At the time of the Famine it was an unquestionable fact, and (to the shame of the Government be it said) it is an unquestionable fact to-day, that no country with any pretence to civilization required its resources to be developed more than Ireland; in no country could a government be more imperatively called upon to foster—­nay, to undertake and effect—­improvements, than Ireland.  In a country so circumstanced, how disappointing, then, and heart-sickening must it not have been to good and thoughtful men, to find the Government passing a bill for the employment of our people on unproductive labour.  Not only did the Labour-rate Act exclude productive labour from its own operations, but its direct tendency was to discourage and put a stop to improvement on the part of others.  This is manifest enough.  The baronies—­that is, the lands of the baronies—­were to be taxed to pay for all the works undertaken to give employment to the starving people.  No one could foresee where or when that taxation was to end.  There could be no more effectual bar to useful improvements.  What landowner could afford the double outlay of paying unlimited taxation, and at the same time of making improvements on his property?  Then, he had to look forward to other probable years of famine, and he naturally trembled with dismay at the prospect, as well he might.  So far from making improvements, the commonest prudence warned him to get together and hold fast whatever money he could, in order to maintain himself and his family when his property would be eaten up—­confiscated—­by taxation expended upon barren works.  Private charity, too, was paralysed; private exertion of every kind was paralyzed; everything that could sustain or improve the country was paralysed, by this blind, or wicked, or stupid, or headstrong legislation of Lord John Russell’s Government, by which the energies and the capital of the country were squandered upon labour that could not, and was not intended to, make any remunerative return whatever.

Whilst the value of the general principle of employing labour on profitable rather than on unprofitable works was evident enough, and accepted by almost everybody, the practical carrying out of that principle was not without its difficulties.  Those who endeavoured to solve them brought forward plans varying from each other in some particulars; but, taking them collectively, there was sufficient good sense in them to enable the Government to frame a system of reproductive employment for the exigencies of the period.

Fears were entertained by many that much of the arable land would remain unfilled in the ensuing spring, by which the Famine would be perpetuated; and it was thought the labour of the country ought to be made available for that purpose.  A kind-hearted, charitable clergyman, the Rev. William Prior Moore, who endeavoured most zealously to relieve the sufferings of the people, put forward this view very strongly, in letters addressed