heard, or read of—­that at a time when there was deep misery and distress prevailing, and proved in Ireland—­rendered only the more heartrending, because the more touching, by the patience—­the admirable and almost inimitable patience—­with which it seemed to be borne—­that at a time when that great calamity existed—­when there were scenes enacted all over those districts, which they could find nothing existing in the page of disease and death and pestilence, ever following in the train of famine—­to which nothing existing was to be found in the page of Josephus, or on the canvas of Poussin, or in the dismal chant of Dante ... that they should be in circumstances like these, and yet be able calmly and temperately to take up questions of permanent policy, he held to be absolutely and necessarily impossible.”

More to the point were some of the remarks made by Lord Stanley, then in opposition.  With regard to the awful visitation which afflicted the sister island from one end to the other, he said he believed that no exaggeration could, in many instances, exceed the dreadful reality.  He was quite content, that for the prevention and palliation of the evil, for the purpose of rescuing the country from the guilt of permitting a large portion of its people knowingly to STARVE, there is no sacrifice, no efforts which her Majesty’s Government can call upon the people of this country to make, which will not be cheerfully responded to by the members of your Lordships’ house, and by the representatives of the people, who will, in this case, represent the deliberate and cordial sense of the whole country.  The Labour-rate Act he pronounced “a great blunder.”  With regard to the non-establishment of food depots, he said that if he could accuse the Government of an error on that head, they were led into it by too rigid an adherence to the principles of political economy—­to the abstract principles of political economy, that were meant for the permanent improvement of the people; but the question might arise as to the propriety of acting against such principles, in order to meet an extraordinary emergency.

In the House of Commons, one of the earliest speakers on the address was Smith O’Brien.  He said, he thought he would be wanting in his duty to his country if he did not, on that occasion, make an appeal to the House on behalf of those whose sufferings could not be exaggerated—­could not be described.  He was asked, by assenting to the address, if he was prepared to say that the Government had been altogether guiltless of having produced that frightful state of things; and if he were called upon to affirm, that everything had been done by the Government, which might have been done by them, he would answer, that he believed it was in their power, to prevent one single individual from dying of starvation in Ireland.  He did not impute to them the wilful intention of bringing about a state of things so disastrous, but