THE HISTORY

OF THE

GREAT IRISH FAMINE

OF

1847,

WITH NOTICES OF EARLIER IRISH FAMINES.

BY THE

REV. JOHN O'ROURKE, P.P., M.R.I.A.

THIRD EDITION.

Dublin:

JAMES DUFFY AND CO., LTD.,

15 WELLINGTON QUAY.

1902.

[The right of translation and reproduction is reserved.]

TO

MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN

THIS NARRATIVE

OF ONE OF THE MOST TERRIBLE EPISODES

IN THE CHEQUERED HISTORY

OF

OUR NATIVE LAND,

IS

RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED.

[CONTENTS.]

PREFACE.

The Author of this volume has, for a considerable time, been of opinion, that the leading facts of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 ought to be put together without unnecessary delay. Several reasons occurred to him why such a work should be done: the magnitude of the Famine itself; the peculiarity of its immediate cause; its influence on the destiny of the Irish Race. That there should be no unnecessary delay in performing the task was sufficiently proved, he thought, by the fact, that testimony of the most valuable kind, namely, contemporary testimony, was silently but rapidly passing away with the generation that had witnessed the Scourge.

Having made up his mind to undertake such a work, the Author's first preparation for it was, to send query sheets to such persons as were supposed to be in possession of information on the subject. And he has here to express his gratitude and thanks to his numerous correspondents, for the kindness and promptness with which his queries were answered. He cannot recall even one case in which this was not done. But there is a dark side to the picture too. In looking over the query sheets now, it is sad to find how many of those whose signatures they bear have already passed from amongst us.

Other materials of great importance lay scattered over the Public Journals of the period; were buried and stowed away in Parliamentary Blue Books, and Parliamentary debates;—were to be sought for in pamphlets, in periodicals, and more especially in the Reports of the various Societies and Associations, which were appointed for dispensing the alms given with such free hand, to aid in saving the lives of the famishing people. Those Records will be found quoted and referred to in the course of the work.

Amongst them, it is but just to acknowledge, how much the Author owes to the Report of the Census Commissioners for 1851; to the "Transactions" of the Society of Friends; and to the Irish Crisis, by Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, Bart.; which originally appeared as an article in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1848, but was reprinted in a small volume of two hundred pages. Although far from agreeing with many of Sir Charles's conclusions (he was Secretary to the Treasury during the Famine), still the Author cheerfully acknowledges, that the statistical information in the Irish Crisis is very valuable to a student of the history of the Famine period.

It was to be expected, that the alarm about the Potato Blight and the Famine would be first raised through the public Press. This was done by letters from various localities, and by Special Reporters and Commissioners, who travelled through the country to examine the state of the people, as well as that of the potato crop. There was a Commissioner from the London Times in Ireland at this period. His letters written to that Journal were afterwards collected, and they made an octavo volume of nearly eight hundred pages.

The English people, and many in Ireland, long adhered to the opinion, that there was much exaggeration in the Irish Newspapers regarding both the Blight and the Famine; but subsequent investigation showed, that there was very little, if any, exaggeration; nay, that the real facts were often understated. As to the Famine, several of the gentlemen sent by the Charitable Societies to make Reports, wrote back, that there was no exaggeration whatever, and, for a very sufficient reason, namely, that, in their opinion, it was impossible to exaggerate the dreadful condition in which they found the people.

Another mode of acquiring information adopted by the Author was, to visit those parts of the country in which the Famine had raged with the greatest severity. On such occasions he not only had the advantage of examining the localities, but of conversing with persons whose knowledge of that awful Calamity made them valuable and interesting guides.

As to the rest, it is left to the kindness of the Reader.

ST. MARY'S, MAYNOOTH,

1st December, 1874.

CONTENTS.

[PREFACE.]

[CHAPTER I.]

