Those who had mortgages on Irish estates, and their name
was legion, should have been compelled to contribute their due
proportion; the commercial and monied interests of the country should
have been taxed, as well as the land; no one able to bear any portion of
the burthen should have been exempted from it, at such a moment of
national calamity. Instead of taxing one species of property, namely
land, to meet the Famine, the _whole_ property of the country should
have been taxed for that purpose; and this partiality was justly
complained of by the landed interests.
But a much more formidable opposition than that of the landed interest,
as such, rose up against the Labour-rate Act, and for a very sufficient
reason. The employment to be provided under it could not, and was not
intended to be reproductive; the public works which it sanctioned being,
as Secretary Labouchere said, in his letter, only undertaken with a view
of relieving the temporary distress occasioned by the failure of the
potato crop. On this account, the dissatisfaction with the measure was
very general from every section of politicians; not that it was thought,
except perhaps by some few, that the Government were unwilling to
provide against the great Famine which all felt was already holding the
Irish nation in its deadly grasp, but because it was felt and believed,
that the mode chosen for that purpose was the very worst possible.
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