{"id":52958,"date":"2019-11-23T05:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=52958"},"modified":"2019-11-23T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T14:51:06","slug":"sir-charles-trevelyan-head-of-the-irish-relief-efforts-during-the-potato-famine-and-creator-of-the-modern-civil-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/23\/sir-charles-trevelyan-head-of-the-irish-relief-efforts-during-the-potato-famine-and-creator-of-the-modern-civil-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Charles Trevelyan, head of the Irish relief efforts during the potato famine, and creator of the modern civil service"},"content":{"rendered":"

By happenstance, after posting the OSP video<\/a> on the history of Ireland, a post at Samizdata<\/em> covered one of the questions I had from OSP’s summary, specifically that the famine was worsened by British “laissez-faire<\/em> mercantilism”. Mercantilism<\/a> is rather different from any kind of laissez-faire<\/em><\/a> system, so it was puzzling to hear Blue link them together as though they were the same thing. Of course, I live in a province currently governed by the Progressive Conservative party, so it’s not like I’m unable to process oxymorons as they go by…<\/p>\n

Anyway, this post by Paul Marks<\/a> looks at the man in charge of the relief efforts:<\/p>\n

Part of the story of Sir Charles Trevelyan<\/a> is fairly well known and accurately told. Charles Trevelyan was head of the relief efforts in Ireland under Russell’s government in the late 1840s \u2013 on his watch about a million Irish people died and millions more fled the country. But rather than being punished, or even dismissed in disgrace, Trevelyan was granted honours, made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and later made a Baronet, not bad for the son of the Cornishman clergyman. He went on to the create the modern British Civil Service \u2013 which dominates modern life in in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Charles Edward Trevelyan (contemporary lithograph). This appeared in one of the volumes of “The drawing-room portrait gallery of eminent personages principally from photographs by Mayall, many in Her Majesty’s private collection, and from the studios of the most celebrated photographers in the Kingdom \/ engraved on steel, under the direction of D.J. Pound; with memoirs by the most able authors”. Many libraries own copies.
Public domain, via Wikimedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

With Sir Edwin Chadwick<\/a> (the early 19th century follower of Jeremy Bentham who wrote many reports on local and national problems in Britain \u2013 with the recommended solution always being more local or central government officials, spending and regulations), Sir Charles Trevelyan could well be described as one of the key creators of modern government. If, for example, one wonders why General Douglas Haig was not dismissed in disgrace after July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme when twenty thousand British soldiers were killed and thirty thousand wounded for no real gain (the only officers being sent home in disgrace being those officers who had saved some of them men by ordering them stop attacking \u2013 against the orders of General Haig), then the case of Sir Charles Trevelyan is key \u2013 the results of his decisions were awful, but his paperwork was always perfect (as was the paperwork of Haig and his staff). The United Kingdom had ceased to be a society that always judged someone on their success or failure in their task \u2013 it had become, at least partly, a bureaucratic society where people were judged on their words and their paperwork. A General, in order to be great, did not need to win battles or capture important cities \u2013 what they needed to do was write official reports in the correct administrative manner, and a famine relief administrator did not have to actually save the population he was in charge of saving \u2013 what he had to do was follow (and, in the case of Sir Charles, actually invent) the correct administrative procedures.<\/p>\n

But here is where the story gets strange \u2013 every source I have ever seen in my life, has described Sir Charles Trevelyan as a supporter of “Laissez Faire<\/em>” (French for, basically, “leave alone”) “non-interventionist” “minimal government” and his policies are described in like manner. […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which probably explains why Blue used the term in the previous video. Then these “laissez-faire<\/em>” policies are summarized, which leads to this:<\/p>\n

None of the above is anything to do with “laissez faire<\/em>” it is, basically, the opposite. Reality is being inverted by the claim that a laissez faire<\/em> policy was followed in Ireland. A possible counter argument to all this would go as follows \u2013 “Sir Charles Trevelyan was a supporter of laissez faire<\/strong> \u2013 he did not follow laissez faire<\/strong> in the case of Ireland, but because he was so famous for rolling back the state elsewhere (whilst spawning the modern Civil Service) \u2013 it was assumed that he must have done so in the case of Ireland<\/em>“, but does even that argument stand up? I do not believe it does. Certainly Sir Charles Trevelyan could talk in a pro free market way (just as General Haig could talk about military tactics \u2013 and sound every inch the “educated soldier”), but what did he actually do when he was NOT in Ireland?<\/p>\n

I cannot think of any aspect of government in the bigger island of the then UK (Britain) that Sir Charles Trevelyan rolled back. And in India (no surprise \u2013 the man was part of “the Raj”) he is most associated with government road building (although at least the roads went to actual places in India \u2013 they were not “from nowhere to nowhere”) and other government “infrastructure”, and also with the spread of government schools in India. Trevelyan was passionately devoted to the spread of government schools in India \u2013 this may be a noble aim, but it is not exactly a roll-back-the-state aim. Still less a “radical”, “fanatical” devotion to “laissez faire<\/em>“.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By happenstance, after posting the OSP video on the history of Ireland, a post at Samizdata covered one of the questions I had from OSP’s summary, specifically that the famine was worsened by British “laissez-faire mercantilism”. Mercantilism is rather different from any kind of laissez-faire system, so it was puzzling to hear Blue link them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,25,84,7],"tags":[509,347,711,33,817],"class_list":["post-52958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","category-economics","category-government","category-history","tag-civilservice","tag-debunking","tag-infrastructure","tag-ireland","tag-laissez-faire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dMa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52971,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52958\/revisions\/52971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}