posed his measures, thoroughly conciliated the House, and all people felt pleased. He gains every day wonderfully upon the House. He has made no speech that is not a good one; and the absence of the Peel egotism (always displayed on such occasions) was much remarked upon. I have had a great many people from the country with me to-day they all say that this week has given the Government a character for durability which it had not before, and that the idea extends that it will do. There is such unanimity in the House that people in it feel confident.'- Yours sincerely,

CLARENDON.

While Lord Bessborough, writing from Ireland on the 28th, said

I am very much pleased with your speech; and so I hear everybody is who heard it. I see even Fitzstephen French, who went away vowing vengeance, was satisfied with it.

Warm, however, as was the approval which the speech won, a party in Ireland and a party in Parliament were in favour of other measures. And, as the arguments which were used by the Irish at the time have been repeated in later years, and, as well-informed Irishmen even now assert that their fellowcountrymen have neither forgotten nor forgiven the manner in which Lord John met the famine, it may be well to consider, in connection with what he did, the accusation against him for what he failed to do. It may be found in the pages of Mr. Mitchel, or, in greater detail, in Father O'Rourke's History of the Great Irish Famine.' Briefly stated it resolves itself into four charges. It is argued that (1) the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was an injury to Ireland, since it reduced at the moment of her trial the value of the single commodity which she had to sell. (2) Instead of this measure, the exportation of corn from Ireland should at once have been stopped. (3) Parliament should have been summoned in the autumn, and legislative authority obtained (a) for the suspension of the Navigation Laws, (b) for the purchase and distribution of food. (4) The people should have been employed on productive work, instead of unproductive labour.

1

From an Imperial point of view it is probably sufficient to

answer that, if the two first of these arguments had been attended to, famine in Great Britain would have been at once added to famine in Ireland. But from an Irish point of view their adoption would have been disastrous. The circumstance which made the famine specially deplorable was that it fell upon a population habitually subsisting on one of the cheapest kinds of food which the earth produces. It would have been no advantage to have retained for the use of the Irish the cereals which they had raised for export, unless it could be shown that no cheaper kind of food could be obtained elsewhere. If by selling a quarter of oats Ireland was able to purchase a larger equivalent in maize, rice, or other food, the interference with trade would have enhanced instead of mitigating the famine. Lord John, in fact, based his policy on the theory that interference with trade would aggravate, instead of diminishing, distress. No one who believes in free trade will doubt the propriety of his conclusion.

The same reason made him hesitate to adopt another recommendation. His own temperament and convictions disposed him to summon Parliament in the autumn of 1846, and to propose the suspension of the Navigation Acts. He did not

do so because those of his friends who knew Ireland best assured him that the suspension of the Navigation Acts, three months earlier than would otherwise be possible, would not repay the injury which would be done to Ireland by giving those of her resident gentry who were doing their duty an excuse or a reason for leaving their estates, and joining their absentee fellow-landlords in London. The purchase of food by the Government was an operation which Lord John thought could only paralyse trade. And, though it may be possible that Lord John overrated the importance of trade in remote poverty-stricken districts, where trade never came, as a general proposition every man who has faith in free trade will again believe that Lord John was right.

It was, however, the refusal of Lord John to employ the people on productive rather than on unproductive works which. forms the chief reproach on his memory. Yet those who make

the charge forget that, if the people were to be employed at all, it was necessary that they should be employed at once. There was no possibility of obtaining authority for making railways. What other works were immediately practicable except the arterial drainage of large tracts of land, the improvement of old roads, or the construction of new ones? Irish critics reply that the people might have been employed on cultivating the soil or on the reclamation of waste lands. If the Government had adopted the first view, it must at once have become the sole cultivator of all Ireland. It could not have taken upon itself the burden of cultivating the land of A without doing the same thing for B, C, D, and the remaining letters of the alphabet. Those, again, who recommended the employment of the people on reclaiming waste lands ignored the fact that the waste lands of Ireland were the property of landlords. As the landlords could not be expropriated, the waste lands could not have been reclaimed without enhancing the value of the landlord's property. And, whatever may have been said of Lord John, what would have been said if he had allowed the ratepayers of Ireland to be taxed for the purpose of adding some hundreds of thousands to the value of these landlords' property?

