The Corn Peel arranged to purchase was government bought, and was paid for because it was not a foodstuff that was in any previous demand, so would not, the theory went, interfere with existing markets.
To Trevelyan of course, government expenditure was government expenditure, and thus he opposed even this inadequate intervention by the state.
Trevelyan wasn’t advocating tarrifs, he was advocating as little government intervention as possible, and hoping that under free market conditions, the food would be cheap enough to stave off the famine....
You're making a lot of assumptions there.
The government purchased it because - according to the protectionist laws of the British Empire - private citizens of Ireland were not allowed to purchase grain from India.
Neither Peel nor Trevelyan wanted to go with the obvious free market solution: i.e. open the Irish market to Indian farmers. Peel wanted to buck the protectionist laws temporarily and in a controlled manner. Trevelyan wanted to maintain the protectionist laws unchanged.
To Trevelyan of course, government expenditure was government expenditure, and thus he opposed even this inadequate intervention by the state.
Trevelyan was a protectionist, as his policy clearly indicates. He may have felt that tariff revenue shouldn't be wasted on the Irish, but he was strongly opposed to ending protectionist intervention in the economy.
Completely false. He never suggested ending the tariffs in the slightest. And his own comments, as revealed by your source, indicate that he was worried that cheap Indian grain would undercut the high prices that the tariffs provided to English grain growers.
Again, if Trevelyan was an advocate of free markets he would have called for an immediate end to all government intervention in the grain market. But, as the record shows, he opposed even Peel's modest plan to effectively suspend tariffs temporarily.