23.  That an address be presented to her most gracious Majesty, the Queen, setting forth in the most respectful, but, at the same time, the most urgent manner, that the present state of provisions in Ireland is inadequate to support the people of that country; that the resources of the landed proprietors, gentry, and merchants, are altogether unequal to meet the present emergency; and that we, therefore, pray that her Majesty may be graciously pleased to direct her Parliament, immediately on their assembling, to take into consideration the speediest and most effectual means of importing provisions into Ireland, so as to provide, as far as possible, the necessary food for the people.

These resolutions go very fully into the state of the country, its evils and their remedies.  They contain much that is wise and well intended, and some of the measures suggested in them will be found in the programme of the Government, or, as their plan was called by their friends,—­the “group of measures,” by which the present and future of Ireland were to be settled to the satisfaction and advantage of all parties.  The Rotunda meeting having been held only a few days before the assembling of Parliament was just in time to exercise an influence on the measures the Government had in preparation, to meet the existing Irish difficulty; and very possibly it had that effect.  One thing the landlords who met in the Round-room had evidently set their hearts on—­there was to be an extensive emigration—­the land was to be cleared.  If half the improvements suggested in the resolutions were undertaken, instead of a surplus population, labour enough could not be had for the purpose of carrying them out:  if piers and harbours were taken in hand, and if the earthworks of the projected railways were commenced, and if the reclamation of the waste lands were seriously taken up, the labour wasted on the barren road-making would be found insufficient for such gigantic undertakings:  but the piers were not built; the harbours were not deepened or improved; the waste lands were not reclaimed; the railway earthworks were left to private enterprise—­but EMIGRATION—­Oh! that darling object was always in favour with the ruling class, and most effectively promoted by wholesale eviction.  The people were sent to benefit the colonies, as the 14th resolution suggested, by their labour; sent “to increase the supply of food throughout the world [except in Ireland], to bring fresh land under cultivation,” and above all to “largely extend the market for home manufacture.”  Yes, that last was a happy hit to secure the willing ear of the “mother country;” as for the poor “sister island,” from which all those people were to emigrate, she had no manufactures to open a market for.  But the Rotunda people would send away another class too.  The last clause of the 12th resolution reads thus:  “that as there must be a large amount of population dependent for subsistence, during the year, upon public