The right of the rich few to sell food to the highest bidder came before the majority needs for food for survival, and the right to collect rent came before the right to housing. British government supported that by the Coercion Act enabling it to declare martial law and a curfew. Soldiers and constabulary were used to protect food for exporting from the starving. The British blamed Ireland for continuing to plant the potato after the first time the blight appeared. At the height of the famine the full system of English poor laws were extended to Ireland. There was food available to save the Irish people from starvation, but it was denied them. Ireland was at this time part of the United Kingdom, the wealthiest country in the world. The British government had insisted on undertaking responsibility for Ireland, but when crisis arose they ran away from it. The British were handling human beings as ciphers on a bit of paper. They looked up the answers in economic textbooks without ever setting eyes on the living skeletons of the Irish people. They excused the Irish for being hit by the blight once, but they condemned them for persisting in planting the potatoes after the blight appeared again. Most of all the British government feared that the entire social structure would topple down if men and women were once given food they could not pay for. It was easy for the British to believe the blight was the fault of the Irish because blight occurred in England too, but it was not nearly as severe. The first step they took to relieve the situation was to send over a shipload of scientists to study the cause of the potato failure. Money could not be used for seeding the lands, reclaiming the millions of acres of bog, or building railways because that would be giving the Irish farmer an unfair advantage over the English (MacManus, 1944).
       The government was accused of genocide by the Irish and even of instigating an "Irish holocaust". The Irish were accused of marrying too early and having too many children. The efforts of the British government for relief of the Irish were half-hearted and inadequate. They set up relief schemes and pubic works to avoid mass revolt (Costigan, 1969).