of America--not
some newly-discovered tribes of South Australia, or among the Polynesian
Islands--not Hottentots, Bushmen, or Esquimaux--neither Mahommedans nor
Pagans--but some millions of our own Christian nation at home, living in
a state and condition low and degraded to a degree unheard of before in
any civilized community; driven periodically to the borders of
starvation; and now reduced by a national calamity to an exigency which
all the efforts of benevolence can only mitigate, not control; and under
which thousands are not merely pining away in misery and wretchedness,
but are dying like cattle off the face of the earth, from want and its
kindred horrors! _Is this to be regarded in the light of a Divine
dispensation and punishment? Before we can safely arrive at such a
conclusion, we must be satisfied that human agency and legislation,
individual oppressions, and social relationships have had no hand in
it_."[221] Was it not a money question, when a labourer at task work
could only earn 8d. or 8-1/4d. a-day?--not enough to buy one meal of
food for a moderate sized family. No, no, answered the Government
people; this low rate of wages is fixed, in order not to attract labour
from the cultivation of the soil. Now, in the famine time, the labourer,
as a rule, could not obtain money wages for the cultivation of the
soil--a fact well known to the Government; so that _money wages_ of
almost any amount must withdraw him from agriculture, from the absolute
necessity he was under of warding off immediate starvation. If,
therefore, Government wished the labour of the country to be employed in
cultivating and improving the soil, why did they not, instead of
spoiling the roads, so employ that labour at fair money wages, and
subject to just and proper conditions? They were often urged to do it,
but in vain. They yielded at last, but at an absurdly late period for
such a concession.

Further: if it were solely a food question, the Government should have
used all the means in their power to bring food into the country, which
they did not do; because they refused to suspend the navigation
laws--this free-trade government did, and thus deliberately excluded
supplies from our ports. By the navigation laws, merchandize could be
brought to these countries only in British ships, or in ships belonging
to the nation which produced the merchandize. The importation of corn
fell under this _protective_ regulation. If those laws were sus