It is a country, too, in
which--and it is the only Christian country of which it may be said for
some centuries past--it is a country in which a famine of the most
desolating character has prevailed even during our own time. I think I
was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial-ground at Skibbereen, that at
least 400 people who had died of famine were buried within the quarter
of an acre of ground on which I was then looking. It is a country, too,
from which there has been a greater emigration by sea within a given
time than has been known at any time from any other country in the
world. It is a country where there has been, for generations past, a
general sense of wrong, out of which has grown a state of chronic
insurrection; and at this very moment when I speak, the general
safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and we meet in this
hall, and I speak here tonight, rather by the forbearance and permission
of the Irish executive than under the protection of the common
safeguards of the rights and liberties of the people of the United
Kingdom.
I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating picture to
draw of this country.
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