Famine Relief Acts - The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)

John Mitchel

The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)

Author’s Edition (undated)

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levelled with the ground, straggling columns of exiles, work-houses multiplied and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant the institutions of this more civilized land "—meaning England.

These were the two principal measures for the prudent administration of the famine; but there was also another, purporting to aim more directly at Relief. I approach the detail of these "Relief Acts" with great deliberation and caution. They have always appeared to me a machinery for the destruction of an enemy more fatal, by far, than batteries of grape-shot, chain-shot, shells, and rockets: but many persons who pass for intelligent, even in Ireland, do believe yet that they were in some sort measures of Relief, not contrivances for slaughter. In dealing with them, I shall endeavour to exaggerate nothing; as I shall certainly extenuate nothing.

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An American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine:

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