Commission
after Commission--the Scientific Commission, the Castle Commission, the
Police inquiry; and these went on analyzing, printing, and distributing
hundreds weight of query sheets, and making reports, long after it was
proved, beyond all doubt, that half the food of the Irish people had
been irretrievably lost, the money value of which was estimated at from
eight to ten millions of pounds sterling. So early as the end of
October, 1845, Dr. Playfair, his own scientific investigator, expressed
to him his opinion that fully one half of the potatoes in Ireland were
perfectly unfit for human food; he said he had made a careful tour of
the potato shops of Dublin, and had found that those potatoes picked as
sound had nineteen bad for fourteen good! Sir Robert Peel knew this in
October, 1845; admitted its truth more than once during the session of
Parliament that followed, and yet the bill which he persisted in
regarding as the only panacea for such a national calamity, did not
become law until the 25th of June, 1846, eight months afterwards; but of
course four millions of foodless Irish must battle with starvation until
the Premier had matured and carried his measure for securing cheap bread
for the artizans of England; and further, those same famishing millions
had, day after day, to submit to be insulted by his false and hollow
assertion, that all this was done for them. Nor can it be urged in his
favour, that the delay in repealing the Corn Laws was the fault of his
opponents, not his own; for no one knew better than he, a shrewd
experienced party leader, that every available weapon of Parliamentary
warfare would be used, as they were used, against his bill for the
repeal of the Corn Laws, in order to strike it down by sheer defeat if
possible, but if not, at least to maim and lop it of its best
provisions.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Mr. Culhoun.

[89] During the debate in the House of Lords on the Address, in January,
1846, Lord Brougham stated his views about the repeal of the Corn Laws;
the reasons why they should be repealed, and the effects of that repeal.
These views must have seemed to many at the time strange enough, if not
eccentric, but they have turned out to be singularly correct. He
said:--"It was my opinion that an alteration in the commercial policy of
this country with respect to corn, as well as to other commodities, was
highly expedient; I will not say solely, but principally, and beyond all
comparison