cal interpretation of the state of Ireland. Quinn (39) cites an 1847 editorial in the London Times that unfavorably compared the indolent and lazy Celts to the more hardy and industrious Saxons comprising the population of England. In that same year, an editorial in Blackwood's Magazine "complained of the expense being incurred to help the Irish. The famine was not an English problem . . . and there was no need for wasting another shilling on a disaster 'which the heedlessness and indolence of the Irish had brought upon themselves'" (Quinn 39-40).
That attitude was adopted by Charles Trevelyan, at the time Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in Britain, who began to withdraw publicly funded support for those affected by the famine:
[Trevelyan was] convinced that Ireland's problem wasn't inadequate food supplies but "the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people," pronounced the famine over. There would be no more extraordinary measures by the Treasury, not even when the potato failed again in 1848, 1849, and into the early 1850s. Irish nee
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