“His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant was there,” wrote the Evening Packet (a Conservative journal); “the ladies Ponsonby and many other fair and delicate creatures assembled; there were earls and countesses, and lords and generals, and colonels and commissioners, and clergymen and doctors; for, reader, it was a gala day,—­a grand gala.”  The provincial press dealt with the proceedings in the same spirit.

Like many other great men, M. Soyer, in a short time, found that Ireland was his “difficulty;” so he resolved, somewhat suddenly, it would appear, to return to the more congenial atmosphere of the Reform Club.  His resolution was thus announced in one of the Dublin morning journals:  “SOYER’S MODEL KITCHEN.—­By the special desire of several charitable ladies, who have visited and paid particular attention to the working of the model kitchen, it will be opened again on Saturday next, from two to six, on which day those ladies, under the direction of Mrs. L——­, will attend and serve the poor.  The admission for the view on that day will be five shillings each, to be distributed by the Lord Mayor in charity; after which the kitchen will be closed, M. Soyer being obliged to leave for the Reform Club, London.”  This smacked very much of a “positively last appearance.”  Referring to it, a Dublin journal exclaims—­“Five shillings each to see paupers feed!  Five shillings each to watch the burning blush of shame chasing pallidness from poverty’s wan cheek!  Five shillings each!  When the animals in the Zoological Gardens can be inspected at feeding time for sixpence!"[251]

A few gentlemen gave M. Soyer a dinner and a snuff box before he left, and so his Irish mission was brought to a close; but his name was not forgotten, for Sawyer’s soup was long a standing joke with a certain class of the Dublin people.  Had the word come into popular use at the time, there is little doubt that M. Soyer’s undertaking to feed the starving Irish would have been called a fiasco.[252]

Philanthropists of a stamp different from M. Soyer brought forward schemes for the good of Ireland at this time.  They related chiefly to the reclamation of her waste lands.  At the opening of Parliament in 1847, Lord John Russell, as we have seen, proposed to introduce a Bill on this subject, one million being the first grant to be made for the purpose.  The plan on which the reclamation was to be carried out is given in the resume of Lord John’s speech at the opening of the session.  It was the very best of the Premier’s measures for the permanent improvement of Ireland; but, according to Mr. D’Israeli, it was faintly proposed, and finally abandoned in deference to the expressed opinion of Sir Robert Peel, who, at the time, governed from the Opposition benches.

This question of the reclamation of our waste lands had been often before Parliament and the public previous to 1847.  The committee relating to the poor of Ireland in the year 1830 refer in their report to no less than twelve preceding sessions in which the importance of reclaiming the Irish wastes was strongly recommended, but the publication of the “Industrial Resources of Ireland,” by Dr. (now Sir Robert) Kane, a short time before the Famine, directed public attention anew to the subject.