[66] Lord George Bentinck stated that 1500 miles of railroad would give constant employment, either on the line or in the various occupations connected with it, to 110,000 able-bodied labourers and artificers, representing, with their families, 550,000 persons; but even supposing that all these had been set to work at once, they would have been selected from the classes of persons least likely to require charitable assistance, while the weak and infirm would have been systematically excluded. The number of persons for whom the Government had to provide the means of subsistence at this crisis, was upwards of three millions; and this had to be done in the neighbourhood of their own homes, which could not be accomplished by means of railroads, employment on which is confined to particular localities. The number of persons stated in the House of Commons as likely to be employed on railroads in Ireland was greatly overrated; the general surface of the country requires scarcely any deep cuttings or embankments, and the eskars, through which the cuttings are made, offer the finest possible material for ballasting. [67] Speech of Mr. Richard Bourke, M.P. for Kildare, to his father’s tenantry, September 1847. [68] Although both did their best, it is fair to state that the Protestant clergy had some advantages which the Roman Catholic clergy did not possess. The Protestant clergy were assisted by liberal subscriptions from England; and as their stipends are primary charges on the rent, they were regularly paid even during the period of the greatest distress. The Roman Catholic clergy, on the contrary, depend, both for their own subsistence, and for the means of helping their poor and ignorant people, upon the voluntary contributions of the people themselves; and when these had nothing to give, owing to the failure of their crops and the want of employment, the clergy were reduced to great straits, which they bore with exemplary patience. The fees on marriages and baptisms which are the principal source of the income of the Roman Catholic clergy, almost entirely ceased in some parts of the country. It is much to the credit of the poor Irish, that now that they have been deprived of the potatoes on which they had been accustomed to bring up their families, marriages have become much less frequent.