“With a view to mitigate these evils, very large numbers of men have been employed, and have received wages, in pursuance of an Act passed in the last session of Parliament.  Some deviations from that Act, which have been authorized by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in order to promote more useful employment, will, I trust, receive your sanction.  Means have been taken to lessen the pressure of want, in districts which are most remote from the ordinary sources of supply.  Outrages have been repressed, as far as it was possible, by the military and police.

“It is satisfactory to me to observe, that in many of the most distressed districts, the patience and resignation of the people have been most exemplary.

“The deficiency of the harvest in France and Germany, and other parts of Europe, has added to the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of provisions.

“It will be your duty to consider, what further measures are required to alleviate the existing distress.  I recommend to you to take into your serious consideration, whether, by increasing, for a limited period, the facilities for importing from foreign countries, and by the admission of sugar more freely into breweries and distilleries, the supply of food may be beneficially augmented.

“I have also to direct your earnest attention to the permanent consideration of Ireland.  You will perceive, by the absence of political excitement, an opportunity for taking a dispassionate survey of the social evils which afflict that part of the United Kingdom.  Various measures will be laid before you, which, if adopted by Parliament, may tend to raise the great mass of the people in comfort, to promote agriculture, and to lessen the pressure of that competition for the occupation of land, which has been the fruitful source of crime and misery.”

In the House of Lords, the debate on the address in reply to the Queen’s speech was not very remarkable.  All the speakers admitted that which it was impossible to deny, the terrible reality of the famine, unequalled, as Lord Hatherton said he believed it to be, in past history, and certainly not to be paralleled in the history of modern times.  Lord Brougham made a joke and raised a laugh at the expense of the Irish landlords.  He inclined, he said, to the opinion that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner, but it was objected that such a course would have the effect of bringing the Irish proprietors to England at a time when their presence at home was much needed.  “God forbid,” exclaimed his lordship, “that I should be instrumental in bringing the Irish proprietors over to this country."[192] He further said, in one of those involved sentences of his, “that he held it to be impossible that, when the cry of hunger prevailed over the land—­when there was a melancholy substance as well as the cry—­when the country was distracted from day to day by accounts of the most heartrending spectacles he had ever seen,