Despite Parliamentary findings 10 years earlier recommending construction of a railroad system, by 1846, the second year of the Famine, Ireland had only 123 miles of railroad.  Why?   There was ample land, a great need, Parliamentary support (in the form of votes, not funds) and construction costs were roughly 1/2 those of England.  Most importantly, in a rural society where the transportation of food meant the difference between survival and famine and where the swift deployment of troops could mean the difference between chaos and peace, why, MP George Bentinck argued in the House of Commons, didn’t Ireland have a railroad system?  Why did the country’s economic prosperity rest instead on extensive but unpaved roads, a nascent canal system and a few steamships?

After spending nearly two decades in Parliamentary silence, Lord George Bentinck (son of a Duke) stepped into the spotlight to oppose Prime Minister Peel’s repeal of the Corn Law tariffs.  A protectionist out of principle (he wasn’t opposed to importing cheap corn to feed the starving Irish) Bentinck’s association with the protectionist Benjamin Disraeli gave that man’s anti-Peel movement the blue blood it needed.

After Disraeli and Bentinck helped to force Peel from office (thus giving birth to a new Tory party), Bentinck turned his attention to the Irish Question.  Contemplating the prospect of huge government loans in support of public works programs – the starving weren’t to be given handouts, mind you, but made to build unneeded roads before their bellies could be filled – Bentinck argued that where millions (of pounds) were to be expended by the state, something more advantageous to the community should accrue than the temporary subsistence of the multitude (see Disraeli’s biography of Lord George).  Pointing to the advantages reaped by industrialized Britain in the mid 19th Century, Bentinck posited that the quickest way to weather the Famine and improve Ireland’s agricultural land was through railroad construction.  Toward that end, he sent engineers to Ireland to investigate the issue and, with their reports in hand, attempted to persuade Parliament to his thinking.  Alas, Bentinck’s sage advice was not heeded.

One is left to wonder what the impact of a rail system could have been during the darkest days of the Famine when fish, which spoiled too quickly for transport via roadway drays, could have been sent inland; when food depots in rural areas could have been more quickly supplied; and, when the overflow of those in want could have been reallocated between workhouses.  Railroads would also have allowed for food distribution at any place along the lines, not just in towns; it would have enabled the swift movement of aid workers and the military during a time of national crisis.  It might, quite simply, have made a horrific situation markedly less so.