let us not deserve it, Mrs. O’Dwyer.
There will be a lot of them at Gortnaclough to-morrow,
and I shall tell them that we, on our side, won’t
be wanting. To give them their due, I must say
that they are working well. That young Herbert
Fitzgerald’s a trump, whether he’s Protestant
or Catholic.”
“An’ they do say he’s a strong bearing
towards the ould religion,” said Mrs. O’Dwyer.
“God bless his sweet young face av’ he’d
come back to us. That’s what I say.”
“God bless his face any way, say I,” said
Father Barney, with a wider philanthropy. “He
is doing his best for the people, and the time has
come now when we must hang together, if it be any way
possible.” And with this the priest finished
his pipe, and wishing the ladies good night, walked
away to his own house.
THE RELIEF COMMITTEE
At this time the famine was beginning to be systematised.
The sternest among landlords and masters were driven
to acknowledge that the people had not got food, or
the means of earning it. The people themselves
were learning that a great national calamity had happened,
and that the work was God’s work; and the Government
had fully recognized the necessity of taking the whole
matter into its own hands. They were responsible
for the preservation of the people, and they acknowledged
their responsibility.
And then two great rules seemed to get themselves
laid down—not by general consent, for there
were many who greatly contested their wisdom—but
by some force strong enough to make itself dominant.
The first was, that the food to be provided should
be earned and not given away. And the second
was, that the providing of that food should be left
to private competition, and not in any way be undertaken
by the Government. I make bold to say that both
these rules were wise and good.
But how should the people work? That Government
should supply the wages was of course an understood
necessity; and it was also necessary that on all such
work the amount of wages should be regulated by the
price at which provisions might fix themselves.
These points produced questions which were hotly debated
by the Relief Committees of the different districts;
but at last it got itself decided, again by the hands
of Government, that all hills along the country roads
should be cut away, and that the people should be
employed on this work. They were so employed,—very
little to the advantage of the roads for that or some
following years.
“So you have begun, my men,” said Herbert
to a gang of labourers whom he found collected at
a certain point on Ballydahan Hill, which lay on his
road from Castle Richmond to Gortnaclough. In
saying this he had certainly paid them an unmerited
compliment, for they had hitherto begun nothing.
Some thirty or forty wretched-looking men were clustered
together in the dirt and slop and mud, on the brow
