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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2022
It has pleased Providence to afflict not only this country, but the greater part of the rest of Europe, with scarcity and dearth, which have pressed with peculiar severity on that part of the United Kingdom which, from its poverty, is least able to bear it. Thousands of suffering and famishing people, chiefly in Ireland, claim from us sympathy and assistance, which I am confident will not be withheld from them. If I were only to refer to the past and the present state of the finances of the country, I should certainly say, that there never was a time when the finances of the country were so well able to bear the demands which are now about to be made upon them.
Sir Charles Wood (chancellor of the exchequer), debate on the February 1847 Budget.I have no money & therefore I cannot give it. The Revenue is at last as we have been expecting, falling off very much. According to the last account ending August 7th, the revenue from April 5 to August 7 is £850,000 less than last year – the expenditure £2,000,000 more. You may guess from these figures in what state my Exchequer is. The unused balance of the loan carries me over the October quarter and a paltry plight I shall then be in. Therefore, assistance to Ireland means only a further loan and in the present state of the money market and depression in all our manufacturing towns, this is out of the question. Ireland must keep herself somehow or other. This, at least, is certain: the public funds of this country will not. I plead guilty to being very hard hearted.
Wood to Lord Clarendon (lord-lieutenant of Ireland), 15 August 1847.When last year we were much pressed to adopt measures for emigration, I objected to any such attempt on the ground that no measures of this kind could be adopted which would not involve a considerable outlay of capital in the first instance … at that time it cannot be forgotten there was an obvious deficiency of disposable capital in the country and that it would have been impossible for the Government to have gone into the market to borrow money for any such purpose as that now adverted to without still further aggravating this deficiency, and increasing the severe pressure then bearing upon the trade of the country.
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