And, indeed, from the
first night of the session until the resolutions on the Corn Laws were
carried, the members of the Government showed the greatest anxiety to
keep the terrible consequences of the potato failure before Parliament.
They did not exaggerate the failure, nor its then probable effects; they
gave to both that importance which they really demanded, but which, only
the admission helped the repeal of the Corn Laws, they would hardly be
so ready to concede. The Protectionists, on the contrary, took up the
cry of "exaggeration," against the most undoubted evidence, supplied
from every part of the country, by persons in every rank of life, and of
every shade of political opinion. "We have," said one of them,[88]
"famine in the newspapers, we have famine in the speeches of Cabinet
Ministers, but we find abundance in the markets; the cry of famine is a
pretext, but it is not the reason for the changes." There is some truth
in the latter part of this sentence--famine was not all a pretext, but
it was certainly used by ministers as a cry to strengthen their Corn Law
policy. "It was," said Sir Robert Peel, "that great and mysterious
calamity, the potato failure, that was the immediate and proximate cause
which led to the dissolution of the Government on the 6th of December,
1845.
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