hey were, by this
disease of the potato crop, deprived of the first necessary of life.
Under these circumstances, therefore, however they might respect the
doctrines of strict political science and non-interference, _yet they
would not be doing their duty as legislators, if they stood by and
allowed the people to perish without interfering to prevent it_. Of the
Bill before them, [a Bill for the employment of the poor of Ireland,] he
said, that _its groundwork should have been the profitable employment of
the people_; but if they set their baronial sessions to work without
reference to profitable employment, they would be making relief the only
object, whilst they would be wasting capital, and destroying the funds
that would employ labour.

The President of the Council, the Marquis of Lansdowne, in offering some
remarks on the speech of Lord Monteagle, said he wished to God he could
differ from him, in the expectations which he entertained of the too
probable, he would not say certain, but the too probable recurrence of
that alarming evil, which was even then staring them in the face. Of
course, he said, the Government would endeavour to discharge its duty
with efficiency, in every circumstance which arose from the general
necessities felt in administering to the wants of a poor country; but he
could not be expected, at that moment, to enter more fully into the
question. He referred, in terms of approbation, to the measures taken by
the late Government, in November, 1845, to meet the famine; of their
prudent foresight in _supplying Indian meal, he entirely approved_.

It was a matter of course, according to Lord Lansdowne, that the
Government would try to discharge its duty, but he more than hints at
the difficulty of relieving a poor country, like Ireland. Yes, he spoke
the truth, Ireland was poor--poor with the poverty brought upon her by
wicked laws, enacted to make her poor, and keep her so; and that poverty
is flung in her face by an English Minister, at a time when the effects
of those laws had brought her people to the brink of one common
grave--not the grave of a slaughtered army, but the vast monster-grave
of a famine-slain nation. "Was there ever heard of such a thing,"
writes Lord Cloncurry, "as the almost yearly famine of this country,
abounding in all the necessaries of life, and endeavouring to beg or
borrow some of its own money to escape starvation."[116]

The Earl of Devon, a man eminently qualified t