if he did not come forward and address the House in the language which they had already heard from him, but nothing that fell from him was conceived in a spirit of hostility to the minister of the crown.  He told the Government that if they did not like to carry out the measure, they ought to do what Mr. Pitt did in 1793, appoint a commission—­an unpaid commission—­to carry it out.  “Let them put me,” said Lord George, “at the head of that commission, and I will be responsible for carrying out the plan, without the loss of a shilling to the country; if I fail, I am willing to accept the risk of impeachment.  I offer no quarter; it is most just that I should receive no quarter.  I offer myself to carry out the measure at the risk of impeachment, without its costing the country a single shilling.  I am quite willing to be answerable for its success.  It is a measure offered on no old party grounds; it is a measure that rests on no religious prejudices; it confiscates no property; it introduces no agrarian law; it will feed the hungry and clothe the naked, by borrowing from the superfluities of the rich.  It is my honest and earnest prayer that it may be successful; and, should it fail, I care not if it be the last time I address this or any other mortal assembly.”

Although the more usual course would have been for the House to divide after Lord George’s address, during which the call for a division was heard more than once, the Prime Minister, as a mark of respect to the House, he said, rose and made a speech, thus giving the Government the last word.  He did not intend to reply to the proposer of the Bill, but he wished to give his view of the existing state of things.  He did so.  It was charged with gloomy apprehensions.  He agreed with Sir Robert Peel, that the finances would not bear the strain a loan of L16,000,000 would put upon them.[210] Six hundred thousand persons were receiving wages on the public works in Ireland, representing, he would say, 3,000,000 of the population.  There were 100,000 in the Workhouses; and, taking with these the thousands subsisting by private charity, there were, he considered, three and a-half millions of the Irish people living by alms.  He repeated, once again (on the authority of some important but nameless person, whom Lord George Bentinck called “the great Unknown"), that only one-fourth of the money expended in making railways went for unskilled labour.  It was well into the small hours of the morning before the division bell rung, after a three nights’ debate.  In a house of 450, the Bill was supported by only 118 votes.  A majority of 214 for the Government left them secure in their places.[211]