injure and disparage; on ours (if some of our loudest spokesmen are to be taken as our representatives) of lazy, lawless savages, whose want of industry and energy keeps them ever on the verge of starvation; whose want of respect for life and property makes it unsafe for civilized beings to dwell among them.  England unanimously repudiates the first theory; but is the other much less disgraceful to us?  An independent nation is, in all essentials, what it has made itself by its own efforts; but a nation conquered, and held in subjugation ever since it had a history, is what its conquerors have made it, or have caused it to become.  Yet this reflection does not seem to inspire Englishmen generally with any feeling of shame.  The evils of Ireland sit as lightly on the English conscience as if England had done all which the most enlightened and disinterested benevolence could suggest for governing the Irish well, and for civilizing and improving them.  What has ever yet been done, or seriously attempted, for either purpose, except latterly, by taking off some of the loads which we ourselves have laid on, history will be at a loss to determine."[141]

Some of the officers connected with the relief works expressed their opinion, that the failure of the potato crop and the deficiency of food in the country were both exaggerated.  They threw doubts on the veracity of those with whom they conversed, and warned the Government to be cautious about believing, to the full, the statements made by individuals, committees, or newspapers.  Sir Randolph Routh, the head of the Commissariat Department, in a letter to Mr. Trevelyan, the Assistant-Secretary to the Treasury, says:  “In the midst of much real, there is more fictitious distress; and so much abuse prevails, that if you check it in one channel, it presents itself in another."[142] Again, Assistant Commissary-General Milliken, writing to Sir R. Routh from Galway, informs him that he met a considerable number of carts loaded with meal and other supplies; and there did not, he said, appear that extreme want and destitution that he had expected.[143] More than any other did Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, Chairman of the Board of Works, keep the idea of exaggerated and fictitious distress before the mind of the Treasury, although he began his communications in a far different spirit.  Writing on the 1st of September to Mr. Trevelyan, he says:  “The prospects for the ensuing season are melancholy to reflect upon; the potato crop may now be fairly considered as past; either from disease, or from the circumstance of the produce being small, it has been consumed; many families are now living upon food scarcely fit for hogs.”  And again:  “I am very much afraid that Government will not find free trade, with all the employment we can give, a succedaneum for the loss of the potato.”  Doubtless Colonel Jones soon discovered such views as these to be distasteful to his superiors; so, like a prudent servant, he puts them aside, and in his