August 24th, 1846: The new Whig government believes the Irish people need to be taught a lessen in self reliance. "There are times when something like harshness is the greatest humanity," echoes the London Times. In Ireland many relief committees deplore the decision to close the food depots at a time of unprecedented distress.
But the Whig ideologues consider a dangerous precedent was set last year: Sir Robert Peel's relief measures created an expectation that the government would again supply food. Lord John Russell has no intention of allowing his government to repeat the experiment.
He states: "It must be thoroughly understood that we cannot feed the people. It was a cruel delusion to pretend to do so." Repeated state intervention would not only paralyse private enterprise, but increase Irish dependence on Britain.
In the second year of the Famine, therefore, the Whigs compromise. They assure Irish merchants there will be no government interference in the import of food into the eastern part of the country. They will, however, intervene in the west - where there are fewer traders anyhow - if it proves to be absolutely necessary.
Responsibility for overseeing the distribution of food is placed in the hands of the Treasury, confirming the importance of Charles Trevelyan and the Chancellor, Sir Charles Wood.
The depots, now confined to the west coast, are to be used only as a last resort. The sub depots, superintended by the constabulary and coastguard last year, are not to be reopened as they had "embarrassed the accounts considerably". Central depots are to be controlled by the Commissariat Office under Sir Randolph Routh.
Furthermore, the influence of the view that the Irish crisis is providentially determined can scarcely be over estimated. Wood, the man in charge of the purse strings, believes in a retributive yet beneficent providence: "A want of food and employment is a calamity sent by providence"; "Except through a purgatory of misery and starvation, I cannot see how Ireland is to emerge into a state of anything approaching to quiet and prosperity."
Trevelyan agrees: "Even in the most afflicting dispensations of providence, there was ground for consolation and often even occasion for congratulation." To Wood, the government is the agent and not the initiator of these sanctions.
Providentialist thought requires that, ultimately, Ireland be left to the operation of "natural causes". While the Irish administration contains many earnest and conscientious men, their political masters in London will merely tinker with the food supply.
But for economists imbued with the ethos of evangelical Protestantism, the Famine is a God given opportunity to transform Irish behaviour. They regard the potato as the root of all Irish evil: a "lazy root", grown in "lazy" beds by a "lazy" people. To push the feckless Irish up the ladder of civilisation, the degenerate potato should be replaced by a higher food source like grain.