Eeeh, this kind of looks like a British apologetic that ignores the whole "hundreds of years of colonial occupation" thing they were doing at the time.

Blaming the whigs for a technical agricultural policy point they were probably right about [1] while waving off the background of extractive colonialism that created the dependency on the potato crop is a little convenient

[1] when there's famine due to economic shortfall in a country with an agricultural economy, agriculture policy interventions like food dumping and banning exports can make things worse by collapsing the economy. if you want to help, don't send rules send money