ust be brought from foreign countries through the
channels of commerce. Let any one look at the tables of our exports of
food during the famine years, and he will see how the case stood. The
food was in the country, on the very ground where it was
required--beside the starving peasant, but was taken away before his
eyes, while he was left to travel day after day three, four, five, and
in many cases six or seven miles for a pound or two of Indian meal,
carried three thousand miles to replace the wheat and oats of his own
country, of which he was deprived; and there are recorded instances of
men falling down dead at their own threshholds, after such journeys,
without having tasted the food which they had sacrificed their lives to
procure.[117]

It was a question of money also. The Government would not advance
enough of money to buy the wheat, oats, or barley of the country; there
must be a food found that was nearest in price to the potato. England
could find a hundred millions of money to spend in fighting for the
Grand Turk; she could find twenty millions for the slave-owners of her
colonies; she could find twenty millions more for the luxury of shooting
King Theodore, but a sufficient sum could not be afforded to save the
lives of five millions of her own subjects.[118]

Lord John having announced the intention of the Government, to bring in
a bill empowering the Lord Lieutenant to summon baronial and county
sessions, for the purpose of providing public works for the Irish
people, proposed that the Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury should
issue Exchequer bills for L175,000 as a grant, and for L255,000 as a
loan, to pay for the works that might be undertaken. He concluded in
these words: "Sir, as I stated at the commencement, this is an especial
case, requiring the intervention of Parliament. I consider that the
circumstances I have stated, of that kind of food which constitutes the
subsistence of millions of people in Ireland being subjected to the
dreadful ravages of this disease, constitutes this a case of exception,
and renders it imperative on the Government and the Parliament to take
extraordinary measures of relief. I trust that the course I propose to
pursue will not be without its counterbalancing advantages: that it will
show the poorest among the Irish people that we are not insensible,
here, to the claims which they have on us in the Parliament of the
United Kingdom; that the whole credit of the Treas