This course may be inconvenient, but such an emergency
requires inconveniences to be encountered. History presents no parallel
to our circumstances. There is no other instance on record of the whole
food of a people becoming rotten before it was ripe. Of course the
system of public works would go on more smoothly than any other that can
be suggested. It would give far less trouble to the Government than the
system which it is proposed to substitute for it; but what would the end
of it be? Never since the connexion of Ireland with England has so awful
a power been placed in the hands of any statesman as in yours. The whole
country is, as it were, fused in your hands--on you depends the future
shape which it will assume. If you use your opportunities well--if you
develope its resources--if you increase its capital--if you improve its
agriculture--if you distribute its wealth as it ought to be distributed,
its progress in the next two or three years will be greater than the
progress ever made by any country in the same time. If you take the easy
course--if you throw away the opportunity placed by Providence in your
hands--if you allow the vast sums of money which you have to direct the
distribution of to be spent unprofitably, we shall retrograde as fast as
under the other alternative we should have advanced; and those who have
been year after year hoping against hope, and labouring against the
tide, will fold their arms in despair.
Pages:
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336