The Potato--Its introduction into Europe--Sir Walter Raleigh--The Potato of Virginia--The Battata, or sweet Potato--Sir John Hawkins--Sir Francis Drake--Raleigh's numerous exploring expeditions--Story of his distributing Potatoes on the Irish coast on his way from Virginia groundless--Sir Joseph Banks--His history of the introduction of the Potato--Thomas Heriot--His description of the Opanawk a correct description of the Potato--That root in Europe before Raleigh's time--Raleigh an "Undertaker"--The Grants made to him--The Famine after the War with the Desmonds--Introduction of the Potato into Ireland--Did not come rapidly into cultivation--Food of the poorest--Grazing--Graziers--Destruction of Irish Manufactures--Causes of the increasing culture of the Potato--Improvement of Agriculture--Rotation of Crops--Primate Boulter's charity--Buys Corn in the South to sell it cheaply in the North--Years of scarcity from 1720 to 1740--The Famine of 1740-41--The Great Frost--No combined effort to meet this Famine--Vast number of Deaths--The Obelisk at Castletown (Note)--Price of Wheat--Bread Riots--Gangs of Robbers--"The Kellymount Gang"--Severe punishment--Shooting down Food-rioters--The Lord Lieutenant's Address to Parliament--Bill "for the more effectual securing the payments of rents and preventing the frauds of tenants"--This Bill the basis of legislation on the Land Question up to 1870--Land thrown into Grazing--State of the Catholics--Renewal of the Penal Statutes--Fever and bloody flux--Deaths--State of Prisoners--Galway Physicians refuse to attend Patients--The Races of Galway changed to Tuam on account of the Fever in Galway--Balls and Plays!--Rt. Rev. Dr. Berkeley's account of the Famine--The "Groans of Ireland"--Ireland a land of Famine--Dublin Bay--The Coast--The Wicklow Hills--Killiney--Obelisk Hill--What the Obelisk was built for--The Potato more cultivated than ever after 1741--Agricultural literature of the time--Apathy of the Gentry denounced--Comparative yield of Potatoes a hundred years ago and at present--Arthur Young on the Potato--Great increase of its culture in twenty years--The disease called "curl" in the Potato (Note)--Failure of the Potato in 1821--Consequent Famine in 1822--Government grants--Charitable collections--High price of Potatoes--Skibbereen in 1822--Half of the superficies of the Island visited by this Famine--Strange apathy of Statesmen and Landowners with regard to the ever-increasing culture of the Potato--Supposed conquest of Ireland--Ireland kept poor lest she should rebel--The English colony always regarded as the Irish nation--The natives ignored--They lived in the bogs and mountains, and cultivated the Potato, the only food that would grow in such places--No recorded Potato blight before 1729--The probable reason--Poverty of the English colony--Jealousy of England of its progress and prosperity--Commercial jealousy--Destruction of the Woollen manufacture--Its immediate effect--William the Third's Declaration--Absenteeism--Mr. M'Culloch's arguments (Note A.)--Apparently low rents--Not really so--No capital--Little skill--No good Agricultural Implements--Swift's opinion--Arthur Young's opinion--Acts of Parliament--The Catholics permitted to be loyal--Act for reclaiming Bogs--Pension to Apostate Priests increased--Catholic Petition in 1792--The Relief Act of 1793--Population of Ireland at this time--the Forty-shilling Freeholders--Why they were created--Why they were abolished--the cry of over-population,

[CHAPTER II.]

The Potato Blight of 1845--Its appearance in England--In Ireland--Weather--Scotland--Names given to the Blight--First appearance of the Blight in Ireland--Accounts of its progress--The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland--Its action--The Dublin Corporation--O'Connell--His plan for meeting the Crisis--Deputation to the Lord Lieutenant--How it was received--Lord Heytesbury's Reply--It displeases the Government--The Times' Commissioner--His suggestions--Mr. Gregory's Letter--Mr. Crichton's--Sir James Murray on the Blight--Action of the Clergy--the Mansion House Committee--Resolutions--Analysis of five hundred letters on the Blight--Partial cessation of the Rot caused by the Blight--Report of Professors Lindley and Playfair--Estimated loss--Query Sheets sent out--Corporation Address to the Queen--Her Reply--Address of the London Corporation asking for Free Trade--The Potato Blight made a party question--Dean Hoare's Letter--Failure of remedies,

[CHAPTER III.]

