but these Acts were not, he said,
so successful as was expected, or as the wants of Ireland required.
Without any desire of being an alarmist, he told the Government that the
prospects of the coming year were infinitely worse than those of the
year then passing away, and that precautionary measures were much more
necessary than ever. The hopes that were at one time entertained by
physiologists, that potatoes raised from the seed might be free from the
infection, had entirely vanished, and there was every reason to
anticipate a failure of the plant itself. Such a failure would, in his
opinion, be the worst event of the kind that had ever happened in
Ireland. No antecedent calamity of a similar nature could be compared
with it. He was, he said, well acquainted with the calamity of 1823, but
that was as nothing compared with the one from which the people had just
escaped. Alluding to the sums of money given by Government, and by
private individuals, he praised the generosity of landlords, naming
three or four who had given considerable subscriptions, one of them
belonging to a class who had been frequently and unjustly attacked, the
class of Absentees.[115] Of the aid given by Government, he said, that
although the funds had been administered as wisely as the machinery of
the law allowed, he entirely denied that they had been economically or
quickly administered for the relief of distress. To a certain extent the
Board of Works must be pronounced a failure. How had it acted when the
duty was confided to it of finding employment? In the County of Clare,
an application was made by Lord Kenmare and himself, to put them in the
way of giving productive employment to the people about them, and their
lordships would, he said, scarcely credit him when he stated that, up to
the present time, they had not been able to obtain the preliminary
survey, so as to enable them to take a single step. His lordship moved,
that an humble address be presented to her Majesty, on the subject of
encouraging industry and employment amongst the people of Ireland.

Some weeks later, Lord Monteagle, addressing himself to the same
subject, said he agreed in the propriety of the Government not
purchasing the Indian corn which would be required that year; at the
same time, he approved of the steps they had taken the year previous, in
purchasing Indian corn. He called upon their lordships to recollect that
the peasantry of Ireland grow their own food, and t