Scotland.  Such is a description of what that country was at the end of the seventeenth century.  Dare we, sir, say that the particular laws—­that the particular state of a country—­has no influence; that a country which has been in a perfectly disordered condition—­where robberies have been frequent—­where industry has been interrupted—­may not yet become orderly, civilized, and industrious?  We should be unworthy of being members of this British Parliament were we to give way to despair.”  To prove that the miseries of Ireland could be neither attributed to the soil or the people, the Premier said, at the close of his singularly able and lucid speech:  “There is no doubt of the fertility of the land; that fertility has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers of all nations.  There is no doubt either, I must say, of the strength and industry of its inhabitants.  The man who is loitering idly by the mountain-side, in Tipperary or in Derry, whose potato plot has furnished him merely with occupation for a few days in the year, whose wages and whose pig have enabled him to pay his rent, and eke out afterwards a miserable subsistence—­that man, I say, may have a brother in Liverpool, or Glasgow, or London, who, by the sweat of his brow, from morning to night, is competing with the strongest and steadiest labourer of England and Scotland, and is earning wages equal to any of them.  I do not, sir, therefore, think that either the fertility of the soil of Ireland, or the strength and industry of its inhabitants, is at fault."[201]

During the delivery of the speech here summarized, Lord John Russell was frequently interrupted with an amount of applause very unusual in the House of Commons, and at its close he is reported to have sat down amidst vociferous and continued cheering.

And no wonder, for never did an English Minister touch the grievances of Ireland with a bolder or truer hand than he did on this occasion; but amongst his proposals, that which was of the greatest value, the reclamation of the waste lands, was abandoned,—­in fact, was never brought forward.  May we not well ask, Why were not the permanent measures, now proposed, thought of long before, and passed into laws?  Statesmen appear to have understood them well enough:  why then did it require a famine to have them brought officially before Parliament?  Because it seemed to be the rule with successive Governments to do nothing for Ireland until they were forced to it by agitation, rebellion, famine, or some abnormal state of things, which could not be passed over or resisted.  Here we have a plan sketched for the reclamation of the waste lands of Ireland, which, if in operation for twenty years before, would have gone far to make the famine transient and partial, instead of general and overwhelming, as it was.  Still the plan was very welcome when it came, as it offered the prospect of great future prosperity for this country; everybody felt this, and hence it was hailed with the most unusual