The starvation that racked the Irish people was “the judgment of God” on “the selfish, perverse, and turbulent character” of the Irish people, in the words of Sir Charles Trevelyan, prominent evangelical and chief administrator of famine relief; it was “the direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence.” (Though some economists grumbled that Providence had botched the job: Senior complained that a million deaths “would scarcely be enough to do much good.”)
