would not be doing their duty as legislators, if they stood by and allowed the people to perish without interfering to prevent it.  Of the Bill before them, [a Bill for the employment of the poor of Ireland,] he said, that its groundwork should have been the profitable employment of the people; but if they set their baronial sessions to work without reference to profitable employment, they would be making relief the only object, whilst they would be wasting capital, and destroying the funds that would employ labour.

The President of the Council, the Marquis of Lansdowne, in offering some remarks on the speech of Lord Monteagle, said he wished to God he could differ from him, in the expectations which he entertained of the too probable, he would not say certain, but the too probable recurrence of that alarming evil, which was even then staring them in the face.  Of course, he said, the Government would endeavour to discharge its duty with efficiency, in every circumstance which arose from the general necessities felt in administering to the wants of a poor country; but he could not be expected, at that moment, to enter more fully into the question.  He referred, in terms of approbation, to the measures taken by the late Government, in November, 1845, to meet the famine; of their prudent foresight in supplying Indian meal, he entirely approved.

It was a matter of course, according to Lord Lansdowne, that the Government would try to discharge its duty, but he more than hints at the difficulty of relieving a poor country, like Ireland.  Yes, he spoke the truth, Ireland was poor—­poor with the poverty brought upon her by wicked laws, enacted to make her poor, and keep her so; and that poverty is flung in her face by an English Minister, at a time when the effects of those laws had brought her people to the brink of one common grave—­not the grave of a slaughtered army, but the vast monster-grave of a famine-slain nation.  “Was there ever heard of such a thing,” writes Lord Cloncurry, “as the almost yearly famine of this country, abounding in all the necessaries of life, and endeavouring to beg or borrow some of its own money to escape starvation."[116]

The Earl of Devon, a man eminently qualified to offer an opinion at such a crisis, touched the true point, when he said, there was a matter which he regarded as of still greater importance than public works, and that was the employment of the people in improving the soil and increasing the productive powers of the country.

All relief from Government ceased, as we have seen, on the 15th of August.  On the 17th, the Prime Minister went into a general statement of what had been done by Sir Robert Peel’s Government to meet the Irish Famine.  He detailed the measures adopted by them, in a spirit of approval, like Lord Lansdowne, and dwelt, of course, with especial laudation on the celebrated purchase of Indian meal;—­its wisdom, its prudence, its generosity, its secrecy—­not