Lord Heytesbury and Sir Robert Peel--The Potatoes of last year!--Is there a stock of them?--Sir R. Peel and Free Trade--Strength of his Cabinet--Mr. Cobden proposes a Committee of Inquiry--His speech--Its effect--Committee refused--D'Israeli's attack on Sir R. Peel (Note)--Sir Robert puts forward the Potato Blight as the cause for repealing the Corn Laws--The extent of the Failure not exaggerated--Sir James Graham and Sir R. Peel--Appointments of Drs. Lindley and Playfair to investigate the Blight--Sir R. Peel announces that he is a convert to the repeal of the Corn Laws--States his views, but does not reason on them--The Quarterly Review--Special Commissioners--Mr. Buller's letter--Sir James Graham and the Premier--Proceeding by Proclamation instead of by Order in Council--Sir James's sharp reply--Agitation to stop distillation--County Meetings proposed by the Lord Lieutenant--Cabinet Council--The Premier puts his views before it in a memorandum--The Corn Laws--Some of the Cabinet displeased with his views--On the 6th November he submits another memorandum to the Cabinet--Lord Stanley dissents from the Premier's views--The Cabinet meet again next day and he concludes the memorandum--On the 29th November he sends to each of his colleagues a more detailed exposition of his views--Several reply--Another mem. brought before them on the 2nd December--The Cabinet in permanent session--On the 5th of December Sir Robert resigns--Lord John Russell fails to form a Government--The old Cabinet again in power--Mr. Gladstone replaces Lord Stanley,

[CHAPTER IV.]

Meeting of Parliament--Queen's Speech--The Premier's speech on the Address--Goes into the whole question of Free Trade--The protectionists--Lord Brougham's views (Note)--The twelve nights' debate on the Corn Laws--No connection between it and the Famine--Stafford O'Brien's speech--Sir James Graham's reply--Smith O'Brien's speech--His imprisonment (Note B.)--O'Connell's motion--His speech--Sir Robert Peel replies--Substantially agrees with O'Connell--Bill for the protection of life in Ireland--Its first reading opposed by the Irish members--O'Connell leads the Opposition in a speech of two hours--Mr. D'Israeli mistaken in calling it his last speech--His account of it--He misrepresents it--The opinions expressed in it were those O'Connell always held. Break up of the Tory party--Lord George Bentinck becomes leader of the Protectionists--Their difficulty in opposing the Coercion Bill--Ingenious plan of Lord George--Strange combination against the Government--Close of Debate on Coercion Bill--Government defeated by a majority of 73--Measures to meet the Famine--Delay--Accounts from various parts of the country--Great distress--"Are the Landlords making any efforts?"--Notice for rent--The bailiff's reply--Number of Workhouses open--Number of persons in them--Sir Robert Peel's speech on his resignation--Accident to him--His death--The Peels--Sir Robert's qualities and character--His manner of dealing with the Famine--His real object the repeal of the Corn Laws,

[CHAPTER V.]

John Russell Prime Minister--He confers important offices on some Irish Catholics--His address to the electors of London--Its vagueness--Addresses of some of the other new Ministers--The Irish difficulty greater than ever--Young and Old Ireland--The Times on O'Connell and English rule in Ireland--Overtures of the Whig Government--O'Connell listens to them--The eleven measures--Views of the advanced Repealers--Lord Miltown's letter to O'Connell--Dissensions in the Repeal Association--The "Peace Resolutions"--O'Connell's letters--He censures the Nation newspaper--Debate in the Repeal Association--Thomas Francis Meagher's "Sword speech"--The Young Ireland party leave Conciliation Hall in a body--Description of the scene (Note)--Reflections--Sir Robert Peel's speech after his resignation--Lord John Russell's speech at Glasgow--His speech on the Irish Coercion Bill--His speech after becoming Prime Minister--The Potato Blight reappears--Accounts from the Provinces--Father Mathew's letter--Value of the Potato Crop of 1846--Various remedies, theories, and speculations--State of the weather--Mr. Cooper's observations at Markree Castle--Lord Monteagle's motion in the House of Lords for employing the people--Profitable employment the right thing--The Marquis of Lansdowne replies--It is hard to relieve a poor country like Ireland--Lord Devon's opinion--The Premier's statement about relief--The wonderful cargo of Indian meal--Sir R. Peel's fallacies--Bill for Baronial Sessions--Cessation of Government Works--The Mallow Relief Committee--Beds of stone!--High rents on the poor--The Social Condition of the Hottentot as compared with that of Mick Sullivan--Rev. Mr. Gibson's views--Mr. Tuke's account of Erris (Note)--Close of the Session of Parliament,

