Editing John Mitchel (section)

===Responds to the Famine===

Mitchel blamed the British government for the famine. He wrote: "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine...and a million and a half men, women and children were carefully, prudently and peacefully slain by the English government".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kearney |first1=Hugh F. |title=Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History |date=2007 |publisher=NYU Press |page=272}}</ref>

On 25 October 1845, in article "The People's Food", Mitchel pointed to the failure of the potato crop, and warned landlords that pursuing their tenants for rents would force them to sell their other crops and starve.<ref>''The Nation'' newspaper, 1845</ref> On 8 November, in "The Detectives", he wrote, "The people are beginning to fear that the Irish Government is merely a machinery for their destruction; ... that it is unable, or unwilling, to take a single step for the prevention of famine, for the encouragement of manufactures, or providing fields of industry, and is only active in promoting, by high premiums and bounties, the horrible manufacture of crimes!".<ref name="The Nation">''The Nation'' newspaper, 1844</ref>

On 14 February 1846 Mitchel wrote again of the consequences of the previous autumn's potato crop losses, condemning the Government's inadequate response, and questioning whether it recognised that millions of people in Ireland who would soon have nothing to eat.<ref name="T.F. O'Sullivan">Young Ireland, T.F. O'Sullivan, The Kerryman Ltd, 1945.</ref> On 28 February, he observed that the [[Coercion Act|Coercion Bill]], then going through the [[House of Lords]], was "the only kind of legislation for Ireland that is sure to meet with no obstruction in that House". However they may differ about feeding the Irish people, the one thing all English parties were agreed upon was "the policy of taxing, prosecuting and ruining them."<ref name="Nation">''The Nation'' newspaper, 1846</ref>

In an article on "English Rule" on 7 March 1846, Mitchel wrote: <blockquote>The Irish People are expecting famine day by day... and they ascribe it unanimously, not so much to the rule of heaven as to the greedy and cruel policy of England. ... They behold their own wretched food melting in rottenness off the face of the earth, and they see heavy-laden ships, freighted with the yellow corn their own hands have sown and reaped, spreading all sail for England; they see it and with every grain of that corn goes a heavy curse.<ref name="Nation" /></blockquote>