To aid this masked policy of his, there was Commission
after Commission--the Scientific Commission, the Castle Commission, the
Police inquiry; and these went on analyzing, printing, and distributing
hundreds weight of query sheets, and making reports, long after it was
proved, beyond all doubt, that half the food of the Irish people had
been irretrievably lost, the money value of which was estimated at from
eight to ten millions of pounds sterling. So early as the end of
October, 1845, Dr. Playfair, his own scientific investigator, expressed
to him his opinion that fully one half of the potatoes in Ireland were
perfectly unfit for human food; he said he had made a careful tour of
the potato shops of Dublin, and had found that those potatoes picked as
sound had nineteen bad for fourteen good! Sir Robert Peel knew this in
October, 1845; admitted its truth more than once during the session of
Parliament that followed, and yet the bill which he persisted in
regarding as the only panacea for such a national calamity, did not
become law until the 25th of June, 1846, eight months afterwards; but of
course four millions of foodless Irish must battle with starvation until
the Premier had matured and carried his measure for securing cheap bread
for the artizans of England; and further, those same famishing millions
had, day after day, to submit to be insulted by his false and hollow
assertion, that all this was done for them.
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