FROM THE ARCHIVES:One of the unfulfilled hopes for the west of Ireland, and indeed the country as a whole, in the 19th century was the development of Galway as a major transatlantic port. It looked a likely prospect in the early 1860s when a local shipping company provided regular services to Canada and the US, helped by contracts with the Post Office which acted as subsidies for the services. These contracts were withdrawn by the British government, apparently after lobbying by other port interests in Liverpool and elsewhere, prompting this outraged editorial.
THE DEBATE on Mr. Gregory’s motion was probably the most important that ever took place upon an Irish question [. . .] The Irish members expressed more strongly than they are wont their opinion of the system pursued towards this country, and, on the other hand, Ministers did not conceal their real estimate of this country and its people. The tone of the Cabinet manifests clearly that Ireland is by them considered to be a mere outlying dependency, which is to be kept up in some sort for the sake of English interests alone.
The London Times, catching the tone of Mr Cardwell , audaciously asserts that "Ireland is merely a NATURAL BREAKWATER before the real ports of the empire." As a breakwater it is to be kept from falling to pieces [. . .] but no Whig Statesman would think of improving it [. . .] This sufficiently accounts for the fact, that while 2,400,000l. are sunk in the sea at Holyhead, 1,200,000l. at Alderney, and 2,100,000l. wasted in a vain attempt to keep together the shingle at Dover, the expenditure of 70,000l. for the benefit of Ireland herself would be deemed an unpardonable extravagance.
The Galway Company did meet with casualties, for we will not call them misfortunes, [but] its great losses have been greatly exaggerated. In comparison with the disasters which befell Imperial companies, they are insignificant. Since 1859 one Liverpool company lost the Canada and the Hungarian, and, with the latter, 120 lives. Since 1859 the Cunard company lost the Columbia; the Australasia was in jeopardy, and lost her voyage; the Arabia came into collision with another of Cunard’s ships; the Hibernia struck on a rock near Halifax; the Africa ran against the Copeland Islands; the Cambria struck upon Cape Codd; the Niagara ran ashore at Cork; the Canada dashed upon an iceberg; so did the Persia; and the Arabia grounded on Seal Island; Inman’s Liverpool line lost the City of Glasgow, and in her 120 souls. [. . .] This is a tolerably heavy list of English losses, but our Irish Secretary, with Imperial spectacles, can see none of them.
In the administration of the present Cabinet there is not a single member connected with this country by birth, feeling or property; consequently, no portion of important trust is given to any but a countryman of the dominant class. This is to coerce a subject dependency, not to govern an imperial province. Scotland would not submit to be ruled thus imperially, yet Scotland has not half our men and one-third our means. No ministerial scribe has ventured to say that nature threw Scotland – a ridge of rocks – into the sea to protect the lands of England from icebergs. But then Scotchmen are united, and we are divided; and the result is, that Ministers, in effect, and the scribes in words, coolly tell us that “Ireland must be considered as a natural breakwater to protect the real ports of empire”. Impudence could scarcely go further.
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