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On the Irish Question: A Report by Karl Marx (1867)

Editor’s Note: In December 1867, Karl Marx delivered a detailed report on the “Irish Question” to the Communist Educational Association of German Workers in London. This document is the outline of that speech. It provides a blistering analysis of English colonial policy in Ireland, arguing that the system, even in its supposedly “milder” modern form, was designed for the systematic destruction of the Irish nation. Marx traces the history of conquest, confiscation, and economic suppression that led to the famines, mass emigration, and social ruin of the 19th century. This text reveals Marx’s deep engagement with anti-colonial struggles and his view that the liberation of Ireland was a prerequisite for the liberation of the English working class itself.

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I. The Character of Fenianism

What is distinctive of Fenianism? Actually, it originates from the Irish Americans. They are the initiators and leaders. But in Ireland, the movement took root (and is still really rooted) only in the mass of the people, the lower orders. That is what characterises it.

In all earlier Irish movements, the people followed the aristocracy or middle-class men, and always the Catholic churchmen. The Anglo-Irish chiefs and the priests during the rising against Cromwell; even James II, King of England, in the war against William III; the Protestant Republicans of Ulster (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald) [111] in the 1798 revolution and, finally, in this century the bourgeois O’Connell supported by the Catholic clergy.

The Catholic clergy decreed a ban on Fenianism, which it did not lift until it realised that its attitude would deprive it of all influence on the Irish masses.

II. England’s Bafflement

Here is what baffles the English: they find the present regime mild compared with England’s former oppression of Ireland. So why this most determined and irreconcilable form of opposition now?

What I want to show—and what even those Englishmen who side with the Irish, who concede them the right to secession, do not see—is that the regime since 1846, though less barbarian in form, is in effect destructive, leaving no alternative but Ireland’s voluntary emancipation by England or a life-and-death struggle.

III. A History of Conquest and Colonisation

a) Before the Protestant Reformation (1172-1500s)

In 1172, Henry II conquered less than one-third of Ireland. It was a nominal conquest, gifted to him by Pope Adrian IV, the Englishman. Some 400 years later, another Pope, Gregory XIII, took back the “present” from Queen Elizabeth I. [112]

The English colony was confined to the “English Pale,” [113] with Dublin as its capital. Outside this fortified zone, a war of conquest was conducted as if against “Red Indians.” There was significant mixing of English colonists and Anglo-Norman nobles with the native Irish chiefs. No significant English reinforcements were sent to Ireland until 1565.

b) The Protestant Epoch & Colonisation Plan (16th-17th Centuries)

The plan of the English was now explicit:

To exterminate the Irish, at least up to the river Shannon, take their land, and settle English colonists in their place. This policy involved clearing the island of the natives and stocking it with loyal Englishmen.

They succeeded in planting a new landowning aristocracy of English Protestant “adventurers” (merchants and usurers) who received confiscated lands from the English Crown.

• Elizabeth I settled Munster.
• James I settled Ulster with the “Jacobite plantation” (1609-12), giving British undertakers stolen lands. It was not until 1613 that the Irish were even considered English subjects; previously, they were “outlaws” and “enemies.” [114]
• Cromwell conducted the 2nd Complete Conquest of Ireland following the Irish Revolution of 1641. The conquest, completed in 1652, was followed by a massive division of spoils. The policy was to “smite the Amalekites of the Irish Nation hip and thigh” and replant the land with Puritan English. [115] This resulted in bloodshed, devastation, depopulation of entire counties, and the sale of many Irish into slavery in the West Indies.

By engaging in the conquest of Ireland, Cromwell threw the English Republic out the window. Thence the Irish mistrust of the English people’s party.

c) The Second Irish Revolt & William III (1660-1692)

Following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, Charles II and James II began to favor the Catholic interest in Ireland. By 1685, the Irish Catholic army was increased, and Catholics began demanding the repeal of the Acts of Settlement to reclaim their lands. This led to the war between James II (backed by the Irish) and William III.

The war ended with the Capitulation of Limerick in 1691. The treaty’s terms were violated shamefully, first under William III and even more so under Queen Anne. [116]

d) Ireland Defrauded and Humbled to the Dust (1692-1776)

Any notion of “planting” the country with English yeomen was discarded. The new policy was one of systematic economic destruction.

• 1698: The Anglo-Irish Parliament, on command from England, passed a prohibitory tax on the export of Irish woollen goods.
• 1698: The English Parliament laid a heavy tax on the import of Irish home manufactures into England and Wales and absolutely prohibited their export to other countries.

