nd in that terrible crisis it overrode the rights of humanity.
Many of the landowners, however, manfully did their best to stay the
plague, but anything which they could accomplish seemed a mockery amid
the widespread distress. Readers of Sir Gavan Duffy's 'Four Years of
Irish History' will recall his vivid description of the manner in which
some of the landowners, however, saw their cruel opportunity, and
accordingly 'closed on the people with ejectments, turned them on the
road, and plucked down their roof-trees,' and also that still more
painful passage which describes how women with dead children in their
arms were seen begging for a coffin to bury them. Relief committees
were, of course, started; the Friends, in particular, busied themselves
in practical efforts to cope with the distress, and Mr. W. E. Forster,
who went to Ireland to distribute relief, declared that his wonder was,
as he passed from village to village, not that the people died, but that
so many contrived to live.

The Russell Government met the crisis with courage, though scarcely with
adequate understanding. Ireland remembered with bitterness their Arms
Bill and their repressive measures. Public feeling ran high over some of
their proposals, for the people resented Lord John's modification of Sir
Robert Peel's plan by which the cost of public works was to be defrayed
by the State and district in which employment was given. Lord John
determined that the cost should be met in the first instance by
Government loans, which were to be repaid with an almost nominal
interest by the people of the district. This was interpreted to mean
that Ireland was to bear her own burdens, and in her impoverished state
was to be saddled with the financial responsibilities inseparable from
so pitiable a collapse of prosperity. Bread riots and agrarian
disturbances grew common, and the Government met them with rather more
than becoming sternness, instead of dealing promptly with the
land-tenure system which lay at the root of so much of the misery. At
the beginning of the session of 1847 it was stated that 10,000,000_l._
would be required to meet the exigencies of the situation. Lord George
Bentinck proposed a grant of 16,000,000_l._ for the construction of
Irish railways, but Lord John made the question one of personal
confidence in himself, and threatened resignation if it passed. His
chief objection to the proposal was based on the fact that seventy-five
per cent. of