Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary at the treasury (1840–59), is probably the best-known nineteenth century British civil servant. He was the author of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the civil service and a key figure in the British government's relief programs during the Irish famine of the 1840s. Robin Haines believes that historians have caricatured and maligned Trevelyan, that “on the evidence of a few selected passages, their authors have convinced themselves and others, that Trevelyan was the fiend he was held to be” (xii). Haines sets out “to test the well-known proposition that Trevelyan was more powerful than the politicians he served, a despot calling the tune in Westminster” (xiv). He also questions “the received view that there were major differences in the development and implementation of relief policy between the Conservative government under Peel, from 1845, and the Whig government under Russell, from mid-1846” (xiv). Haines's assertions might well have been valid in the 1960s, but not today.

Haines traces the origins of this caricature of Trevelyan to Jennifer Hart's article on “Sir Charles Trevelyan at the Treasury,” published in English Historical Review in 1960; this article undoubtedly influenced the portrayal of Trevelyan in Cecil Woodham-Smith's best-selling book, The Great Hunger (1962). Woodham-Smith saw Trevelyan as the architect of Liberal government's famine relief policies, and she praised Peel's relief program while condemning the harsher regime of the Liberals. But scholars such as Kevin B. Nowlan, author of a major section of R. Dudley Edwards and T. D. Williams, The Great Famine (Dublin, 1956), never accepted that Trevelyan was primarily responsible for devising the Liberal government's famine relief policy (here I am drawing on my experience as a student of Nowlan at University College Dublin), though The Great Famine did distinguish between a benign Peelite relief program and a harsher regime under Russell. But Peter Gray's important Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843–1850 (Dublin, 1999) dispels both of Haines's starting assumptions. Gray believes that Trevelyan “indisputably played a wilful and destructive role in the relief administration of 1846, and was clearly motivated by his own policy agenda. Nevertheless, his frequent depiction as the bête noire of the period has been allowed to obscure the government's policy errors” (135); Gray also emphasizes that the famine relief program of the Liberal government was “an adaptation” of measures adopted by the Conservative government “rather than a radical departure” (230).

Furthermore Haines's method of refuting the caricatures of Trevelyan—an exhaustive account of the correspondence of the leading politicians and officials responsible for Irish famine relief—serves to confirm some of the images that Haines is determined to refute. Hart claimed that Trevelyan was obsessed with hard work and with trivia (547). Among the many vignettes that Haines gives us is Trevelyan sampling bread baked from a combination of maize, wheat, and rye; requiring his unfortunate family to eat maize served in various ways, including leftover maize from the previous day; extensive correspondence about disposing of the wheelbarrows and shovels left over from the discontinued relief works, and about allocating bread ovens in the west of Ireland; and Trevelyan personally tasting and commenting on samples of cured haddock and herring sent him from experimental curing stations in Ireland. Although reporting lines were undoubtedly less clear-cut than in a modern government, Trevelyan appears to have intruded well beyond his immediate responsibilities when he insisted that all principle officers in charge of relief operations write to him personally and that he should see all reports submitted by Irish Poor Law inspectors.

Some of the most interesting material in this book relates to Trevelyan's concern with the historical record. At the height of the famine he found time to devote attention to the preservation of official records—one reason why the Irish famine is probably the best-documented natural disaster in modern history—he took personal charge of compiling the blue books, containing correspondence and memoranda regarding famine policy. It is instructive to learn that these publications, which have been extensively used by historians of the Irish famine, were edited to avoid causing offense—there is scope for further work on this. In January 1848, the Edinburgh Review published his anonymous essay, “The Irish Crisis,” setting out Britain's policy with regard to the famine and Irish rural society. However, this historical record has probably damaged Trevelyan's reputation; while Haines struggles to suggest that he was sympathetic to the Irish, the self-righteous tone of “The Irish Crisis” suggests otherwise.

Haines notes that to Trevelyan, the Irish crisis was a crisis in exchequer funding, and a food crisis; “in bureaucratic terms, the crisis was over once direct government funding, via temporary relief measures had ceased, with the disbandment of the Board of Works and the Relief Commission, leaving local government in charge” (406). Trevelyan had long favored making the poor law the primary method of relief—because this placed the burden on Irish landlords. He was opposed to public works, because they let landlords off the hook; as a Malthusian he believed that assisted emigration would only create space for a new generation of impoverished peasants. The antipathy of a large section of the British political elite toward Irish landlords at the time of the famine needs to be factored into any analysis of famine policy—and Haines provides ample material for this; yet however justifiable this hostility, the ultimate victims were the Irish poor; few Irish landlords went bankrupt because of the famine.

This is a demanding book; overly long, and overly detailed—its author appears to have contracted some of Trevelyan's obsession with hard work and trivia. While I disagree with the basic premises, I wholeheartedly welcome a lot of the material given here, particularly about the British Association and the later stages of famine relief; it is a reminder that there is further scope for research on the Irish famine.