The Economic Impacts of the Great Irish Famine

The analysis of the Irish economic problem, the Great Famine, was a remarkable topic to study by several classical authors such as, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo or William Senior. A contextualization skim of the economic characteristics of the country is required in order to know about their main ideas with respect to the topic, taking into account the aspects like the land property, the political power and the relation between Ireland and England.

The tense relationship between Ireland and England lasted for many years. There were constant attempts from the English government to exercise control over its neighbors, which were, at the same time, answered with several insurrections.

In 1801, the Kingdom of Great Britain and

the Kingdom of Ireland created, through the Act of Union, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Through it, the Irish parliament disappeared making its citizens British subject. The Irish nation understood it as an opportunity to encourage free trade, investment and therefore an industrial revolution. But none of these actually happened. Furthermore, the pretended manufacturing sector was not able to emerged, as English textile sector was very productive and more efficient than the Irish. The English textile surpluses absorbed all the Irish market demand, without giving any opportunity to industrialization. It is clear that the country was pushed to entirely depend on the agriculture sector.
The land ownership was significantly divided into tiny parcels. As a result of its small size the only nutritive production that could be found about were the potatoes. And, as a matter of fact, it was almost unable to properly feed a family. That is why when in 1845 the potatoes crop collapse, the consequences for the population were dramatic. The Irish famine had an immense effect on the demography of the country that lasted for decades.
As the Irish population was British subject, the response to the humanitarian crisis had to be given by the Westminster parliament. Few policies were implemented to face the situation. During the Irish famine, there were two different governments. The first one was under Tory Primer Minister Robert Peel, and the second one was Prime minister Whig John Rusell. At first, some smooth responses were taken. In 1846, the sale of maize in Ireland was permitted, even though there were some concerns about the negative implication for the British trade. For the government of John Rusell, no more cheap corn was sold to the Irish population. Moreover and worse of all, no political intervention was made to avoid the Irish economy from being a net export of oats, while the Irish population was suffering from a terrible shortage of food. Two million British citizens were fed with food imported (wheat, oats and barley) from Ireland, according to the estimations of Kinealy.
An explanation for that kind of policy, or (in fact) non-policies, could be found in the influential classical economic at the moment. There was the widespread belief that the market could solve its own problem by itself. The principles of Adam Smith and his book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776), to consider, had a deep impact over the academic and political English world.
The classical authors analyzed the Irish famine through the population-capital concept, mainly from Malthus’ population theory point of view.
In chapter 2 of his work, “An Essay on the Principle of population”, the explanation about the different ratios in which population and food increase is found mentioned, increases in a geometrical way the first, whereas the second one was arithmetical. This argument can be seen in the following abstract: “No limits whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity. Yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.” (Malthus, 1798, page 8)
Having this argument as the background, the only way of changing this cycle was by adjusting the ratio population to capital, either reducing the first one or increasing the second. In the potatoes crisis, the proposal improvement of the ratio was through the recession of the population, as capital was seen almost as a fixed input or at least with low possibilities to increase in the short run.
The Malthus trap reasoning is the following; once the production become more efficient, the income per capita increases, therefore the population well-being spreads, which become an incentive for more natality.

As a result, the community growth intensifies to a point where the income per capita will be so low that its maintenance would turn into untenable; hence the population suffers and contracts, occasioning a new cycle again. Therefore, the theory emphasizes a rigid dependence of population growth upon the food supply.

Following this reasoning, it could be inferred that the cyclical reduction of population through famines is a necessary condition for the efficiency of an economy. Therefore, by clearing the surplus population from the land, the market rebalances itself. So at that point, it can be suggested that a definition for overpopulation is the moment when a community is too large to maximize the efficient production of its economy; so it would need a reduction in numbers that would raise income per

capita.
To some extent, the English academics blamed the Irish population for this situation. They were overpopulated and excessively dependent on the potato. Both claims could be dismissed if we take into account the social and economic characteristics in the Irish context; the high natality rate is a typical trait of the agriculture economies, where the parents aim is to have a significant offspring to ensure their own retirement. On the other hand, as it had been pointed out previously, the potato crop, considering the small size of the land property was the only feasible production. Furthermore, the flow of food export from Ireland to England (to pay the rent of the English landlords and the manufactured imports), strangled the Irish economy. These exports are calculated to have been sufficient to feed more than twice the Irish population, according to John Mitchel.
Several arguments were expressed against any kind of charity policy, not only during the Great famine but also prior to it. Some authors (Trevelyan to name one) argued that it was not the government duty to do so, and that the life standard of a community was the responsibility of its member’s effort. Another argument against the provision of public supplies of food was the idea that could become a way to encourage idleness and the growth of a more than populated servile community. Malthus theory argues that the principal incentive against an increase in population was the responsibility of each individual to fend by him or herself. So by giving food to the poorest, they would no longer be responsible for their own improvidence. He held the following argument, by implementing a Poor Law in Ireland; it would be an impediment for its economic growth since it tends to fix the surplus of labor supply, and therefore high rates of unemployment, instead of encouraging the reduction of it by emigration movements. Any kind of government provision of retirement subsidies was also significantly criticized. Senior considered the inability of old people to work as a foreseeable matter, and therefore, an individual responsibility, but not something the State should be aware of.
This argument did not change when the Great Famine become a severe issue. It would be a shock for the standards of our society today to understand such a behavior, moreover when about 2 million of the Irish population was shrunk (there is no official data base), yet no notable political act was made.
Regarding the academic influences, the most remarkable thesis was made by John Stuart Mill.

Who wrote Principle of Political Economy (1848), it was nicknamed by Mark Blaug as the undisputed bible of the 19th century for the economic world.

Richard Lebow’s analyzed Mill’s arguments sustaining that it can be identified two contrary visions; one arguing for the market on its own and the other for the necessity of a state’s intervention. This classification of two clearly opposed views is also raised by Gide and Rist in the following statement “During the first half of his life, Mill was an individualist who was deeply committed to utilitarianism. During the second half, he was a socialist who remained a champion of individual liberty” (1947, page

358).
As we had seen in the previous contextualization, there was a clear problem regarding the land ownership; Irish people working on the land had no right over them, the land was highly divided into bits (as all the population was mainly dependent on the agricultures sector), the competition for a plot of land was really hard, as a result, the rent prices were significant higher than what the plot was actually able to produce. Taking this into account once the famine started, the situation became even worst; families were not able to pay the rent to the English landlord, the potato’s crop was devastated, and they were not able to neither feed themselves nor pay the rent of the land. Consequently, they were condemned to eviction. The improvement of Ireland economic conditions depended on the changes of the cottier system. Stuart Mill analysed the situation in several unsigned editorials in the Morning Chronicle, between October 1846 and January where he published 43 columns.
The recommendation regarding the cottier-tenant system and how to solved the problems caused by it, are surprisingly very heterogenic, even contradictory; he did not had a consistent opinion about the best policies to be applied in order to improve the land ownership system
Once again the “two Mills” appeared; on one hand, he opposed removing the peasant system, which would have meant giving the farmers the status of capitalist, while he made strong allegations about the unacceptability of the land expropriation to the Irish aristocracy. As a classical author, his beliefs about the private property were pretty remarkable.
On the other hand, he claimed for the relocation of the farmers to the western regions of Ireland to give them a fixed tenancy. By way of the implementation of this policy, the government would correct the Irish situation without any need of capital. That point is truly significant due to the fact that, for the classical economists, the relation capital-population was the key idea of the majority of their reflections regarding the Irish question.