tance. I think it will be brought to
bear."[218] It was brought to bear; and in a later communication, he
speaks of the British Association with evident satisfaction. "The
subscription is going on very well," he says; "six names down for a
thousand pounds each, and a good working committee organized."[219]

The Government, it may be fairly said, should not refuse any aid
proffered to them. Certainly not; but they did more. They showed a
decided anxiety to receive aid in money, not only from landlords, who
were bound to give it, but from any and every quarter--even from the
Great Turk himself, who subscribed a thousand pounds out of his bankrupt
treasury, to feed the starving subjects of the richest nation in the
world. And the noblemen and gentlemen who signed the Address of Thanks
to the Sultan Abdul Medjid Khan, for his subscription, amongst other
things, say to his majesty, that "It had pleased Providence, in its
wisdom, to deprive this country suddenly of its staple article of food,
and to visit the poor inhabitants with privations, such as have seldom
fallen to the lot of any civilized nation to endure. In this emergency,
the people of Ireland _had no other alternative but to appeal to the
kindness and munificence of other countries_ less afflicted than
themselves, to save them and their families from famine and death."[220]
Besides making the Famine a money question, this address contains the
blasphemous attack upon Divine Providence, so current at the time among
politicians. William Bennett, one of those praiseworthy gentlemen whom
the Society of Friends sent to distribute relief in the Far West, was,
however, of opinion that the responsibility of the Irish Famine should
not be laid at the door of Divine Providence, at least without some
little investigation. In his letters to his committee, he endeavoured,
he says, to give a bird's-eye view, as it were, of the distressed
portions of Ireland, drawn upon the spot, with the vivid delineation of
truth, but without exaggeration or colouring. And what is the picture,
he asks? "Take the line of the main course of the Shannon continued
north to Lough Swilly, and south to Cork. It divides the island into two
great portions, east and west. In the eastern there are distress and
poverty enough, as part of the same body suffering from the same cause;
but there is much to redeem. In the west it exhibits a people, not in
the centre of Africa, the steppes of Asia, the backwoods