rence
with those gentlemen was, that two engineers of acknowledged ability
were despatched by him to Ireland, to examine and report upon the whole
question of Irish railways.

Lord George, reflecting upon the perilous state of England in 1841-2,
came to the conclusion that it was the vast employment afforded by
railway enterprize which relieved the pauperism of those years; a
pauperism so great, that it was enough to create alarm, and almost
dismay, in the breasts of English statesmen. There were at that time a
million and a-half of people upon the rates: between eighty and ninety
thousand able-bodied men within the walls of the Workhouses, and four
hundred thousand able-bodied men receiving outdoor relief. It seemed to
him that this pauperism was not only relieved, but was actually changed
into affluence and prosperity by the vast employment which the railway
works, then rapidly springing into existence, afforded. "Suddenly, and
for several years," says Mr. D'Israeli, quoting Lord George, "an
additional sum of thirteen millions of pounds sterling a-year was spent
in the wages of our native industry; two hundred thousand able-bodied
labourers received each upon an average, twenty-two shillings a-week,
stimulating the revenue, both in excise and customs, by their enormous
consumption of malt and spirits, tobacco and tea."[205]

Lord George saw no reason why the same remedy, if applied to Ireland,
should not be attended with the like success. He was sustained, too, by
the reports of Parliamentary Commissioners, as well as by the natural
and common-sense view of the subject. Many years before, in 1836, a
commission had been issued to enquire into the expediency of promoting
the construction of railways in Ireland. The Commissioners, in their
report, recommended that a system of railway communication should be
established there by Government advances. Ten years had passed; but, of
course, nothing was done. Yes, another commission! The noted Devon one
was, I should have said, issued some years after the former by another
Government, which "confirmed all the recommendations of the Railway
Commissioners of '36, and pointed to those new methods of communication,
by the assistance of loans from the Government, as the best means of
providing employment for the people."[206] Had the recommendations of
those Commissioners been carried out, or even begun within a reasonable
time, there could have been no Irish famine in the sense i