[203]
Mr. Smith O'Brien (then enthusiastic about a Repeal of the Legislative
Union) said that the picture of Irish misery drawn by Lord John Russell
was the result of forty-seven years of union with England. Halcyon days
were promised to Ireland at the time of the Union, but he called on the
House to contrast the progress of Ireland from 1782 to the Union, with
the state of Ireland since. He expressed his opinion that the loss in
potatoes, considering the value of offal for pigs and the rise in
prices, was from twenty to thirty millions of money. He believed the
Government could have made such exertion as would have prevented the
death of ONE INDIVIDUAL in Ireland from starvation. He thought the
legitimate course was to have called Parliament together at the earliest
possible moment, (cheers,) and nothing surprised him more than the
statement of the Chief Secretary, that the Irish people had not a
general desire for Parliament to meet in November.
Sir Robert Inglis, referring to the assertion that absentees did not
discharge the duties of proprietors, said he found it stated in a speech
of the late Bishop Jebb, in 1822, when there was a similar calamity,
that a large subscription was raised in a western county by the resident
proprietors, but the absentees, who received out of it a rental of
L83,000 a-year, only subscribed L83.
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