affirmed that Newcastle gets more coal from Ireland than she sends to it. Lord Cloncurry spoke at the same meeting, with the real voice of the country; he insisted that exportation of food to England ought to be specially prohibited, and he declared that he was ready to apply his entire income towards the task of averting this national calamity. The proposals of the alarm meeting were carried to the Lord Lieutenant for submission to the English Government, but nothing whatever came of them. The exportation of food was forbidden in all the countries of Europe where the potato blight was threatened, except in Ireland, where it was the only alternative to famine. The Evening Mail and the landlord Press in general were of opinion that this danger was grossly exaggerated, and was in part the work of dishonest persons who wanted to evade paying their rent. The landlords improved the occasion by seizing the harvest universally, and more corn was exported to England during that winter than in any similar period of which a record exists. The Nation insisted over and over again, if there was a famine, it would be a famine created by the landlords. They might be called upon to make large sacrifices, but they would be sacrifices to save a people who had created all their wealth.[1] It was the law of nature and of God, we insisted, for the landlord's claim for rent does not accrue till the farmers and farm labourers are supplied with daily bread. But the Government, who were supported by the class of which the Evening Mail was the spokesman, held a different opinion. The calamity, they insisted, did not furnish any adequate reason for interrupting the ordinary course of law, and rents must
- ↑ John O'Hagan, the most moderate, considerate, and scrupulous of the young men, expressed their deep conviction in language which deserves to be remembered:—
"Heaven, that tempers ill with good, when it smote our wonted food,
Sent us bounteous growth of grain sent to pauper slaves in vain!
We but asked in deadly need, 'Ye that rule us, let us feed
On the food that's ours'; behold! adder-deaf and icy cold!
Were we, saints of Heaven! were we, how we burn to think it—FREE!
Not a grain should leave our shore, not for England's golden store;
They who hunger where it grew, they whom Heaven hath sent it to,
They who reared with sweat of brow they, or none, should, have it now."
