critics in later times admitted, the vast majority 'went down with the
ship.'

The survivors of this terrible time numbered heroes drawn from all
classes of life; and it would have been well if the lesson of universal
charity then practically demonstrated had been allowed to sink into all
hearts.

Instead I will quote the following extract from John Mitchel's _History
of Ireland_, a thick, paper-bound volume, which, at the price of
eighteenpence, has circulated enormously among the Irish, not only at
home, but in Glasgow and America.

On page 243:--'That million and a half of men, women, and children were
carefully, prudently, and peacefully _slain_' [the italics are those of
Mitchel] 'by the English Government. They died of hunger in the midst of
abundance which their own hands created; and it is quite immaterial to
distinguish those who perished in the agonies of famine itself from
those who died by typhus fever, which in Ireland is always caused by
famine.

'Further, this was strictly an _artificial_ famine--that is to say, it
was a famine which desolated a rich and fertile island that produced
every year abundance and superabundance to sustain all her people and
many more. The English, indeed, call that famine a dispensation of
Providence, and ascribe it entirely to the blight of the potatoes. But
potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe, yet there was no famine
save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first a
fraud; second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato
blight, but the English created the famine.'