Abbey, and dropped through the hinged bottom of a ‘trap coffin’ into a common grave below. In the rural districts even this rude sepulchre was impossible. In the fields and by the ditches the victims lay as they fell, till some charitable hand was found to cover them with the adjacent soil.” And yet during this time, as Lord George Bentinck said, the food exports of Ireland were greater than those of any other country in the world, not merely relatively but absolutely in proportion to people or area. As Mr. Henry George observes,[66] “grain and meal and butter were carted for exportation along roads lined with the starving, and past trenches into which the dead were piled.” During the preceding autumn the Government had quite under-estimated the gravity of the situation in Ireland. They had given a pledge that they would not disturb the food market, and they relied on the ordinary capital of the nation to obtain supplies for a starving country, in the greater part of which there was by this time neither capital nor commerce. They imagined [Illustration: THE IRISH FAMINE: INTERIOR OF A PEASANT’S HUT.] that the law of supply and demand would feed the people, and that whenever hunger smote them in a desolate district, there merchants and retailers of food would spring up as if by magic. Meetings of the Cabinet Council were [Illustration: LORD BROUGHAM, 1850. (_From a Sketch of the Period_.)] held, it is true; and a glimpse at their deliberations is afforded us by Lord Campbell, who says he was summoned to attend a meeting of the Cabinet on the 20th October, at which the impending aggravation of the calamity was discussed. He adds:--“Lord John Russell has been severely blamed for not having immediately made an Order in Council to open the ports for the introduction of corn _duty free_. He actually proposed this measure, but was overruled, his colleagues being almost unanimously against him. In our then state of knowledge I think we were right not to tamper with the law as it had been recently settled, particularly as an Order in Council of this nature would have induced a necessity for the immediate meeting of Parliament, which, on account of the state of Ireland, was universally deprecated. The course we adopted was applauded till the accounts of Irish destitution became daily more appalling. We employed ourselves in considering the Bills which were to be brought forward at the meeting of Parliament, and Committees of the Cabinet were appointed to prepare them. Cabinet dinners were given once a week, and we were still in good spirits, hoping that the scarcity of this winter would not be more severe than that of the preceding.”[67] Ministers were painfully undeceived.