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.