immediately succeeding, is omitted.  The reason why Mr. D’Israeli did this is obvious from what follows, which shows he did not agree with Lord George, in censuring the Government for not opening depots, and he undertakes to prove that they should not have done so.  He uses, amongst others, the old trite argument, when he says:  there is reason to believe that the establishment of Government depots at the end of ’46, however cautiously introduced, tended in the localities to arrest the development of that retail trade, which was then rapidly extending throughout Ireland.”—­Lord George Bentinck, a political Biography, 5th Ed., pp. 360, 363.

There is reason to believe, says Mr. D’Israeli; yes, there is the best reason to believe, that tens of thousands died of starvation in Munster and Connaught, because food depots were not introduced, or, at least, because they were not opened for the sale of food to the public.  The word “development” which he uses, sufficiently refutes his whole theory.  There was no time for development; millions were starving who must die or get food within a few days.  What a time to begin to develop a trade in articles of food among a people without capital, who never had such a trade before!  The effect of Government not interfering in the sale of food is shown by the prices Lord George quotes a little further on.

[196] Mr. D’Israeli took good care not to quote this passage in his Biography of Lord George Bentinck.

[197] It was more than hinted that he did not follow the advice of the Irish Government in other important matters concerning the Famine.

[198] In the middle of November, Mr. Smith O’Brien commenced a series of letters to the landed proprietors of Ireland.  Whilst he was preparing the first of these, which was introductory, and intended to awaken the class he was addressing to a sense of their danger and their duty, the Agricultural Society of Ireland published their objections to the system of carrying out reproductive works laid down in the Chief Secretary’s letter; and it was in commenting on their views that he wrote the passage quoted above by the Prime Minister.  His second letter dealt with the knotty question of land tenure.  In it he urges strongly and well a principle which has become a part of the Land Act of 1870, namely, the tenant’s right to compensation.  He says:  “I begin with the subject of tenure:  uniform experience of human nature teaches that men will not toil for the benefit of others as they toil for themselves.  You are very sensitive about the maintenance of the due rights of property....  The same feelings influence your tenant; he will not expend his capital upon your land unless the return of such capital be guaranteed to him.”  His third letter is devoted to the question of drainage, and the reclamation of waste lands.  He undertook to show how advantageous a peasant proprietary would be, changing, as it would, numbers of persons from