a useful substitute. But then the Corn Law has raised the price, not merely of wheat, but of all the other corns used in the production of bread, and by shutting out the products of our industry from foreign markets has lessened the demand for labour and lowered its reward; and, as the mass of the people have, by this double process, been reduced to a potato diet, the failure of the potato crop leaves them absolutely without food. This is the present condition of hundreds of thousands in Ireland—in Ireland, supposed to be so especially benefited by the Corn Law—in Ireland, for whose especial benefit legislators tell us that, even if the landowners of Great Britain derived no advantage, the Corn Law should be continued! One cause of the contempt with which the people's petitions were received in the Commons was the belief that the fine weather and the fine appearance of the crops would speedily put an end to Anti-Corn-Law agitation. It was forgotten that the stock of last year's potatoes, the only food of Ireland, might be exhausted before the new crop was ready. The far-seeing legislators overlooked the interval; and the consequence of their oversight is the deliberate sacking of the provision stores of Limerick, by men whose desperation rendered them insensible to all fear. These things take place when corn and flour, to the amount of four or five millions sterling, might, in a few weeks, be had in exchange for the same amount of our manufactured goods." The emphatic warning given by starvation and tumult was thrown away upon the government and the legislature. The population of Ireland was still to subsist on a watery root, and no provision was made for the possible failure of that precarious crop. Was it blindness or utter heartlessness, or grasping avarice, that left eight millions of people to this terrible contingency?
At a meeting of the delegates, in London, a number of agricultural labourers, from different counties, were publicly examined as to their condition, to meet the allegations
