it was his opinion, and the opinion of others in Ireland, that they had not introduced those measures which were suitable to the condition in which Ireland was placed, and had thus brought about the state of things which was now witnessed.  “To the declaration of the Prime Minister, last session, that there was to be no legislative interference with the price of food, he believed they owed many of the disasters which had taken place in Ireland.”  This sentiment was received with cheers.  Mr. O’Brien then made a point in favour of the Irish landlords.  Was this, he asked, to be considered as a local calamity, or was it to be considered as a national calamity?  If the Irish members were legislating in an Irish parliament, it would be considered by them as a national calamity, and all classes—­the fund holder, the office holder, the mortgagee, the annuitant, would be called on to contribute to the general exertion to alleviate distress.  He wished to learn whether the House considered this as an Imperial calamity or not; and whilst he, for his own part, refrained from any supplication to the Imperial treasury, he could assure the House, that there were millions in Ireland, who did not consider the Union a union in which all the advantages ought to be on the part of England.  England had the advantage of the Irish absentee rents, and the advantage of applying all the resources of Ireland; and the Irish people did not consider that it ought to be looked upon as a union for the advantage of England alone, and no union when it was for the interests of Ireland.  Nothing, he thought, could be more outrageous than that one class, who suffered most from the disasters which had taken place—­namely, the landlords of Ireland—­should be called upon to bear the whole burthen of this calamity.

Smith O’Brien was quite right in saying it was most unreasonable that the Irish landlords should be called upon to bear the whole expense of the Famine, but it is equally true, that, as a body, they made no effort worth the name to stay or mitigate the Famine, until it had knocked at their own hall doors in the shape of rates, present and prospective, that threatened them with the confiscation of their properties.

Mr. Labouchere, the Irish Chief Secretary, as was to be expected, was put up to defend the Government, and to foreshadow the future measures of relief.  His line of defence was a strange one for an English minister to adopt.  It was, that the agricultural population of Ireland, vast in its numbers, were always on the brink of starvation; so that when the potato blight swept the country from sea to sea, it was impossible for the Government to meet the disaster fully.  An English journal of high repute,[193] whose words have been already quoted in these pages, truly said, that for five hundred years Ireland had been completely in the hands of England, to mould and fashion her as she pleased; and now at the end of those five centuries, a British statesman does not blush to urge, as an