Madam, - In a review of The Discovery of France by Graham Robb, Anne Haverty makes a statement which runs counter to the usual understanding of exceptionally dire social conditions prevailing in pre-Famine Ireland ( Weekend Review, September 22nd).
She claims that "compared [ with] the wretched French peasant, his Irish pre-Famine contemporary could be said to have enjoyed a life of plenty".
The accounts of notable French visitors to Ireland in pre-Famine days cast light on the matter of the comparative plights of the Irish and French peasantry.
In his Journey in Ireland, a diary of his visit in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "Most of the dwellings of the country very poor looking. A very large number of them wretched to the last degree. Walls of mud, roofs of thatch, one room. . ."
In Ireland: Social, Political and Religious, Gustav de Beaumont, who also toured Ireland in the mid-1830s, wrote:
"Irish poverty has a special and exceptional character which renders its definition difficult, because it can be compared with no other indigence. . .In all other countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what never was seen until it was shown in Ireland." - Yours, etc,
TED O'SULLIVAN, Homefarm Park, Dublin 9.