On the fifth night of the debate, Sir Robert rose again, and, in his speech, applied himself almost exclusively to the famine part of the question.  He read many letters from persons in high position in Ireland, to prove to the House what was unfortunately but too well known in that country for many months, that the greater portion of the only food of four millions of the people was destroyed.  Reading from an official report, substantially embracing the whole kingdom, he said:  “In four electoral divisions, nearly nine-tenths of the potato crop are gone; in ninety three, between seven-tenths and eight-tenths; and in one hundred and twenty-five, the loss approaches to seven-tenths of the whole crop; in sixteen divisions, to six-tenths; in five hundred and ninety-six divisions, nearly one-half; and in five hundred and eighty-two, nearly four-tenths are destroyed.”  Appealing to the House, he says it has but two courses,—­“to maintain the existing law, or make some proposal for increasing the facilities of procuring foreign articles of food.”  “Will you not, then,” he concludes, in an elaborate peroration, “will you not then cherish with delight the reflection, that, in this, the present hour of comparative prosperity, yielding to no clamour—­impelled by no fear—­except, indeed, that provident fear which is the mother of safety—­you had anticipated the evil day, and, long before its advent, had trampled on every impediment to the free circulation of the Creator’s bounty.”

The old Tory party had, in the beginning, admitted, to a great extent, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland; but seeing the use the Peel Government were making of it, they seem to have agreed to maintain that the reports—­Government as well as others—­were greatly exaggerated,—­and for a purpose.  Lord George Bentinck, the coming leader of the Protectionists, said, that “in his opinion, which every day’s experience confirmed, the potato famine in Ireland was a gross delusion—­a more gross delusion had never been practised upon the country by any Government.”  Mr. Shaw, the member for the University of Dublin, maintained that “great exaggeration existed.”  “The case,” he said, “was not extraordinary—­fever, dysentery, and death being a kind of normal state” in Ireland!

Members on both sides of the House soon began to see, that there was no necessary connection between the potato failure in Ireland, and the repeal of the Corn Laws, although, in all his speeches on the subject, Sir Robert Peel assumed it as a matter of course.  The only member of the Government who attempted to prove this connection, was Sir James Graham.  Mr. Stafford O’Brien, the member for North Northamptonshire, but connected by marriage with the county Clare, and one of the ablest men in the Tory ranks, said he had just returned from Ireland; that there was no exaggeration about the failure of the potato crop there, but that it had nothing to do with the question of the Corn