_Now_, their part was to admit to the
fullest extent the vastness of the Famine, and make it the excuse for
their want of energy and success in overcoming it. On the same
principle, Mr. Labouchere, relying on figures supplied by Mr. Griffith,
goes into what appears to be a fair statement of the actual money value
of the loss Ireland suffered from the potato blight. The money value of
the potatoes destroyed by the Blight of 1846, he estimates at
L11,250,000: the loss of the oat crop of that year he calculates to be
L4,666,000, making the whole loss in oats and potatoes L15,916,000.
Still this sum, he says, is under the actual loss; the money value of
the loss not at all representing the real loss to the people; and the
House, he added, would form a very inadequate notion of the nature and
extent of the loss which had befallen Ireland, if they merely considered
the money value of the crop which had failed, or the stock of human food
which had been supplied.
The chronic poverty and misery of Ireland, as set forth in the Report
which the Poor Law Commissioners published in 1835, seems to have been
the favourite armoury whence Mr. Labouchere loved to draw his logical
weapons, for the defence of the Government on this occasion.
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