employment who could not get it--The Death-roll.

To have met the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would
have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the
food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such
being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its
effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery could
be modelled. Great allowance must be therefore made for the shortcomings
of the Government, in a crisis so new and so terrible; but after making
the most liberal concessions on this head, it must be admitted that Lord
John Russell and his colleagues were painfully unequal to the situation.
They either could not or would not use all the appliances within their
reach, to save the Irish people. Besides the mistakes they made as to
the nature of the employment which ought to be given, a chief fault of
their's was that they did not take time by the forelock--that they did
not act with promptness and decision. Other nations, where famine was
far less imminent, were in the markets, and had to a great extent made
their purchases before our Government, causing food to be scarcer and
dearer for us than it needed to be. Thus writes Commissary-General Routh
to the Treasury on the 19th of September:--"I now revert to the most
important of our considerations, the state of our depots. We have no
arrivals yet announced, either at Westport or Sligo, and the remains
there must be nothing, or next to nothing. The bills of lading from Mr.
Erichsen are all for small quantities, which will be distributed, and
perhaps eaten, in twelve or twenty-four hours after their arrival. It
would require a thousand tons to make an impression, and that only a
temporary one. Our salvation of the depot system is in the importation
of a large supply. These small shipments are only drops in the ocean."
The Treasury replies in this fashion, on the 22nd, to Sir R. Routh's
strong appeal:--"With reference to the remarks in your letter of the
19th instant, as to the insufficiency of the supplies for your depots,
the fact is that we have already bought up and sent to Ireland all the
Indian corn which is immediately available; and the London and
Liverpool markets are at present so completely bare of this article,
that we have been obliged to have recourse to the plan of purchasing
supplies of Indian corn which had been already exported from London to
neighbouring