f which he is a
member, that the normal state of Ireland was--to be on the brink of
starvation. This defence, weak and inconclusive from every point of
view, served his colleagues and himself, of course, but little, while it
was calculated to cover his nation with shame and confusion. He goes on
to prove the fact, alas! too easily proved; he goes to Lord Devon's
Commission, and tells us from it, that it is no exaggeration to say,
that the people of Ireland are the worst housed, the worst clothed, and
the worst fed of any people in Europe. It is a country, proceeds the
Secretary, of which I find an account given from a most unexceptionable
source, the Commission of Poor Law Enquiry in 1835. From this Report it
appeared, that Ireland then contained 1,131,000 agricultural labourers,
whose average earnings did not exceed from two shillings to two
shillings and six pence a week; and that of these one-half were
destitute during thirty weeks of every year. "This," said he, "is the
ordinary condition of Ireland, and it is upon such a country as this
that the calamity has fallen--a calamity which I believe to be without a
parallel in modern times."

Such was the defence of the Irish Chief Secretary. And here it is worth
while remarking, that in the earlier stages of the Famine it was the
practice of the government organs to throw doubt on the extent of its
ravages which were published, and the Government, apparently acting on
these views, most culpably delayed the measures by which the visitation
could be successfully combated. _Now_, their part was to admit to the
fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for
their want of energy and success in overcoming it. On the same
principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith,
goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value
of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight. The money value of
the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at
L11,250,000: the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be
L4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes L15,916,000.
Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of
the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the
House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and
extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered
the money value of the crop which had failed,