The government has wisely suspended all other business to direct more effectually the measures proposed for the alleviation of the misery and distress that is now depopulating Ireland. Our sympathies, in common with those of the inhabitants of all England, go with ministers in their object and their endeavours. Party spirit is hushed, public opinion undivided, when the necessity is urged of immediately and sufficiently supplying the wants of our suffering fellow-countrymen, unable from their situation and circumstances to do ought in favor of themselves. To help them now, indeed, is our immediate duty; to teach them better habits, a wiser social economy, and a less selfish nationality, must be reserved for more fortunate times, when, perchance, our readiness to assist them in adversity will have prepared even the most prejudiced against us, to receive our advice without questioning our sincerity.
            --Pictorial Times, Jan. 30, 1847, on the famine in Ireland

Everyone KNOWS that if you give people food they will just sit back and consume it without care for the future or thrift, breeding more of their sort. I mean, look at the people who starved in Ireland: simple louts who slept with their pigs and sometimes would riot against their caring, benevolent landlords or the landlords' representatives. And the same was true all over Europe: the knout was never used in Russia, for instance, nor the whip in Germany or France. It's really amazing that people left such paradises to come to the US and Canada.