"--_A twelve months'
residence in Ireland, during the Famine and the Public Works in 1846-7,
by Wm. Henry Smith, C.E., late conducting Civil Engineer of Public
Works_.--London, 1848; p. 120.
"A foreign railway company, a few months ago, advertised in the English
papers for Irish labourers to work on their lines, where they would
receive one-third more wages than the French people themselves were
receiving. He [the Irishman] would do the same amount of work at home,
if properly fed; but the principle is much the same as keeping a horse
without his oats, and expecting him to get through his work the same as
if well fed. The Irishman at the English harvest, or as a railway
labourer, and the London heavy goods or coal porter, is not excelled in
his willingness or industry."--_Ib._ 196.
"It is a mistake to suppose the Irish people will not work. They are
both willing and desirous to work, and, when in regular employment, are
always peaceable and orderly."--_His Excellency Lord Clarendon's Letter
to the Lord Mayor of London, on the "Plantation Scheme," dated Viceregal
Lodge, June 26, 1849._
[202] _Freeman's Journal_, 23rd June, 1847.
[203] Armagh could be scarcely said to have had any manufactures at this
time, as machinery, erected in the large factories of Belfast and other
places, had abolished the hand-looms at which the people worked in their
cottages, and the linen trade had been greatly depressed for years
before; but no doubt there was a time when it was a material help to the
inhabitants of that and other Northern counties.
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