tent.
As to public works, to vote money merely to employ people, that would
only aggravate existing evils by interfering with the natural demand for
labour. Sir Robert Peel, however, was disposed cordially to support the
measure in its general objects; as was also Lord Stanley.

The second reading of the bill did not take place till the end of April.
The interval seems to have confirmed Mr. O'Connell in his hostility
to the measure. It was not his intention directly to oppose it--some
measure of the kind was inevitable; but his deliberate judgment was,
that it would aggravate, instead of mitigate, the existing evils of the
Irish peasantry. Those evils he ascribed to English misgovernment: the
distinct and direct object of the penal laws was to enforce ignorance
and poverty by act of parliament. For a century, the Irish had had
laws requiring the people to be ignorant, and punishing them for being
industrious. And what, he asked, were the natural consequences of this
legislation? He entered into a variety of statistical details to prove
that, with a less fertile soil, the quantity of agricultural produce
raised in England was as four to one compared with that of Ireland;
though, according to the number of acres under cultivation, it ought not
to exceed two to one. He then proceeded to read numerous extracts from
the reports of the commissioners, descriptive of the extreme misery of
the Irish peasantry. He described men as lying in bed for want of food;
turning thieves in order to be sent to jail; lying on rotten straw in
mud cabins, with scarcely any covering; feeding on unripe potatoes and
yellow weed, and feigning sickness, in order to get into hospitals. He
continued:--"This is the condition of a country blest by nature
with fertility, but barren from the want of cultivation, and whose
inhabitants stalk through the land enduring the extremity of misery and
want. Did we govern ourselves? Who did this? You, Englishmen!--I say,
you did it? It is the result of your policy and domination!" With
respect to the bill before the house, Mr. O'Connell ridiculed the
proposition of relieving the destitution of 2,300,000 persons by
building poor-houses to shelter eighty thousand at the expense of
L312,000 a year. The charities in Dublin alone amounted to half that
sum, and the farmers gave away in kind from a million to a million and a
half yearly. As for tranquillizing the country, Mr. O'Connell said that
the bill would not have a