[CHAPTER VI.]

The Labour-rate Act passed without opposition: entitled, An Act to Facilitate the Employment of the Labouring Poor--Its provisions--Government Minute explaining them--Heads of Minute--Rate of wages--Dissatisfaction with it--Commissary-General Hewetson's letter--Exorbitant prices--Opinion expressed on this head by an American Captain--The Government will not order food as Sir R. Peel did--Partial and unjust taxation--Opposition to the Labour-rate Act--Reproductive employment called for--Lord Devon's opinion--Former works not to be completed under the Act--Minute of 31st of August--Modified by Mr. Labouchere's letter of 5th of September--People taxed who paid a rent of £4 a year--In many cases a hardship--Barren works the great blot of the Labour-rate Act--Arguments against the Act--Resources of the country should have been developed--Panic among landowners--Rev. Mr. Moore's letters--Level roads a good thing--Food better--A cry of excessive population raised--Ireland not overpeopled--Employ the people on tilling the soil--Sir R. Routh takes the same view--Relief Committee of Kells and Fore--Reproductive employment--Plan suggested--Address to the Lord Lieutenant--True remedy--O'Connell on the Famine--Writes from Darrynane on the subject--Money in the hands of Board of Works--Compulsory reclamation of waste lands--Drainage Bill--Mr. Kennedy's opinion--Who is to blame?--The Government, the landlords, or the people?--O'Connell for united action--Outdoor relief will confiscate property--Proposed Central Committee--Several Committees meet in Dublin--Mr. Monsell's letter--His views--Against unproductive labour--Money wasted--Appeal to the Government--Cork deputation to the Prime Minister--His views--He now sees great difficulties in reclaiming waste lands--Platitudes--Change of views--Requisition for meeting in Dublin--Unexpected publication of the "Labouchere Letter" authorizing reproductive works--Verdict of the Government against itself,

[CHAPTER VII.]

The Measures of Relief for 1846-7--Difficulties--Shortcomings of the Government--Vigorous action of other countries--Commissary General Routh's Letter on the state of the depôts--Replies from the Treasury--Delay--Incredulity of Government--English Press--Attacks both on the Landlords and People of Ireland--Not the time for such attacks--View of the Morning Chronicle--Talk about exaggeration--Lieutenant-Colonel Jones--Changes his opinion--His reason for doing so--Mr. Secretary Redington's ideas--Extraordinary Baronial Presentments--Presentments for the County Mayo beyond the whole rental of the county!--The reason why--Unfinished Public Works--Lord Monteagle--Finds fault with the action of the Government, although a supporter of theirs--Expenses divided between landlord and tenant--Discontent at rate of wages on public works being 2d. per day under the average wages of the district--Founded on error--Taskwork--Great dissatisfaction at it--Combination--Attempt on the Life of Mr. W.M. Hennessy--True way to manage the people (Note)--Stoppage of Works--Captain Wynne--Dreadful destitution--Christmas eve--Opposition to Taskwork continues--Causes--Treasury Minute on the subject--Colonel Jones on Committees--Insulting his officers--Insult to Mr. Cornelius O'Brien, M.P.--Captain Wynne at Ennistymon--A real Irish Committee--Major M'Namara--His version of the Ennistymon affair (Note)--Charges against the Gentry of Clare by Captain Wynne--Mr. Millet on Ennistymon--Selling Tickets for the Public Works--Feeling of the Officials founded often on ignorance and prejudice--The Increase of Deposits in the Savings' Banks a Proof of Irish Prosperity--How explained by Mr. Twistleton, an official--Scarcity of silver--The Bank of Ireland authorized to issue it--The Public Works of 1845-6 brought to a close in August, 1846--The Labour-rate Act--Difficulty of getting good Officials--The Baronies--Issues to them--Loans--Grants--Total--Sudden and enormous Increase of Labourers on the Works under the Labour-rate Act--How distributed over the Provinces--Number of Officials superintending the Public Works--Correspondence--Number of Letters received at Central Office--Progress of the Famine--Number employed--Number seeking employment who could not get it--The Death-roll,

