most chiefly wanted, not for the purpose of lowering the
price of corn and food (which I never expected it could do, which I
urged it could not do, which I endeavoured to show it had no tendency to
do, any more than the Corn Laws had a tendency to keep up the prices of
food); but because I thought it would tend to remodel the whole of our
commercial system, and cause it to assume such a shape and position with
respect to Foreign Powers, as to prevent them from excluding our
manufactures, by opening our ports to their corn, and such as would give
us a reasonable prospect that their restrictions would be removed, and
our manufactures allowed to penetrate into these foreign markets." And
further on in the same speech, "I shortly restate," he said, "the ground
on which I rested for the repeal or the modification of the Corn Law
system. I did not, because I could not, hold to the people of this
country--I could not honestly hold out to them, that it would make bread
cheap.... I did not argue that the Corn Law was the cause of famine,
that it was the cause of disease, that it was the cause of crime, that
it was the cause of mortality, in this country."--_(Hansard)_.

[90] Smith O'Brien occupied far more of the time and attention of the
House of Commons, during the Session, by his refusal to serve on a
railway Committee than by his speeches. This refusal gave rise to some
delicate questions of constitutional law, and consigned the hon.
gentleman to prison for twenty-five days. _See note_ B, APPENDIX.

[91] Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, 5th edition, revised,
p. 158.

[92] Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, by Benjamin D'Israeli.

[93] Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs, part 3, page 310. Any one can see how
little poor famine-stricken Ireland was before Sir Robert's mind, when
he penned the above lines.

[94] The Irish Crisis, by Sir Charles E. Trevelyan.

[95] This observation was, in all probability, levelled at the _Dublin
Evening Mail_; a newspaper which Sir Lucius would be sure to read, being
one of the organs of his party, and which had, sometime before, with a
heartless attempt at humour, called the blight "the potato mirage."

[96] The _Freeman's Journal_.

[97] _Ibid._ This correspondent tells an anecdote of a peasant whose
heroic generosity contrasts strongly with the conduct of the above noble
proprietors. He (the correspondent) stood by a pit of potatoes whilst
the owner, a small farmer, was