let the labour-power
of the country be, at least in the first instance, employed upon it, to
secure food for the next year. 4. Even if it were desirable to continue
employing the people upon those public works, where were they to be
always found? "In many districts it was impossible last year to find
useful public works. Hills were cut down, and new roads made, which,
under ordinary circumstances, no one would have thought worth the
expense which they entailed on the baronies in which they were situated.
In such districts, where are hills and roads to be found upon which the
people may, this year, be employed?"[126] Was it not passing strange,
that, with such difficulties existing, the Government would neither
apply labour to profitable work, nor even allow the old unfinished works
to be completed?

At the time of the Famine it was an unquestionable fact, and (to the
shame of the Government be it said) it is an unquestionable fact to-day,
that no country with any pretence to civilization required its resources
to be developed more than Ireland; in no country could a government be
more imperatively called upon to foster--nay, to undertake and
effect--improvements, than Ireland. In a country so circumstanced, how
disappointing, then, and heart-sickening must it not have been to good
and thoughtful men, to find the Government passing a bill for the
employment of our people on unproductive labour. Not only did the
Labour-rate Act exclude productive labour from its own operations, but
its direct tendency was to discourage and put a stop to improvement on
the part of others. This is manifest enough. The baronies--that is, the
lands of the baronies--were to be taxed to pay for all the works
undertaken to give employment to the starving people. No one could
foresee where or when that taxation was to end. There could be no more
effectual bar to useful improvements. What landowner could afford the
double outlay of paying unlimited taxation, and at the same time of
making improvements on his property? Then, he had to look forward to
other probable years of famine, and he naturally trembled with dismay at
the prospect, as well he might. So far from making improvements, the
commonest prudence warned him to get together and hold fast whatever
money he could, in order to maintain himself and his family when his
property would be eaten up--confiscated--by taxation expended upon
barren works. Private charity, too, was paralysed; private