102 ENGLISH SAGA

market according to the gospel of laissez-faire, fixed the price
of British unskilled labour.

The prophet Carlyle saw the truth of it—the writing on the
wall of Britain's splendid imperial destiny:

"The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, rest-
lessness, unreason, misery and mockery, salute you on all
highways and byways. The English coachman, as he whirls
past, lashes the Milesian with his whip, curses him with
his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat to beg. He
is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In his rags
and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work
that can be done by mere strength of hand and back—for
wages that will purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt
for condiment, he lodges to his mind in any pig-hutch or
dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears a suit of tatters,
the getting on and off of which is said to be a difficult
operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides of
the calendar. The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these
terms, finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his
strength but by the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon
native out, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in
his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence,
as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder ....
Thus the condition of the lower multitude of English
labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish,
competing with them in all the markets."

The autumn of 1846 saw a climax to the suffering and misery
that had begotten this Nemesis. The English harvest was bad,
there was a world food shortage, and for the second season
running the Irish potato crop, ravaged by disease, failed. Wheat
and provision prices soared. The British Government, faced
with the prospect of a whole nation starving, advanced ten
million pounds to relieve distress and bought yellow maize
from India to make broth.1

It was in vain. Through the neglected villages of the stony
west and south famine stalked. The weak hand of Dublin Castle
could not stay it.' The wages of those in work fell to && a day.
The Unions were beseiged by applicants: by December over

xlt was known in Ireland as Peel's brimstone. Early Victorian England, /, 6$.