The Judgement of God

Doing a bit of research recently for a future podcast, I came across this astonishing little passage.

“The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated … The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

I’ve blanked out who was being taught a lesson, and what was teaching them a lesson; it’s easy enough to find out. But oh my, with the smallest of misunderstandings, that “the people” are not those being taught a lesson, but those teaching them, and the whole thing makes perfect sense today.

The original also made sense back when, to a certain group, but it was wrong then and is wrong today.