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The state of Ireland in the 1820s: James Cropper's plan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2017

Kenneth Charlton
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Extract

In 1825 there was published in Liverpool a pamphlet of 59 pages entitled The present state of Ireland, with a plan for improving the position of the people. Its author was James Cropper, a quaker merchant of that city and senior partner of the firm Cropper, Benson and Co. As a young man he had been apprenticed to the firm of Rathbone, Benson and Co., living and working in the small circle of liberal radicals in the city, of whom the Rathbones, the Binns and the Roscoes were perhaps the most famous. In 1799 he had set up business on his own account, and later joined in partnership with another quaker, Thomas Benson, son of Rathbone's partner, as Cropper, Benson and Co. The firm engaged in a wide variety of commission trading, but increasingly specialized in cotton imports from the United States of America, acting also as the Liverpool agent for the Black Ball line of packets which from 1818 provided the first regular passenger sailings between New York and Liverpool. As an ‘ American ’ merchant in Liverpool, Cropper helped to form the American chamber of commerce in the port, serving as treasurer and later as president. Besides his trading activities Cropper was a founder-director of the Liverpool-Manchester Railyway and he also invested heavily in the New York State canal system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 67 , March 1971 , pp. 320 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1971

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References

1 Report from the select committee of the house of commons on the employment of the poor in Ireland, H.C. 1823 (561), vi.

2 Canning Box, Liverpool Public Libraries, printed in Fay, C. R., Huskisson and his age (London, 1951), pp 252-4.Google Scholar

3 Gf. Malthus, T. R., Essay on the principle of population (5th ed., London, 1817), ii, 287 Google Scholar, and Cropper, J., Present state of Ireland with a plan for improving the position of the people (Liverpool, 1825), p. 59 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Cropper).

4 Whately, R., ‘ Emigration to Canada ’ in Quarterly Review, xxiii (1820), pp 373–400 Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Adams, W. F., Ireland and Irish emigration to the New World from 1815 to the famine (New Haven, 1932), ch. vi.Google Scholar

6 Cropper, pp ii-iv.

7 Hodgson, J. S., A history of Penketh school (London, 1907), pp 23 ffGoogle Scholar, and Gharlton, K., ‘ James Cropper and agricultural improvement in the early nineteenth century ’ in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxii (1960), pp 65–78 Google Scholar.

8 Cropper, p. 23.

9 Cropper, p. 24.

10 This defect in previous schemes had been noted in R. Ryan's Prize Essay to the Royal Irish Academy, 1822 : What are the best means of rendering the national sources of wealth possessed by Ireland effectual for the employment of the population? (London, 1824), p. 74.

11 Cropper, pp 25–6.

12 Cropper, pp 35–6.

13 Cropper, p. 35.

14 Cropper, p. 47. Cropper was in fact merely confirming the view of the select committee on the employment of the poor in Ireland.

15 Ibid., p. 35. For evidence of the effects of combination on Irish industry cf. O'Brien, G., The economic history of Ireland from the union to the famine (London, 1921), pp 386–402 Google Scholar.

16 Cropper, p. 38.

17 Irish Observer, 4 Dec. 1824.

18 Cf. Collison Black, R. D., Economic thought and the Irish question 1817–70 (Cambridge, 1960), ch. VIGoogle Scholar.

19 Cropper, p. 33; cf. Irish Observer, 8 Dec. 1824.

20 Cropper, p. 36.

21 Cropper, p. 37.

22 The Bengal (402 tons), owned jointly by Cropper, Benson and Co. and Rathbone, Hodgson and Co., had in fact followed John Gladstone's Kingsmill (576 tons) as the second ship to sail from Liverpool for the far east under the new regulations (Liverpool Mercury, 3 June 1814 and 26 May 1815).

23 Liverpool Mercury, 7 June 1822 and 12 July 1822; Redford, A., Manchester merchants and foreign trade 1794–1858 (Manchester, 1934), pp 114-16Google Scholar.

24 The correspondence between John Gladstone Esq., M.P. and James Cropper Esq. on the present state of slavery in the British West Indies and the United States of America; and on the importation of sugar from the British settlements in India (Liverpool, 1824), especially pp 9–14 (hereafter cited as Gladstone and Cropper, Correspondence).

25 Cf. Report of a committee of the Liverpool East India Association appointed to take into consideration the restrictions on the East India trade (Liverpool, 1822), and Cropper, J., Letters addressed to William Wilberforce, M.P. recommending the cultivation of sugar in the dominions of the East Indies as a natural and certain means of effecting the total and general abolition of the slave trade (Liverpool, 1822)Google Scholar.

26 James Cropper to his wife, Mary, 28 Oct. 1824. The Cropper papers are preserved at Tolson Hall, Burneside, near Kendal, and include a good deal of material relating to James Cropper. Some of his original letters, however, were transcribed after his death by his daughter-in-law, Anne Cropper, and then apparently destroyed. The transcription was published privately in lithograph, and it is from this collection that the references which follow are taken. I am indebted to Mrs Anthony Cropper of Tolson Hall for permission to study the papers in her possession.

