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, £16,000,000 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. One person in every three of the population never had any
other alimentary experience than the difference between hunger and
starvation. In these circumstances a Royal Commission was appointed to
consider the advisability of extending the English Poor Law to Ireland.
Their report is a pioneer document in the development of economic
thought. Just as the Railway Commission a few years later was to give
the watchword of the future, nationalisation, so the Poor Law Commission
gave within its province the watchword of the future, prevention before
relief. They pointed the contrast between the two countries. I quote the
words of the later Irish Poor Law Commission of 1903-6:

"Having regard to the destitution and poverty that were prevalent
in Ireland owing to want of employment, the Royal Commissioners in