on of the people had raised
more food than was required for their own wants--a most common case,
they would not surely starve by the fact of the Government buying their
surplus for another portion who were starving--no, but they would thank
the Government very much for buying it. There would be no danger of
their finding fault with the quality of their customer, provided they
got their price. 2. What are Governments for, if not for the good of the
people?--and the Government that sees millions of its people dying of
starvation, with none others to help them, neglect the very first duty
of a Government--the _salus populi_--unless they make all the efforts in
their power to relieve and save them. 3. Besides, to feed one part of
the people--the starving Irish people--is just the thing Lord John's
Government did attempt to do, although badly. There is, moreover, a
fallacy in calling the Irish people, in every instance, a class of
people of the United Kingdom, for they have often been, and still are,
treated as a distinct and separate nation, or class of people. In such a
case it is assumed that our interests and those of England and Scotland
are identical, whereas they are no such thing. We used to be legislated
for separately, and in many instances we are so legislated for to-day,
which need not be the case if Lord Russell's assumption were true.
Again: England is a great manufacturing country, whilst Ireland has no
manufactures; from the nature of things the interests of two such
peoples could not be identical, and yet Lord John Russell and many
others talk and write about Ireland as a portion of the people of the
United Kingdom, in the sense that we are partakers of the great material
prosperity that manufactures have brought to England, which is supposing
that a fair proportion of the manufactures of the United Kingdom are
established and flourishing in Ireland: but so far from this being the
case,--so far from Lord John's political ancestors having supposed the
interests of England and Ireland to be identical, they never ceased,
until by a code of unjust and tyrannical commercial laws, they destroyed
all the manufactures we had, in order, as they avowed, to encourage the
same manufactures in England. What position did we then occupy as a
class of people of the United Kingdom? Where were Lord John's wonderful
free trade principles then? The time had not come for them. No; but when
his countrymen had monopolized our manufa