[CHAPTER VIII.]

Operations of the Commissariat Relief Department--Not to interfere with Mealmongers or Corn Merchants--Effects of this Rule--Deputation from Achill (Note)--Organization of the Commissariat Relief Department--Reports on the Potato Crop--The Blight in Clare--Commissary-General Hewetson's opinion--Commissary-General Dobree's Report--Depôts--Universality of the Blight--Rules with regard to Food Depôts--Fault of the Treasury--Scarcity of Food--Depôts besieged for it in the midst of harvest--Depôts to be only on the West Coast--What was meant by the West Coast--Coroner's Inquests at Mallow--Rev. Mr. Daly--Lord Mountcashel--Famine Demonstration at Westport--Sessions at Kilmacthomas--Riot at Dungarvan--Captain Sibthorpe's Order--Mr. Howley's Advice--Attempt to rescue Prisoners--Captain Sibthorpe asks leave to fire--Refused by Mr. Howley--Riot Act read--Leave to fire given--People retire from the town--Two men wounded--The carter's reason for fighting--Lame Pat Power--Death of Michael Fleming, the carter--Formidable bands traverse the country--Advice of the Clergy--Carrigtuohill--Macroom--Killarney--Skibbereen--March on that town by the workmen of Caheragh--Dr. Donovan's account of the movement--The military, seventy-five in number, posted behind a schoolhouse--Firmness and prudence of Mr. Galwey, J.P.--Biscuits ordered from the Government Store--Peace preserved--Demonstration at Mallow--Lord Stuart de Decies--Deputation from Clonakilty to the Lord Lieutenant--Ships prevented from sailing at Youghal--Sir David Roche--Demonstrations simultaneous--Proclamation against food riots--Want of mill-power--No mill-power in parts of the West where most required--Sir Randolph Routh's opinion--Overruled by the Treasury--Mr. Lister's Account of the mill-power in parts of Connaught--Meal ground at Deptford, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Rotherhithe; also in Essex and the Channel Islands--Mill-power at Malta--Quantity of wheat there--Five hundred quarters purchased--The French--The Irish handmill, or quern, revived--Samples of it got--Steel-mills--Mill-power useless from failure of water-supply--Attempt to introduce whole corn boiled as food,

[CHAPTER IX.]

