pay four millions of these your subjects ? Then call on your transatlantic sister to give you food for them. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; and though she has a right to say she will not send Ireland food to keep them strong in idleness, she has no right to say she will not send them food to give them strength for labor. She has not a heart to say it; foul as her hands may be with slavery, yet she will feed the hungry with a cheerful hand. If she has not done her duty there is room for repentance, yes, effectual repentance. Her fields, the past season, have been waving with rich corn, and her storehouses are filling with the golden harvest. You have given her gold in profusion, for the produce of her soil. The blast of the potatoe has been to her the blossoming and ripening of her pastures—her waving fields of pulse and corn. The husbandman has been stimulated to plow up fresh lands, go that he might fill his granaries abundantly with the rich harvest, because free trade has opened your ports, and you will demand more of his corn; and why should he not send over a few sheaves, as a thank-offering to God, for all this bounty? America will do it if required; but an inquiry has come across the ocean: Is it right to feed a country to encourage idleness—will not the evil be much greater than the good? Answer, you who are statesmen—you who are Christians; answer, you who can. Look at the peasantry of Ireland three years ago, and look at them now! Even their enemies must acknowledge that they are a tractable race, to have developed so much intrigue and cunning under the train-
