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 Laws. He accused the
Government of introducing a new principle for a disaster which he hoped
would be casual, and of announcing that new principle without, in the
least, tracing out how the Corn Laws had contributed to the famine in
Ireland; or how the total abrogation of those laws was likely to
alleviate that country's distress. The Irish members, he said, all asked
for employment; they wished the railways to be made; they expressed
their fears about the want of seed for the ground;--but they said, "if
you wish to complete our ruin destroy our agriculture." Whilst he
expressed the opinion, that there never was a country which called for
more urgent attention on the part of the Government than Ireland did at
the moment, he did not believe, he said, that if they passed the
Government Bill to-morrow, that one more quarter of corn, or one more
hundred weight of meal, would be placed within the reach of the poor of
Ireland, unless it was accompanied by other measures. Sir James Graham
replied, that "it did appear to him, that this matter of the coming
scarcity, if not of famine, in Ireland, had an immediate and
indissoluble connection with the question of the Corn Laws; and that he,
for one, would not propose to the people of Great Britain, to take out
of the taxes of Great Britain public money, t