Will this House say, "We will keep our power, keep it how we may; we regard not the petitions of the people, and are ready to abide by all the conseq… - John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

[I]t may be easily imagined that when those who are best off, in the most prosperous years, earn scarcely sufficient, those who had then been on the brink of famine, must have been unable to resist the flood of destitution and wretchedness which has over-whelmed them by the failure of the potato crop. Such has been unfortunately the case in the present year, during the visitation of a calamity which is, perhaps, almost without a parallel, because it acts upon a very large population, a population of nearly 8,000,000—for the Irish have gradually increased to that amount—while the famine is such as has not been known in modern times; indeed, I should say it is like a famine of the thirteenth century acting upon the population of the nineteenth.

Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared to the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of separate statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing Court, which the extinction of party connection has brought and would again bring upon this country.

In 1780, in 1783, and in 1829, that which had been denied to reason was granted to force. Ireland triumphed, not because the justice of her claims was apparent, but because the threat of insurrection overcame prejudice, made fear superior to bigotry, and concession triumphant over persecution.