Mr. Jackson, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a gentleman
whose great abilities are less known to the public than to his chiefs, made a speech on Wednesday to his con- stituents at Leeds. He said he had recently travelled for two thousand miles in Ireland, five hundred miles of it on cars, and found that although in parts of Ireland
the potato crop was satisfactory, and though an enormous area was cultivated in oats and other cereals, "there was no doubt that in some parts, which were poorest and furthest from rapid means of communication, there were districts in which the potato crop was not only small in size, but very deficient in quantity." There had been gross exag- geration in Irish newspapers, but still an evil existed, and he did not wish to minimise its extent. That being so, we trust the Government is already taking means to meet possibilities, and remembers that, in all such cases in Ireland, money and work are not invariably sufficient preventives. Nobody can eat half-sovereigns; and in the remote places where communica- tion is so difficult, it is the want of actual food which is so terribly felt. It is not only right but indispensable to force forward the light railways as Government is doing; but we should like also to hear of arrangements for the storage and distribution of meal. The essence of the Unionist principle is, that Ireland is as dear to Parliament as Cornwall or Satherlandshire.
