argument in favour of the Government of which he is a member, that the normal state of Ireland was—­to be on the brink of starvation.  This defence, weak and inconclusive from every point of view, served his colleagues and himself, of course, but little, while it was calculated to cover his nation with shame and confusion.  He goes on to prove the fact, alas! too easily proved; he goes to Lord Devon’s Commission, and tells us from it, that it is no exaggeration to say, that the people of Ireland are the worst housed, the worst clothed, and the worst fed of any people in Europe.  It is a country, proceeds the Secretary, of which I find an account given from a most unexceptionable source, the Commission of Poor Law Enquiry in 1835.  From this Report it appeared, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers, whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two shillings and six pence a week; and that of these one-half were destitute during thirty weeks of every year.  “This,” said he, “is the ordinary condition of Ireland, and it is upon such a country as this that the calamity has fallen—­a calamity which I believe to be without a parallel in modern times.”

Such was the defence of the Irish Chief Secretary.  And here it is worth while remarking, that in the earlier stages of the Famine it was the practice of the government organs to throw doubt on the extent of its ravages which were published, and the Government, apparently acting on these views, most culpably delayed the measures by which the visitation could be successfully combated. Now, their part was to admit to the fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for their want of energy and success in overcoming it.  On the same principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith, goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight.  The money value of the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at L11,250,000:  the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be L4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes L15,916,000.  Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered the money value of the crop which had failed, or the stock of human food which had been supplied.

The chronic poverty and misery of Ireland, as set forth in the Report which the Poor Law Commissioners published in 1835, seems to have been the favourite armoury whence Mr. Labouchere loved to draw his logical weapons, for the defence of the Government on this occasion.  In that Report he finds it stated that “Mayo alone would furnish beggars to all England."[194] Be it remembered, that the Poor Law Commissioners had