This policy struck down the manufactures of Ireland, depopulated her cities, and threw the people back upon the land. It also gave rise to the class of absentee landlords—imported English lords who lived in England off Irish rents. [117]

This period saw the creation of the infamous Penal Code [119], a set of laws designed to dispossess Irish Catholics of their property and rights. It was a code for the transfer of property from Catholics to Protestants, making “Anglicanism” a proprietary title.

• Teaching the Catholic religion was a transportable felony.
• Converting a Protestant was high treason, punishable by being hanged, disembowelled alive, and quartered.
• Catholics were deprived of the vote and could not hold public office. [120]

This Penal Code intensified the hold of the Catholic Priesthood upon the Irish people.

e) Time of Transition (1776-1801)

The North American Revolution was the first turning-point in modern Irish history. With the British army’s surrender at Saratoga Springs in 1777, the British cabinet was forced to make concessions.

• 1778-1782: The Penal Code was relaxed, allowing Catholics to acquire freehold property and open schools.
• 1779: Free Trade with Great Britain was established, and restraints on Irish industry were swept away.
• 1783: The Anglo-Irish Parliament was granted equal rights.
• 1793: With war against France looming, Irish Catholics were granted the elective franchise.

However, the Rebellion of 1798 by the Belfast Republicans (led by Wolfe Tone and Lord Fitzgerald) was crushed. In 1800, the Anglo-Irish House of Commons voted for the Act of Union, closing the struggle between the Anglo-Irish and the English. The colony itself protested against the illegal Act.

IV. The Period of the Last 20 Years (from 1846)

The Collapse of Irish Industry (1801-1846)

The legislative independence from 1783 had allowed Ireland to impose duties on foreign manufactures to protect its own surplus labor. The Act of Union reversed this. The natural consequence was the gradual disappearance of Irish manufactures.

Table 1: The Collapse of Irish Manufacturing After the Act of Union

Industry & Location	Workers/Looms (c. 1800)	Workers/Looms (c. 1840)
Master woollen manufacturers (Dublin)	91	12
Hands employed (Dublin)	4,918	602
Silk-loom weavers (Dublin)	2,500	250
Blanket manufacturers (Kilkenny)	56	42
Hands employed (Kilkenny)	3,000	925
Calico-looms at work (Balbriggan)	2,500 (in 1799)	226
Handlooms at work (Wicklow)	1,000	0
Braid weavers (Cork)	1,000	40
Worsted weavers (Cork)	2,000	90
Cottonweavers (Cork)	2,000	220

The linen industry in Ulster did not compensate for this nationwide collapse. As T.F. Meagher stated in a speech in 1847:

“The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives, has been destroyed; the 3,400 silk looms have been destroyed; the serge manufacture… has been destroyed… One business alone survives! That fortunate business—which the Union Act has not struck down—that favoured, and privileged, and patronised business is the Irish coffin-maker’s.”

Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she was crushed and reconverted into a purely agricultural land.

By 1861, approximately 4/5 of the population was purely agricultural. Ireland became a country where “Land is life” (Justice Blackburne). The people had a choice between occupation of land, at any rent, or starvation. This created the system of rack-renting, with enormous rents and low wages, forcing a population of wretched starvers to subsist on potatoes and water.

Clearing of the Estate of Ireland (1846 Onwards)

This new period was ushered in by the potato blight (1846-47), starvation, and the consequent exodus.

• Over one million people died, from hunger or hunger-related diseases.
• In nine years (1847-55), 1,656,044 people left the country.

This process, which began as a “natural” result of barren fields, soon became a conscious and deliberate system driven by several factors:

1. Repeal of the Corn Laws: This ended Ireland’s monopoly on the English corn market, causing prices to drop and making rents unpayable. Meanwhile, the price of meat and wool rose, incentivizing a shift from crop farming to pasturage.
2. The English Pauper Law: An Act passed in 1847-48 forced Irish landlords to support their own paupers. In response, landlords, mostly deep in debt, sought to get rid of the people and clear their estates.
3. The Encumbered Estates Act (1853?): This act allowed for the summary sale of estates from ruined landlords to new ones (often English capitalists and insurance societies) who wanted to run their farms on “modern” (i.e., cleared) economic lines.

This led to mass evictions, carried out forcibly by “crowbar brigades” with police and soldiery.

“The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time…. The work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the latter, the ‘crowbar brigade’ advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses. … The sun that rose on a village sets on a desert.”

— Galway Paper, 1852

The Results of This Process

1. Sterilisation of the Land

The new system of consolidated farms and pasturage led to the land being underfed and overworked, causing a continuous decline in agricultural productivity.

