ssible to view the operation of their
poor-employment Act, and say that it has answered any good purpose." He
held strongly the opinion, that the Government should have supplied food
to the people, at least in remote districts, where it could not be
otherwise procured. On this point he thus expressed his sentiments:
"With respect to the supply of food to the people he, for one, cannot
agree altogether in those principles of political economy which had been
advanced by the Right Hon. gentleman, the Irish Secretary. This
political economy of non-interference with the import and retail trade
may be good in ordinary times, but in times such as the present, when a
calamity unexampled in the history of the world has suddenly fallen
upon Ireland--when there are no merchants or retailers in the whole of
the West--when a country of which the population has been accustomed to
live upon potatoes of their own growth, produced within a few yards of
their own doors, is suddenly deprived of this, the only food of the
people, it was not reasonable to suppose that, suddenly merchants and
retailers would spring up to supply the extraordinary demands of the
people for food. Therefore, I should say that this was a time when her
Majesty's Ministers should have broken through these, the severe rules
of political economy, and should, themselves, have found the means of
providing the people of Ireland with food. The Right Hon. gentleman has
said, that ministers have done wisely in adhering to this decision, but
I think differently from them. When, every day, we hear of persons being
starved to death, and when the Right Hon. gentleman himself admits that
in many parts of the country the population has been decimated, I cannot
say, that I think ministers have done all they might have done to avert
the fatal consequences of this famine."[195] Lord George then read a
letter from the Rev. Mr. Townsend, of Skibbereen, in which it was stated
that in one month from the 1st of December to the 1st of January, there
were one hundred and forty deaths in the workhouse of that town; the
people having entered the workhouse, as they said, "that they might be
able to die decently under a roof and be sure of a coffin." The Rev. Mr.
Townsend also mentioned that in the churchyard of his parish there were,
at one time, fourteen funerals waiting, whilst the burial of a fifteenth
corpse was being completed. In the next parish to his, there were nine
funerals at once i