Ireland's Great Famine

During the Famine years the inhabitants of Mauritius, the Seychelles and Rodrigues contributed a remarkable £3,020 to the British Association for the Relief of Distress in Ireland and Scotland—more than that given by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert put together. ¹ Mauritius’s Catholics, roughly a quarter of the population, were led by an English Benedictine monk, the Rev. William Bernard Allen Collier, who was Vicar Apostolic until he was elevated to the bishopric of Port-Louis when it was established in December 1847. ² The crisis in Ireland more than 6,000 miles away precipitated an ‘unprecedented act of public charity’—in the words of Charles E. Trevelyan, the assistant secretary to the Treasury and the chief official in charge of Irish Famine relief—when characterising the private charity that flowed into the country in the wake of successive failures of the potato crop. ³ Trevelyan singled out this donation for particular praise, noting that ‘the amount subscribed at the Seychelles Islands, and at Rodrigues, is very remarkable, when the poverty of their inhabitants is considered’. He failed to take account of one of the most basic features of humanity, namely the poor are always more likely to give to the poor. ⁴