"[206] Had the recommendations of
those Commissioners been carried out, or even begun within a reasonable
time, there could have been no Irish famine in the sense in which we are
now obliged to chronicle it. There must have been extensive employment
at wages that would have afforded great numbers other and better food
than the potato. As it was, all that resulted from those commissions,
and countless others of the like kind, were the ponderous Blue Books,
which contained their reports, and the evidence upon which they were
founded. And, indeed, so many tons of those had been, from time to time,
produced and stowed away in Government vaults and rubbish stores, that,
had they contained some of the nutritive qualities which, go to sustain
human life, they would have been an appreciable contribution towards
feeding the starving Irish people during the Famine.
No new Acts were necessary to be passed through Parliament, to authorize
the construction of railways in Ireland, in order to justify the
Government in advancing the necessary funds. When Lord George Bentinck
brought his plan before the House of Commons, there were Acts in
existence authorizing the construction of more than 1,500 miles of
railway in this country, some of those Acts having been passed so far
back as eleven years before; yet, at the close of 1846, only 123 miles
had been completed.
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