Ireland, Distress and Social Instability: Sadler Endeavours to Direct the Government ‘to a Better Policy’

Abstract

Sadler announced at the end of the first parliamentary session for 1830 that he intended to bring in a ‘bill to improve the condition of the Poor of the British Empire’. He did not, however, deliver the motion of which he had given notice. Instead, he moved for a resolution that would commit the House to accepting in principle the expediency and necessity of establishing a system of Poor Laws in Ireland. This was proposed ‘as a preliminary to a general measure for bettering the condition of the labouring classes of the kingdom’. Lord Francis Leveson Gower, Wilmot Horton and Thomas Spring Rice all accused Sadler of misleading parliament.¹ In opting for a general resolution, Sadler had taken his lead from Villiers Stuart. When Stuart had raised the question of Poor Laws for Ireland in May of the previous year it had likewise been too late in the session for a protracted debate on the issue. He had, therefore, proposed a resolution that would have committed the House to a consideration of it in the next session. On that occasion Gower, together with Robert Peel and William Huskisson, objected to any resolution that ‘pledged the House to a distinct line of conduct for a future session’.² Sadler’s resolution, a slightly amended version of Stuart’s, was obviously open to the same criticism.³ ‘Instead of a practical detailed measure’, complained Gower, he ‘had come forward with a mere resolution, for which he could not expect to receive the support of the House.’ As a committee on the state of the poor in Ireland was already in session it would be inappropriate, moreover, for the House to adopt any resolution that might pre-empt that committee’s findings. The committee to which Gower referred had been initiated by Spring Rice. Sadler had declined Spring Rice’s offer of seat on this committee; believing that there was little prospect of it recommending a system of Poor Laws for Ireland when the majority of its members were ‘avowed opponents of the very principle’; he had also refused to act as a witness.⁴