When Lord John says, that “any attempt to feed one class of people of the United Kingdom by the Government, would, if successful, starve another part,” he is rather puzzling.  One is tempted to think that he originally wrote—­“Any attempt to feed one class of people of the United Kingdom at the expense of another class, would, if successful, starve the latter,” and that by some mistake of the writer or printer, the words in italics were omitted.  As the sentence stands in his letter, it is strangely inexact. 1.  In case one portion of the people had raised more food than was required for their own wants—­a most common case, they would not surely starve by the fact of the Government buying their surplus for another portion who were starving—­no, but they would thank the Government very much for buying it.  There would be no danger of their finding fault with the quality of their customer, provided they got their price. 2.  What are Governments for, if not for the good of the people?—­and the Government that sees millions of its people dying of starvation, with none others to help them, neglect the very first duty of a Government—­the salus populi—­unless they make all the efforts in their power to relieve and save them. 3.  Besides, to feed one part of the people—­the starving Irish people—­is just the thing Lord John’s Government did attempt to do, although badly.  There is, moreover, a fallacy in calling the Irish people, in every instance, a class of people of the United Kingdom, for they have often been, and still are, treated as a distinct and separate nation, or class of people.  In such a case it is assumed that our interests and those of England and Scotland are identical, whereas they are no such thing.  We used to be legislated for separately, and in many instances we are so legislated for to-day, which need not be the case if Lord Russell’s assumption were true.  Again:  England is a great manufacturing country, whilst Ireland has no manufactures; from the nature of things the interests of two such peoples could not be identical, and yet Lord John Russell and many others talk and write about Ireland as a portion of the people of the United Kingdom, in the sense that we are partakers of the great material prosperity that manufactures have brought to England, which is supposing that a fair proportion of the manufactures of the United Kingdom are established and flourishing in Ireland:  but so far from this being the case,—­so far from Lord John’s political ancestors having supposed the interests of England and Ireland to be identical, they never ceased, until by a code of unjust and tyrannical commercial laws, they destroyed all the manufactures we had, in order, as they avowed, to encourage the same manufactures in England.  What position did we then occupy as a class of people of the United Kingdom?  Where were Lord John’s wonderful free trade principles then?  The time had not come for them.  No; but when his countrymen had monopolized our manufactures by shameful prohibitions; when England had become supreme as a manufacturing nation, and when she wanted cheap bread for her artizans and markets for her wares, then arose the anti-Cornlaw League; then, but not till then, did Free Trade become the only saving gospel with enlightened English politicians.