" "Will
you not, then," he concludes, in an elaborate peroration, "will you not
then cherish with delight the reflection, that, in this, the present
hour of _comparative prosperity_, yielding to no clamour--impelled by no
fear--except, indeed, that provident fear which is the mother of
safety--you had anticipated the evil day, and, long before its advent,
had trampled on every impediment to the free circulation of the
Creator's bounty."
The old Tory party had, in the beginning, admitted, to a great extent,
the failure of the potato crop in Ireland; but seeing the use the Peel
Government were making of it, they seem to have agreed to maintain that
the reports--Government as well as others--were greatly
exaggerated,--and for a purpose. Lord George Bentinck, the coming leader
of the Protectionists, said, that "in his opinion, which every day's
experience confirmed, the potato famine in Ireland was a gross
delusion--a more gross delusion had never been practised upon the
country by any Government." Mr. Shaw, the member for the University of
Dublin, maintained that "great exaggeration existed." "The case," he
said, "was not extraordinary--_fever, dysentery_, and _death_ being a
kind of normal state" in Ireland!
Members on both sides of the House soon began to see, that there was no
necessary connection between the potato failure in Ireland, and the
repeal of the Corn Laws, although, in all his speeches on the subject,
Sir Robert Peel assumed it as a matter of course.
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