ABSTRACT
In particular, Torrens suggests that the Great Famine in Ireland should have taught England to be ready for such disasters in the future and that the Poor Law had been tested in these disasters and found to be a failure. Torrens asks, what is the responsibility of government to its people in such times of crisis, particularly since the country had just been through the Irish Famine of 1846–1850. The confluent streams of national benevolence rose so rapidly as fairly to sweep the administration of Poor Relief from its moorings. The extraordinary expansion of our foreign trade, while it tends to the unparalleled augmentation of wealth amongst us, is not unaccompanied with grave national hazards; and of these, perhaps the gravest is the liability to sudden displacements of labour at home, to an extent and for a length of time which man can venture to compute.
