he coercion
measure which he advocates a sort of collateral support to the corn-law
question, which he desires to pass:--"Now, sir, in reference to this
measure which I am about to propose, painful as it is, and
unconstitutional as I admit it to be, I must say that I, for one,
foreseeing some time ago that the necessity for some such measure would
shortly arrive, felt that I could not reconcile it to my conscience and
sense of duty to be a party to it, when, at the same time, with the
great increase of crime, I saw the extreme physical distress of the
people of Ireland, arising from a deficiency of that which they had been
accustomed to make their principal food. I felt, I say, that it was of
vital importance that provision should first be made, by an effort on
the part of the government, to relieve the physical wants of the people
before this measure should be brought forward; and I resolved that I
could not be a party to the measure unless I had the sanction of my
colleagues to a bill which would have the effect of opening the corn
trade, and placing articles of the first necessity within the reach of
the people of Ireland." But this cannot avail the right honourable
gentleman; for his own returns show that the amount of crime was
_infinitely greater up to the month of August 1845_, when provisions
were most abundant, and the prospects of the new harvest most cheering,
than now, when _it suits his convenience to notice its existence_, or to
sustain the potato panic. "When the greatest increase of crime existed,"
he could not possibly have anticipated "the extreme physical distress of
the people," because no such distress was then heard of. But because his
object was to make the suppression of crime auxiliary to other measures
of the government, he takes no step to accomplish it until he comes
backed by the exaggerations of political knaves, and the reports of
philosophical quacks, to prove his case, in order that the humanity of
his auditory may be excited; and that, before he is called upon to
coerce, he may be permitted to repeal the corn-laws, on the pretence of
relieving "the physical wants of the people."

We are far from denying that a great loss has been sustained in the
potato crop; but that loss does not in reality affect the food of the
people so much as would appear at first sight; for the cattle and pigs
which used to get sound potatoes in other years, were exclusively fed on
diseased ones in this: neither