Table 2: Decrease in Cultivated Land (1861-1866)

Crop Type	Decrease in Acres
Cereal Crops	470,917
Green Crops	128,061

Table 3: Decrease in Yield Per Acre (1847-1865)

Crop	Decrease in Yield
Oats	16.3%
Flax	47.9%
Turnips	36.1%
Potatoes	50%

2. Decrease and Deterioration of the Population

While emigration accounted for much of the population decline, it wasn’t the only factor. The very structure of the population was altered, leading to a lower birth rate and physical decline.

• Population: Fell from 8,222,664 in 1841 to 5,764,543 in 1861.
• Emigration (1845-66): Approximately 2,000,000 Irish emigrated, representing about 2/5 of the total emigration from the United Kingdom.
• Physical Deterioration: Between 1851 and 1861, while the population decreased enormously, there was an absolute increase in the number of deaf-mutes, blind, insane, idiotic, and decrepit inhabitants, rising from a combined total of around 20,000 to over 28,000.

3. The Condition of the Labourer

As Professor Cliffe Leslie wrote in The Economist (Feb 9, 1867):

“After a loss of two-fifths of the population in 21 years, throughout most of the island the rate of wages is now only 1s. a day; a shilling does not go farther than 6d. did 21 years ago. Owing to this rise in the ordinary food the labourer is worse off than he was ten years ago.“

4. Consolidation of Farms & Replacement of People with Livestock

• Between 1855-66, 1,032,694 Irishmen were replaced by 996,877 head of livestock (cattle, sheep, and pigs).
• The total number of farms decreased by 120,000 between 1851 and 1861, with the decrease affecting almost exclusively farms under 15 acres.
• By 1861, about 2/5 of Ireland’s land (8 million acres) was held by just 31,927 large-scale tenants.

In sum, it is a question of life and death.

V. United States and Fenianism

(Editor’s Note: The content for this final section is missing from Marx’s outline manuscript.)

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Explanatory Notes

(These notes were compiled by the editors of the original source, “Marx and Engels on Ireland,” and provide historical context for the names and events mentioned in the text.)

[110] This outline is a draft conspectus for the report on the Irish question Marx was to make at the meeting of the German Workers’ Educational Association in London on December 16, 1867.

[111] A reference to the three biggest national liberation uprisings in Ireland: The 1641-52 uprising, the 1689-91 uprising, and the 1798 uprising led by revolutionaries like Theobald Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald of the “United Irishmen.”

[112] About 1166 Pope Adrian IV issued a bull which conferred on the English King Henry II the title of Supreme Ruler of Ireland. In 1576, Pope Gregory XIII declared that Queen Elizabeth I had forfeited the right to the Irish crown.

[113] English Pale – The medieval English colony in South-East Ireland founded by the Anglo-Norman barons in the 1170s. It served as a bridgehead for the complete subjection of Ireland.

[114] The Anglo-Irish Parliament – Convoked at the end of the 13th century, it initially represented only the English colony. In 1801, it was abolished under the Act of Union.

[115] A reference to the Act of Settlement (1652) and Act of Satisfaction (1653) which legalised the wholesale plunder of Irish lands and the forced resettlement of the Irish population to the barren province of Connaught.

[116] A reference to the capitulation at Limerick in October 1691. The surrender terms promised an amnesty, preservation of property, suffrage and religious freedom, but were soon flagrantly violated by the English authorities.

[117] Absentees – Landlords who owned estates in Ireland but lived permanently in England, managing their estates through agents who robbed the Irish peasants.

[118] A reference to the book: W. Molyneux, The Case of Ireland’s Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England Stated, Dublin, 1698.

[119] Penal Code or penal laws – A set of laws passed at the end of the 17th and in the first half of the 18th centuries which deprived Irish Catholics of all civil, political, and property rights.

[120] Catholics were officially deprived of voting rights by the Act on the Regulation of Elections passed in 1727.

[121] Freehold – A category of small landownership which had come down from medieval England. The freeholder paid the lord a comparatively small rent in cash and was allowed to dispose of his land as he saw fit.

[122] The war England waged against Napoleonic France ended in 1815.

[123] Cottiers – A category of the rural population consisting of land-hungry or landless peasants who rented small plots of land on extremely onerous terms.

[124] The Lichfield-House Contract (1835) was an agreement between Daniel O’Connell and the English Whigs, where O’Connell agreed to stop the Repeal of the Union campaign in exchange for political concessions. It represented a compromise by the Irish bourgeoisie.

[125] The corn-acre system – The subletting of small plots to the poorest peasants by middlemen on fettering terms.

[126] The Irishman – An Irish bourgeois weekly (1858-1885) that supported the national liberation movement and defended the Fenians, but with class and national limitations.

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Source: Marx and Engels on Ireland, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, pp. 126-139. Hosted at the Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org).

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