The Landlords and the Government--Public Meetings--Reproductive Employment demanded for the People--The "Labouchere" Letter--Presentments under it--Loans asked to construct Railways--All who received incomes from land should be taxed--Deputation from the Royal Agricultural Society to the Lord Lieutenant--They ask reproductive employment--Lord Bessborough answers cautiously--The Prime Minister writes to the Duke of Leinster on the subject--Views expressed--Defence of his Irish Famine policy--Severe on the Landlords--Unsound principles laid down by him--Corn in the haggards--Mary Driscoll's little stack of barley--Second Deputation from the Royal Agricultural Society to the Lord Lieutenant--Its object--Request not granted--The Society lectured on the duties of its Members--Real meaning of the answer--Progress of the Famine--Deaths from starvation--O'Brien's Bridge--Rev. Dr. Vaughan--Slowness of the Board of Works--State of Tuam--Inquest on Denis M'Kennedy--Testimony of his Wife--A fortnight's Wages due to him--Received only half-a-crown in three weeks--Evidence of the Steward of the Works; of Rev. Mr. Webb; of Dr. Donovan--Remarks of Rev. Mr. Townsend--Verdict--The Times on the duties of Landlords--Landlords denounce the Government and the Board of Works--Mr. Fitzgerald on the Board and on the farmers--Meeting at Bandon--Lord Bernard--Inquest on Jeremiah Hegarty--The Landlord's "cross" on the barley--Mary Driscoll's evidence; her husband's--Post-mortem examination by Dr. Donovan--The Parish Priest of Swinford--Evictions--The Morning Chronicle on them--Spread and Increase of Famine--The question of providing coffins--Deaths at Skibbereen--Extent of the Famine in 1846--Deaths in Mayo--Cases--Edward M'Hale--Skibbereen--The diary of a day--Swelling of the extremities--Burning beds for fuel--Mr. Cummins's account of Skibbereen--Killarney Relief Committee--Father O'Connor's Statement--Christmas Eve!--A visit to Skibbereen twenty years after the great Famine,

[CHAPTER X.]

The Landlords' committee--A new Irish party--Circular--The "Great Meeting of Irish Peers, Members of Parliament and Landlords" in the Rotunda--The Resolutions--Spirit of those Resolutions--Emigration--great anxiety for it--Opening of Parliament--Queen's Speech--England on her Trial--Debate on the Address--Lord Brougham on Irish Landlords--Lord Stanley on the Famine--Smith O'Brien's speech--Defends the Landlords--Mr. Labouchere, the Irish Secretary, defends the Government--The Irish Agricultural population were always on the brink of starvation, and when the Blight came it was impossible to meet the disaster--The views of the Morning Chronicle on the Government of Ireland--Mr. Labouchere quotes the Poor-law Enquiry of 1835 and the Devon Commission--Change of the Government's views on the Famine--Griffith's estimate of the loss by the Blight--Extent of Irish Pauperism--Lord George Bentinck points out the mistakes of the Government--The people should have been supplied with food in remote districts--He did not agree with the political economy of non-interference--Mr. D'Israeli's manipulation of Lord George's speech--Letter of Rev. Mr. Townsend of Skibbereen--Fourteen funerals waiting whilst a fifteenth corpse was being interred--Quantity of corn in London, Liverpool and Glasgow--Lord John Russell's speech--He regarded the Famine as a "national calamity"--Absurd reason for not having summoned Parliament in Autumn--Sir Robert Peel's view--The Prime Minister on the state of Ireland--His views--His plans--Defends the action of the Government--Defends unproductive work--Reason for issuing the "Labouchere Letter"--Quotes Smith O'Brien approvingly--Mr. O'Brien's letters to the Landlords of Ireland (Note)--Confounding the questions of temporary relief and permanent improvement--Fallacy--Demoralization of labour--The Premier's "group of measures"--Soup kitchens--Taskwork--Break down of the Public Works--Food for nothing--Mode of payment of loans--£50,000 for seed--Impossibility of meeting the Famine completely--The permanent measures for Ireland--Drainage Act--Reclamation of waste lands--Sir Robert Kane's "Industrial Resources" of Ireland--Emigration again--Ireland not over-peopled--Description of England and Scotland in former times by Lord John Russell--His fine exposition of "the Irish question"--Mr. P. Scrope's Resolution--A count out--Bernal Osborne--Smith O'Brien--The good absentee landlords--The bad resident landlords--Sir C. Napier's view--Mr. Labouchere's kind words--Confounds two important questions--Mr. Gregory's quarter-acre clause--Met with some opposition--Irish liberals vote for it--The opponents of the quarter-acre clause--Lord George Bentinck's attack on the Government (Note),

[CHAPTER XI.]

