On the last day of July, Lord Monteagle brought forward, in the House of Lords, a motion for the employment of the people of Ireland, of which he had given notice whilst the Peel Government were yet in office.  He gave credit to that Government for good intentions in passing several Acts for the employment of the people, but these Acts were not, he said, so successful as was expected, or as the wants of Ireland required.  Without any desire of being an alarmist, he told the Government that the prospects of the coming year were infinitely worse than those of the year then passing away, and that precautionary measures were much more necessary than ever.  The hopes that were at one time entertained by physiologists, that potatoes raised from the seed might be free from the infection, had entirely vanished, and there was every reason to anticipate a failure of the plant itself.  Such a failure would, in his opinion, be the worst event of the kind that had ever happened in Ireland.  No antecedent calamity of a similar nature could be compared with it.  He was, he said, well acquainted with the calamity of 1823, but that was as nothing compared with the one from which the people had just escaped.  Alluding to the sums of money given by Government, and by private individuals, he praised the generosity of landlords, naming three or four who had given considerable subscriptions, one of them belonging to a class who had been frequently and unjustly attacked, the class of Absentees.[115] Of the aid given by Government, he said, that although the funds had been administered as wisely as the machinery of the law allowed, he entirely denied that they had been economically or quickly administered for the relief of distress.  To a certain extent the Board of Works must be pronounced a failure.  How had it acted when the duty was confided to it of finding employment?  In the County of Clare, an application was made by Lord Kenmare and himself, to put them in the way of giving productive employment to the people about them, and their lordships would, he said, scarcely credit him when he stated that, up to the present time, they had not been able to obtain the preliminary survey, so as to enable them to take a single step.  His lordship moved, that an humble address be presented to her Majesty, on the subject of encouraging industry and employment amongst the people of Ireland.

Some weeks later, Lord Monteagle, addressing himself to the same subject, said he agreed in the propriety of the Government not purchasing the Indian corn which would be required that year; at the same time, he approved of the steps they had taken the year previous, in purchasing Indian corn.  He called upon their lordships to recollect that the peasantry of Ireland grow their own food, and they were, by this disease of the potato crop, deprived of the first necessary of life.  Under these circumstances, therefore, however they might respect the doctrines of strict political science and non-interference, yet they