'Sometimes, I could see, in front of the cottages, little children leaning against a fence when the sun shone out,--for they could not stand,--their limbs fleshless, their bodies half-naked, their faces bloated yet wrinkled, and of a pale, greenish hue,--children who would never, it was too plain, grow up to be men and women. I saw Trevelyan's claw in the vitals of those children: his red tape would draw them to death; in his Government laboratory he had prepared for them the typhus poison.' John Mitchel describing what he witnessed in 1847 'Although the process by which long established habits are changed, and society is reconstructed on a new basis, must necessarily be slow, there are not wanting signs that we are advancing by sure steps towards the desired end.' Sir Charles Trevelyan, writing in 1848 'The evils, the unspeakable evils of the legislative Union are now placed beyond the reach of doubt or controversy. They are attested by the graves of the dead and the skeleton forms of the living, the accusing monuments of that cruel policy which has systematically consigned the people of Ireland to a food as precarious as tha of men in a savage state. It has forbidden them, in order to support alien luxury and monopoly, to taste of the abundant harvests and numerous flocks with which the land teems, the produce of their own peaceful and skilful industry.' Archbishop John MacHale, 1847 Excerpted from The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine by Enda Delaney All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
