We got so interested today in hearing from all the people who are phoning and e-mailing in comments about the “Raw Judicial Power” series that we forgot to finish writing today’s installment! Still, today’s “substitute” posting, the third in the "Thornton foreword series," does relate to the Raw Judicial Power series.
This is because the Great Famine in Ireland seemed to confirm Malthusian theory. Population had, evidently, outstripped existing food supplies. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse — Famine, Disease, War, and Death — had consequently put in their expected appearance.
The irony is that Ireland was one of the few food exporting countries in Europe. The land provided more than enough to feed the Irish and the propertyless workers of England. Even in 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine, there were massive exports of food from Ireland. (Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845-1852. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995, 354.)
To Thornton, the Great Famine represented not a confirmation of Malthusian theory, but its refutation. As he had argued in 1846, "over-population" is caused by systemic poverty and lack of widespread ownership of capital, not the other way around. In Europe, the potato blight caused hardship, as small landowners who depended on the potato for their basic subsistence had to shift to more expensive foodstuffs.
In Ireland, with virtually no small landowning class and afflicted with "tenancy-at-will" (which meant that landlords could evict a tenant for any reason or none at all), the blight was a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. More than enough food was grown in Ireland to stave off the Great Famine, but it did not belong to the common people. They died by the hundreds of thousands as food was shipped out of the country.
Unfortunately, the British government paid no attention to Thornton's proposal for Ireland. As he complained in 1874 in his revision of the Plea, "The time for creating a numerous peasant proprietary in the summary mode suggested has, however, long gone by, and is not now to be recovered. How seldom, alas, does England, in respect of Irish reforms, take time by the forelock!" (William T. Thornton, A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. London: Macmillan and Company, 1874, 261.)
This might be something to keep in mind during the March for Life on Monday of next week.
#30#
Thursday, January 19, 2012
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3 comments:
Your article is interesting, but seems to miss some key points.
I don't think the Irish Famine demonstrated Malthusian Theory. More that Malthusian Theory was used as a rationale for what happened in Ireland. How else could starving a third of the Irish population be justified?
Your analysis overlooks the root cause of the Irish "Famine" and why it went on as long as it did -- just as our current battles about the dignity of life cannot be successful without resorting to root causes.
The Irish Famine was an engineered genocide.
It is very hard for contemporary Americans to understand the kind of racism that the English ruling classes of the time and the English in general viewed the Irish -- especially Gaelic-speaking Irish. Some commentators viewed it in Malthusian terms to rationalize an entirely preventable tragedy. However, England enforced laws prohibiting imports of grain, especially American corn, into Ireland, even as Ireland's agricultural stores were exported. This transformed some parts of Ireland into an island of starvation. Using Malthusian "scientific" theories helped the English to assuage their consciences, no doubt -- just as today "pro-choice" individuals use a variety of "scientific" arguments to justify modern genocide.
I am sure there are many more parallels here, but the basic root causes are very similar.
In America today it is very easy for us to recognize the racism that abortionists exploit. What most Americans do not realize is that the English actually viewed the Irish as a different race -- especially Gaelic-speaking Irish. A review of research will show that the Gaelic-speaking areas of Ireland suffered deaths to starvation in the Famine disproportionately.
Mr. Thornton's pleas fell on deaf ears. In the preceding 300 years, the English had done all sorts of things to exterminate any small landowning, native Irish class. There was nothing that the English did in North America against the Native Americans that they did not test in Ireland first.
Actually, what I posted was an extract from the foreword — it's not the complete foreword. The issues you raise are addressed in the dozen appendices we added to the book, the longest of which covers the Great Famine.
I agree that the Great Famine did not demonstrate Malthusian theory. That was Thornton's point as well — that Malthus was wrong. It was, however, widely understood as proving it, despite the fact that Malthusian theory was and remains untenable, as Schumpeter pointed out in his History of Economic Analysis.
You should visit http://pleaforpeasantproprietors.blogspot.com and download the free copy of the book, or even get wild and crazy and buy it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Good Article About "Foreword to W. T. Thornton's "A Plea for Peasant Proprietors" (3)"
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