To lie down and die, like cattle in a murrain, was base. No people are
bound to starve while their soil produces food cultivated by their own
hands. No other people in Europe would have submitted to such a fate.
But the leader whom they were accustomed to follow had involved himself
in a tangle of false doctrines by his unhappy "Peace Resolutions," and
he exhorted them to endure all with patience and submission. His son had
the amazing assurance to add that if they starved with complete
resignation the repeal of the union was near at hand.
On the relief committees, doctors, clergymen, and country gentlemen bore
the burden of the work, but a multitude of the gentry stood apart as if
the transaction did not concern them. They were busy in transferring the
harvest to England or clearing the population off their estates. The
English officials in Ireland accused them of jobbing in public works, or
quartering their relations and dependents on the Relief Fund, as
overseers, and, in some extreme cases, of obtaining grants for their own
families of money designed for the suffering poor on their estates.
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