Religion, Philanthropy and the State in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract

Travellers to pre-Famine Ireland invariably commented at length on the extensive poverty of the peasantry. Gustave de Beaumont, who accompanied de Tocqueville on his tour of England and Ireland in the 1830s, remarked, ‘in every nation there are poor people, more or less numerous, but an entire nation of paupers is something never witnessed before’.1 While this is an exaggeration there was an increasing number of poor people in Ireland in the pre-Famine period. Between 1750 and 1845 there was rapid population growth: at the beginning of the nineteenth century the population was a little in excess of 5 million; it had increased to over 8 million by 1841. Manufacturing industries had declined and the vast majority of the population had to earn its living from the land.2 There were numerous government commissions appointed to enquire into the causes of, and possible solutions for, Irish poverty in the first part of the nineteenth century. While the government attempted to alleviate poverty and destitution through the introduction of statutes and the establishment of institutions, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also witnessed the emergence and development of private charitable provision.