manent way included sleepers
and other things connected with the works. They might, perhaps, say
there was a great consumption of bricks; but they could not make bricks
without the employment of much labour--and with such facts as these
before them, how was it possible they could doubt the accuracy of the
statements of the noble lord who had brought forward this measure, and
that the right hon. gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was
grossly mistaken. The right hon. gentleman, too, had said, that the
number of men per mile was about twenty-five or thirty; but on the
Orleans line there were as many as 130 per mile. He really thought the
right hon. gentleman ought to be better informed before he came down to
the House and impugned the statements of other gentlemen."[209]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the course of his speech, made a
statement which reflected severely on the landlords in some parts of
Ireland, but which was no argument whatever against the Bill before the
House. He said: A few days since, we received a report of the
proceedings of a Relief Committee of a barony in the Queen's County; the
subscriptions were raised by persons themselves but little removed from
poverty, and with little or no assistance from the resident proprietor.
The most beneficial results were produced; the whole sum raised was
L176; of this L136 were subscribed by the farmers, the policemen, and
the priest, and only L40 were contributed by the proprietors of the
soil. I have never, said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, perused a
document with greater pleasure and satisfaction, for it gives strong
hopes of what may be done if all classes unite their efforts, giving
money if they have it, and their personal exertions if they have no
money, on behalf of their distressed countrymen. By this means alone can
relief be extended to the starving population. And I confess it was with
pain I can scarcely describe, that I received, by the same post that
brought me the above report, an account of very different proceedings in
the county of Mayo. There I find, so far from subscriptions having been
entered into to maintain their people, that the landlords, or their
agents, are pursuing a system of ejectment, under processes for rent, to
an extent beyond what had ever been known in the country. The number of
processes entered at the quarter sessions exceed, very considerably,
anything they have been before. At the quarter sessions of the b