Four days later “The General Central Relief Committee for all Ireland” sprang into existence, under the chairmanship of the Marquis of Kildare, the present Duke of Leinster.  This became a very important and useful body, having disbursed, during the year of its existence, over seventy thousand pounds.  Greater still were the results achieved by a committee formed on the 13th of November, 1846, by the Society of Friends.  That admirably managed body sent members of the Society to the most distressed parts of the country, in order to investigate on the spot the real state of things, and report upon them.  This committee received from various parts of the world, the very large sum of L198,326 15s. 5d., two thousand seven hundred of which remained unappropriated when they closed their glorious labours in the cause of benevolence.  But of all the charitable organizations produced by the Famine, the most remarkable was “The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and Scotland."[216] This association received in subscriptions, at home and abroad, over L600,000.  The balance in hands, when they drew up their report, was the very trifling one of fourteen hundred pounds; whilst so many of those more immediately connected with this gigantic work laboured gratuitously, that the whole expense of management was only L12,000, barely two per cent.  Further on, I shall have an opportunity of speaking more in detail of charitable committees.

There is one curious fact regarding the Government in connection with those committees.  It is this:  The Government seemed anxious to have it understood, that it was not the money outlay which concerned or alarmed them, but the difficulty of procuring food, and the probability of not being able to procure it in sufficient quantity, by any amount of exertion within their power.  “Last year,” writes Mr. Trevelyan, “it was a money question, and we were able to buy food enough to supply the local deficiency; but this year it is a food question.  The stock of food for the whole United Kingdom is much less than is required; and if we were to purchase for Irish use faster than we are now doing, we should commit a crying injustice to the rest of the country.”  And again, in the same letter:  “I repeat that it is not a money question.  If twice the value of all the meal which has been, or will be, bought, would save the people, it would be paid for at once."[217] In face of this assertion, our Government, as we have already seen, allowed the French, Belgians, and Dutch, who were in far less need than we, to be in the food markets before them, and to buy as much as they required—­even in Liverpool, which they cleared of Indian corn in a single day.  If food were the difficulty, and not money, it is not easy to see what great advantage there was in those charitable associations, formed to receive money subscriptions for the purchase of food.  Of what use was money, if food were not procurable with it?  The aid of such bodies,