in investigating cases of destitution and distributing food, would, no doubt, be very valuable; but this service they could render the Government as well without subscriptions as with them.  Writing to Sir R. Routh, in December, 1846, Mr. Trevelyan says:  “I have continued to forward the plan of a private subscription, as far as it lay in my power, both in Ireland and in England; and Sir George Grey (Home Secretary) has rendered his more powerful assistance.  I think it will be brought to bear."[218] It was brought to bear; and in a later communication, he speaks of the British Association with evident satisfaction.  “The subscription is going on very well,” he says; “six names down for a thousand pounds each, and a good working committee organized."[219]

The Government, it may be fairly said, should not refuse any aid proffered to them.  Certainly not; but they did more.  They showed a decided anxiety to receive aid in money, not only from landlords, who were bound to give it, but from any and every quarter—­even from the Great Turk himself, who subscribed a thousand pounds out of his bankrupt treasury, to feed the starving subjects of the richest nation in the world.  And the noblemen and gentlemen who signed the Address of Thanks to the Sultan Abdul Medjid Khan, for his subscription, amongst other things, say to his majesty, that “It had pleased Providence, in its wisdom, to deprive this country suddenly of its staple article of food, and to visit the poor inhabitants with privations, such as have seldom fallen to the lot of any civilized nation to endure.  In this emergency, the people of Ireland had no other alternative but to appeal to the kindness and munificence of other countries less afflicted than themselves, to save them and their families from famine and death."[220] Besides making the Famine a money question, this address contains the blasphemous attack upon Divine Providence, so current at the time among politicians.  William Bennett, one of those praiseworthy gentlemen whom the Society of Friends sent to distribute relief in the Far West, was, however, of opinion that the responsibility of the Irish Famine should not be laid at the door of Divine Providence, at least without some little investigation.  In his letters to his committee, he endeavoured, he says, to give a bird’s-eye view, as it were, of the distressed portions of Ireland, drawn upon the spot, with the vivid delineation of truth, but without exaggeration or colouring.  And what is the picture, he asks?  “Take the line of the main course of the Shannon continued north to Lough Swilly, and south to Cork.  It divides the island into two great portions, east and west.  In the eastern there are distress and poverty enough, as part of the same body suffering from the same cause; but there is much to redeem.  In the west it exhibits a people, not in the centre of Africa, the steppes of Asia, the backwoods of America—­not some newly-discovered tribes of South Australia, or among