John Morley: “If there are no rains this month, the spectre of famine seems to be approaching, and nobody can blame us for that.”

All alike concerned themselves with its truth or falsehood, with what they counted to be its abstract fitness or unfitness.

This is no mere case of barren wrangle and verbal recrimination.

To stint Ireland in power which might be necessary or desirable for the management of matters purely Irish, would be a great error; and if she was so stinted, the end that any such measure might contemplate could not be attained.

But Turgot was one of those severe and scrupulous souls, to whom a wicked promise does not cease to be degrading by becoming hypocritical.