27 James Cropper to his son, John, 3 Nov. 1824.

28 James Cropper to Mary Cropper, 6 Nov. 1824.

29 James Cropper to his son, Edward, 10 Nov. 1824.

30 James Cropper to John Cropper, 16 Nov. 1824, and Irish Observer, 6 Dec. 1824.

31 Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 27 Nov. 1824; Cork Advertiser, 30 Dec. 1824; Liverpool Mercury, 5 Jan. 1825.

32 James Cropper to Edward Cropper, 1 Dec. 1824, and Waterford Mirror, 29 Nov. 1824.

33 James Cropper to John Cropper, 7 Dec. 1824 and to Mary Cropper, 10 Dec. 1824; Irish Observer, 4, 8 and 11 Dec. 1824.

34 James Cropper to Edward Cropper, 13 Dec. 1824; Clonmel Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1824; Irish Times, 17 Dec. 1824.

35 Waterford Mirror, 20 Dec. 1824. The Waterford resolutions were printed in The Times and the British Traveller on 15 Dec. 1824, the Dungarvan resolutions in The Times on 30 Dec. 1824, and the British Traveller on 31 Dec. 1824.

36 Dubliti Morning Register, 23 Dec. 1824; Dublin Evening Post, 23 Dec. 1824; Irish Times, 24, 29 Dec. 1824.

37 (Waterford) Mail, 22 Jan. 1825.

38 The point is argued in detail by Hodgson, Adam, A letter to M. Jean-Daptiste Say on the comparative expense of free and slave labour (Liverpool, 1825 Google Scholar).

39 Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 20 Nov. 1824.

40 Cropper, pp 58–9.

41 Gladstone and Cropper, Correspondence, p. 15, and Southern Reporter, 2 Dec. 1824; but cf. J. R. Elmore's letter in Southern Reporter, 1 Jan. 1825.

42 Williams, E., Capitalism and slavery (London, 1964), p. 187 Google Scholar.

43 Letter to the editor from ‘ W in a corner of the county Cork ’, in Southern Reporter, 1 Jan. 1825.

44 H. O. Seward to editor of Liverpool Courier, 5 Jan. 1825.

45 Southern Reporter, 2 Dec. 1824, a n ^ (Waterford) Mail, 22 Jan. 1825; but cf. the Irish Observer editorials for 4 and 29 Dec. 1824.

46 Dublin Evening Post, 23 Dec. 1824.

47 Printed in Waterford Chronicle, 8 Jan. 1825.

48 Irish Observer, 29 Jan. 1825.

49 The meeting is reported in Southern Reporter, 17 Mar. 1825, Liverpool Mercury, 25 Mar. 1825, and in Elmore, J. R., Letters to the lit Hon. the earl of Darnley on the state of Ireland in advocacy of free trade (London, 1828), pp 126-30Google Scholar.

50 For the progress of the bill during 1825 and its subsequent amendment in the following year at the request of the directors of the company, together with the petitions for and against, cf. Commons' jn., 80 (1825) and 81 (1826), and Lords’ jn., 57 (1825) and 58 (1826), passim.

51 Report from the select committee of the house of commons on the state of Ireland, pp 688–92, H.C. 1825 (129), viii.

52 O'Driscoll, J., Review of the evidence taken before the Irish committee of both houses of parliament (Dublin, 1825), pp 2 and 53 Google Scholar. Owen's visit to Dublin in April 1823 and his proposals to found Owenite settlements in Ireland had been given a particularly unfavourable reception. The report from the select committee on the employment of the poor in Ireland had discounted the proposals as ‘ impracticable ’. Cf. also Anon., A letter containing some observations on the delusive nature of the system proposed by Robert Owen (Dublin, 1823).

53 Lenihan, M., Limerick: its history and antiquities (Dublin, 1866), p. 466 Google Scholar, and Lewis, Topog. diet. Ire. (2nd ed., London, 1842), ii, 269.

54 Lewis, op. cit., i, 179, 325; ii, 679.

55 P. Power, ‘ The Portiaw cotton factory ’ in Waterford Arch. Soc. Jn. (1910), pp 59–64, and Lewis, op. cit., i, 356. The building of the factory is reported in Southern Reporter, 21 May, 4 Aug., 1825 (quoting the Waterford Chronicle and the Clonmel Advertiser respectively).

56 Kane, R., The industrial resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1844), p. 393 Google Scholar.

57 Fry, E. and Gurney, J. J., Report addressed to the marquess of Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, reporting their late visit to that country (London, 1829), pp 66-7Google Scholar. A return to domestic industry was also advocated in Practice opposed to theory, by ‘ A practical man ’ (London, 1828), pp 139–40.

58 Rural rides, 3 Sept. 1826 (Everyman edition, London, 1912), ii, 75–6. G. D. H. and Margaret Cole, Index of persons … in Rural Rides (privately printed, 1930), p. 964, is inaccurate in its dating of Cropper's Present state of Ireland and of the visit itself. Cobbett's well-known antipathy towards quakers is most forcefully expressed in his Weekly Political Register, 2 Apr. 1826, cols 367–70.

59 Gayer, A. D., et. al., The growth and fluctuations of the British economy (2 vols, Oxford, 1953), i, 171 Google Scholar.

60 Irish Observer, 1 Jan. 1825.

61 Senior, Nassau, ‘ Ireland in 1843 ’ in Journals, conversations and essays relating to Ireland (2nd ed., London, 1868), i, 160 Google Scholar.