As early as 1815 Thomas Spring Rice, an idealistic young man of 25, was fired by the challenge of being a good landlord, aware that his educational and social advantages should be at the service of the tenants.  "It is a sphere of personal privation, and of personal exertion" he wrote, " but, when the mind is awake to the first of all delights, the power of becoming extensively and permanently useful, all privations are forgotten, all labour is well repaid.  A peasantry capable of improvement and grateful for every benevolent assistance, look up to the landlord as to a protector and friend.  He may not only assist their distresses, but may enable them to assist themselves".  In the early 1840's, as agricultural depression and high population growth was leading to low wages and overcrowding on the land, and as the potato crop began to fail, Spring Rice had an unprecedented opportunity to put his paternalism into practice.

 

And, as he began to realise the potential of his position in the context of the famine crisis he discovered the essential and eventually tragic ambiguity of the Ascendancy in Ireland.  For, minutely aware of the diverse problems of the Iris peasantry and able to prescribe workable solutions, he soon found himself at loggerheads with a government that distrusted the motives and abilities of his class; a government that he had served at the highest levels and for which he still worked.  The resulting frustration could draw a tirade from him of which any Irish nationalist of the period would have been proud.  The sword of conquest passed through our land but a century and a half back - insurrections in 1798 and 1803 - partial outbreaks at later times - tithes collected at the bayonet point - penal laws continued till 1829, and then reluctantly repealed - these things have destroyed our country - have degraded our people, and you, English, now shrink from your responsibilities;  you keep gabbling about the incompetency of the Celtic race and the injustice of the Irish landlords; ... remember a Wilberforce said that England owes us a debt for the wrongs of centuries ; endeavour to repay it, not by pauperising us, but by raising us above our present condition".   Yet his social class would prevent him and his children and grandchildren from being fully accepted by Irish nationalists regardless of how republican their language and actions might be.  Thomas's eldest son , Stephen Edward, who managed the estate while his father was in London, expressed the Anglo-Irish position in graphic terms:  " My occupations are those of my class; and in trying to follow them in a spirit of loyal attachment to the Queen and the empire at large, the two classes from whom I receive most opposition are the violent English politicians, and the violent Irish . For the moment as the famine crisis deepend, the enlightened, paternalistic landlords could feel that they were acting in the interests of their tenants, while their main source of opposition was the British government. 

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The starting point of Lord Monteagle's involvement with his tenants' welfare was careful perusal of the rent ledger and an intimate knowledge of how that translated into farms and holdings.  In 1852 he showed Nassau Senior, an economist, the great differences in the estate; farms as neat, well-stocked and thriving as the best in England, next to land covered in thistles and reeds.  "The clue to the difference" said Lord Monteagle, "is the difference of tenure; the good farms are in the hands of tenants at will;  the worst of the bad ones are held at fee farm rents, or on long leases at low rents" reported Senior.  The latter had no incentive to improve their land and often control with shorter term leases.  As the famine took hold the discovery of this information became even more important for the diligent landlord.  "What is the life led by an Irish squire?" Stephen Spring Rice asked rhetorically.  " You have sen him leaving home before daylight , that sunrise may find him within his relief district, into the destitution of which he has to inquire... But he does not go home to rest. His whole night, and far into the next morning occupied in reducing into an available form the rough memoranda of each case which he has collected in the daytime".

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Lord Monteagle approached the problem of the famine from several directions.  He might respond to individual pleas to reduce or waive rents from tenants who could no longer pay.  At the same time he was formulating and applying broader strategies.  One reason for the crisis, he argued , was that Ireland was undeveloped.  He invested in building a school in what was becoming the sizeable village of Foynes, he developed a model farm near Mount Trenchard demesne to encourage the adoption of more efficient farming methods, he diverted some relief works to the building of a pier at Foynes.  Another theory was that a proportion of the population was "redundant".  He investigated the possibility of voluntary emigration and encouraged some of his tenants to consider going to Australia, contributing to their passage and facilitating communication with people who had already gone.

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With these theories and in his assumption that the landlord was responsible for the welfare of his tenants , he did not differ from the government.  Where he fell out with Westminister was in the assumption that the landlord should shoulder the entire costs of helping a distressed peasantry with poor law rates, rent reductions, payments for relief works.  And, because it assumed that the Irish landlords were liable to neglect their duties , the government produced legislation which aimed to ensure that this did not happen.

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