A deputation from that body waited on the Lord
Lieutenant, on the 25th of September, and laid its views before his
Excellency. The members of the deputation open the interview at the
Viceregal Lodge by enunciating the good and sound principle, "that it is
the clear and imperative duty of the possessors of property in Ireland,
to avert from their poor fellow-countrymen the miseries of famine; and
that they, therefore, willingly acquiesce in the imposition upon them of
any amount of taxation necessary for that purpose." They go on to say,
that as a very large sum must be raised on the security of Irish
property, and expended upon labour, during the continuance of the
distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop, the expenditure
of this sum upon unproductive works will increase the disproportion
already existing between labour and capital in the country; which
disproportion they look on as the main cause of the want of employment
for the people, and of the miserable wages they are sustained by.
Reproductive work, they continue, is the only work on which the labour
of the population ought to be employed, and plenty of such work was to
be found in every part of the country.
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