In addition, an address to the
Queen was presented by a number of Irish Peers, headed by the Duke
of Leinster, praying that action might be taken on the Drummond
Commission Report."
The government saw the light, and proceeded to sin against it. They
embodied the Dublin programme in resolutions which were adopted by the
House of Commons in March 1839, and they then abruptly abandoned the
whole business. The last chance was not yet lost. During the Great
Famine of 1847 the Opposition proposed to raise, L16,000,000 by State
loans for the construction of railways as relief works. A suggestion so
sane could not hope to pass. It was in fact rejected; the starving
peasants were set to dig large holes and fill them up again, and to
build bad roads leading nowhere. And instead of a national railway
system Ireland was given private enterprise with all its waste and all
its clash of interests.
The two most conspicuous gifts of Unionism to Ireland have been, as all
the world knows, poverty and police. Soon after 1830, that is to say
when the first harvest of government from Westminster was ripe to the
sickle, Irish destitution had assumed what politicians call men-acing
proportions.
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