105. Grey, the Poor and the Irish

Another significant measure passed by the Grey government was a lot less creditable than the Great Reform Act or Abolition of Slavery. The 1834 Poor Law mandated the construction of workhouses and set out to achieve the aim of making public assistance to the unemployed, sick or old, a lot less pleasant than work – an aim often pursued by politicians today as well and which it achieved. It wasn’t that which brought Grey down, however. It was that constant bugbear of British governments, Ireland. Emancipation hadn’t quietened tempers among the Catholic Irish, it had merely refocused anger on another issue, the requirement on the Irish, the majority Catholic, to pay for the support of the Church of Ireland, the equivalent in the island of the Church of England, which was Protestant and immensely wealthy. The effort to do something about that grievance, however, opened splits in the Cabinet, and the resignation of Ministers. In the end, that culminated in the resignation of the Prime Minister himself. Earl Grey was gone. Illustration: Cartoon of the interior of a Workhouse. Public Domain Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License