(2 of 2)
The trouble lay in the rigidity of their principles. Educated Englishmen, Whig or Tory, believed in laissez faire, the classic economic theory of a free economy. But this mercantile theory led to absurdities when applied to Ireland's pre-mercantile economy. "The fanatical faith ... in the operation of natural causes," says Woodham-Smith, "was carried to such a length that in the midst of one of the major famines of history, the government was perpetually nervous of being too good to Ireland and of corrupting the Irish people by kindness, and so stifling the virtues of self-reliance and industry." As applied by bumbling bureaucrats, the doctrine meant that food (Indian corn mostly) should only be distributed by private agencies. Private traders (though few existed) should import the stuff. Exporters should on no account be hindered in their natural economic function. As a result, oats were carried to the docks for export past starving men.
Sin of Ignorance. The Irish famine does not come under the head of genocide, as British Historian A.J.P. Taylor provocatively has put it. The gas ovens of Auschwitz were the weapons of a deliberate crime. The Irish tragedy was a more confused thing, in which ignorant good will was not the least fatal element. But it is hardly surprising that the Irish blamed the British and that 1,000,000 Irish who somehow managed to escape to Canada, the U.S., England or Australia carried with them as their only inalienable possession—hatred. Only the statute of limitations, which rules the reading of history, has made it possible for the two nations still to speak to each other.