James Snipplet
James Joseph Snipplet (13 February 1809 – 19 August 1879) was a widely respected member of the British Parliament and lesser known as a poet and songwriter.
A member of the House of Commons under Prime Ministers Sir Robert Peel (1841–1846) and Lord John Russell (1846–1852), Snipplet is best known for his impassioned speeches and staunch backroom diplomacy as an advocate for the rights of the poor during the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1852).
Visiting Ireland for the first time in the summer of 1834, Snipplet, a young industrialist, sought a suitable location to build a cotton gin. Touring the countryside, Snipplet was struck with the undaunted spirit of the people, even though they lived in hopeless poverty.
On his second visit, James met and fell in love with Emma Shanley, the daughter of a struggling tenant farmer. After several subsequent visits and numerous love letters, the two married on 2 August 1836. It was this union that would in later years give Ireland a clarion voice in the House of Commons during the Great Potato Famine, for not only did the young industrialist fall in love with Emma, he also fell in love with Ireland.
The potato blight arrived in Ireland in 1844 and by 1846 some seventy-five percent of the crops were lost. The years that followed were disastrous for Irish tenant farmers, most of whom rented the land from absentee owners in Britain. Such plots were so small that the potato was the only viable crop that could be grown. To make matters worse, as the British taste for beef increased, landowners found greater profit in turning acreage used for potato farming into pastures for raising cattle. Thus, the Industrial Revolution that provided wealth and prosperity to the British forced many of their Irish counterparts to live on the verge of starvation.
Throughout the first half of the Nineteenth Century, Parliament empowered numerous commissions and committees to address the continuing economic and social issues to plague Ireland. The Royal Commission, which convened in 1843, was the first of these to which James Snipplet was appointed. Made up entirely of British landowners, with no representation given to Irish tenants, its one-sided conclusion was that the "Irish problem" was nothing more than poor relations between tenants and landowners.
Initially, Snipplet listened to the debates in silence. In time, however, he could no longer hold his tongue. Deeply angered by such blatant political piety, his was a less popular view. Convinced that the policies of the British government and wholesale discrimination by its citizens had worked together for decades to diminish the rights of the Irish people and entrench them in dire poverty, James Snipplet devoted the remainder of his political career to righting what he saw as an intolerable wrong.
Allie Shanley, Snipplet’s mother-in-law, died on 30 November 1847, just days before the House of Commons passed the Crime and Outrageous Act. Staunchly opposed, and with Allie’s death fresh in his memory, Snipplet led the minority debate. During this time, the fervent lawmaker became an overnight icon, arguing on the Commons floor, "Not one snippet of British or Irish blood is any more or less precious than another. All our veins are filled with the common blood of the Union Jack." In response, his political enemies took up the chant, "Snipplet argues snippets! Snipplet argues snippets!" By the end of the day, the Act easily passed and Snipplet was thoroughly humiliated. For years following, in colloquial English the name "Snipplet" was synonymous with the word "snippet," both meaning a small portion or fragment of the whole.
As a songwriter and musician, James Snipplet is less known. His most notable piece, Letters to Emma, caught the public’s attention well after the end of his political career. A collection of tender, romantic letters framed as poems, the work spans two decades and celebrates the love of a man for his wife through both hardship and plenty.
Emma Snipplet died on 22 January 1877 and James followed her some two years later. They were buried next to each other atop a hill overlooking the Irish countryside each loved so very dearly.
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