While then no one can read the history of the Irish Famine without deploring the suffering and the loss to which it led, and without admitting that Government failed, in the summer of 1846, to foresee the full consequences of the potato disease, it is difficult to see that the condition of Ireland would have been improved, while, in some respects, it would have been probably made worse, if Lord John had acted as his critics say that he should have acted. Yet the clamour against him at the time was very great. Irish juries, investigating cases of death from famine, actually brought in verdicts of wilful murder against Lord John Russell. An Irish peer told Lord Clarendon that Ireland had been sacrificed to the London corn-dealers because Lord John was member for the City, and that no distress would have occurred if the exportation of Irish grain had been prohibited. Such were some of the complaints made by Irish critics.

In England Lord George Bentinck formulated a scheme for constructing railways throughout Ireland. He thought that the Government might advance £200 at a low rate of interest on every £100 of share capital subscribed; and he contended that, as the sum advanced by the Government would have preference over the capital of the companies, the State would incur little or no risk in making these advances. Lord George Bentinck's scheme came out at an unlucky moment. The circumstances of the country produced a fall in the price of consols; the capacity of the Government to borrow was consequently diminished; and the terms on which it could afford to advance money became concurrently less favourable. But there was a further and a radical objection to the whole scheme as a device for employing the destitute. As Lord John showed, only twenty-five per cent. of the money employed in constructing a railway is spent on unskilled labour. As a means, therefore, of relieving the destitute Lord George's scheme involved the expenditure of four pounds for every pound which would reach those whom it was chiefly necessary to help. While then Lord John was careful to say that he gave no opinion

whether it is advisable for the Government, under any circumstances, to make grants of money for the promotion of railways, he added that

any advance made to railways should be made in a different state of the country, and in accordance with the principles on which Governments generally proceed when they are making advances on public works.

Yet Lord George Bentinck's scheme was undoubtedly popular. Many members on both sides of the House were disposed to favour a measure which was at any rate designed to divert some portions of the vast stream of money which was being voted for Ireland to a useful purpose; and Mr. Greville, writing on February 6, only repeated the general impression that 'the railroad question may turn the Government out.' Lord John's firmness, however, made this result impossible. Summoning a meeting of his followers, he told them frankly

It

that they might choose between the measure and himself. is quite impossible--so he added publicly in the House of Commons

for any Government to allow the finances of the country to be taken out of their hands. . . . I must repeat, therefore, that I do not think that I was taking an unconstitutional course when I intimated to those who I believed were disposed to support the Government that, with respect to the management of the finances of this country in this great crisis, we must have the majority of the House of Commons with us, or we cannot be competent to conduct the Government of this country. . . . It is now for the House of Commons to decide whether this measure is the sole measure which is essential for the benefit of Ireland; or whether, on the contrary, the course which we are pursuing is the best calculated to promote the welfare of this country and of the whole empire.

Put in this way, the issue was no longer doubtful. Lord George Bentinck's motion was rejected by a majority of nearly three to one and the Government again addressed itself to the prosecution of its own measures of relief.1 All through February these measures made substantial progress; but it

1 Later on in the session, the Government agreed to advance £620,000 to three Irish railways, the Great South-Western, the Waterford and Kilkenny, and the Dublin and Drogheda. The Ministry drew a distinction, which was on the whole clear, between these small advances and the larger sum which Lord G. Bentinck wished to force them to expend, the smaller advances being made on their own initiative, and being covered by a very much larger called-up capital than Lord George had thought necessary. But, though their own measure was, in a financial sense, as sound as Lord George's was defective, it afforded politicians an opportunity of saying that the Government, after defeating Lord George, had been forced to borrow his policy. These loans proved extremely beneficial; and Lord Clarendon on August 28, writing about one of the assisted lines, said: 'There is no greater desiderandum for Ireland at this moment, nothing from which improvement may more surely be expected, than the extension of railways; and no Act of last session has produced so much good effect and gratitude as the loan of £600,000, which is attributed, as it ought to be, exclusively to your having had the courage to insist upon it in spite of all opposition and in the midst of a financial crisis. Future assistance to Ireland cannot be given in a form more useful and reproductive than to railways, though perhaps it would be prudent not to make a specific application to Parliament for that purpose, but simply for an extended grant to the Exchequer Loan Commissioners to use as they may think best.' The concluding words seem to show that Lord Clarendon was aware that the policy of the Government, however beneficial, was open to the charge of inconsistency.