Lord George Bentinck's Railway Scheme; he thought the finishing of the railways would be useful; he was a practical man, and wished to use the labour of the people on useful and profitable work--The state of England in 1841-2--The remedy that relieved England ought to have the same effect in Ireland--Under certain arrangements, there could have been no Irish Famine--Tons of Blue books--No new Acts necessary for Railways--1,500 miles of Railway were passed--Only 123 miles made--Lord George Bentinck's speech--Waste of power--Traffic--Great Southern and Western Railway--Principles of the Railway Bill--Shareholders--What employment would the Railway Bill give?--Mode of raising the money--£20,000,000 paid to slave-owners--Why not do the same thing for Ireland?--Foreign Securities in which English money has been expended--Assurances of support to Lord George--The Irish Members in a dilemma--The Irish Party continue to meet--Meeting at the Premier's in Chesham Place--Smith O'Brien waits on Lord George--The Government stake their existence on postponing the second reading of Lord Bentinck's Bill--Why? No good reason--Desertion of the Irish Members--Sir John Gray on the question--The Prime Minister's speech--The Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech a mockery--Loans to Ireland (falsely) asserted not to have been repaid--Mr. Hudson's speech--The Chancellor going on no authority--Mr. Hudson's Railway Statistics--The Chancellor of the Exchequer hard on Irish Landlords--His way of giving relief--Sir Robert Peel on the Railway Bill--The Railway Bill a doomed measure--Peel's eulogium on industry in general, and on Mr. Bianconi in particular--Lord G. Bentinck's reply--His arguments skipped by his opponents--Money spent on making Railways--The Irish vote on the Bill--Names,

[CHAPTER XII.]

State of the Country during the Winter of 1847--State of Clare--Capt. Wynne's Letter--Patience of the suffering people--Ennis without food--The North--Belfast--great distress in it--Letter to the Northern Whig--Cork--rush of country people to it--Soup--Society of Friends--The sliding coffin--Deaths in the streets--One hundred bodies buried together!--More than one death every hour in the Workhouse--Limerick--Experience of a Priest of St. John's--Dublin--Dysentery more fatal than cholera--Meetings--"General Central Relief Committee for all Ireland"--Committee of the Society of Friends--The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and Scotland--The Government--Famine not a money question--so the Government pretended--Activity of other countries in procuring food--Attack on Divine Providence--Wm. Bennett's opinion.--Money wages not to be had from farmers--Was it a money or food question?--The Navigation laws--Freights doubled--The Prime minister's exposition--Free Trade in theory--protection in practice--The Treasury says it cannot find meal--President Polk's message to Congress--America burthened with surplus corn--could supply the world--Was it a money question or a food question?--Living on field roots--Churchyards enlarged--Three coffins on a donkey cart--Roscommon--no coffins--600 people in typhus fever in one Workhouse?--Heroic virtue--The Rosary--Sligo--forty bodies waiting for inquests!--Owen Mulrooney--eating asses' flesh--Mayo--Meeting of the county--Mr. Garvey's statement--Mr. Tuke's experiences--Inquests given up--W.G.'s letters on Mayo--Effect of Famine on the relations of landlord and tenant--Extermination of the smaller tenantry--Evictions--Opinion of an eyewitness--A mother takes leave of her children--Ass and horse flesh--something more dreadful! (Note)--The weather--its effects--Count Strezelecki--Mr. Egan's account of Westport--Anointing the people in the streets!--The Society of Friends--Accounts given by their agents--Patience of the people--Newspaper accounts not exaggerated--Donegal--Dunfanaghy--Glenties--Resident proprietors good and charitable--Skull--From Cape Clear to Skull--The Capers--Graveyard of Skull--Ballydehob--The hinged coffin--Famine hardens the heart. Rev. Traill Hall--Captain Caffin's narrative--Soup-kitchens--Officials concealing the state of the people--Provision for burying the dead--The boat's crew at a funeral--State of Dingle--Father Mathew's evidence--Bantry--Inquests--Catherine Sheehan--Richard Finn--Labours of the Priests--Giving a dinner away--Fearful number of deaths--Verdict of "Wilful murder" against Lord John Russell--The Workhouse at Bantry--Estimated deaths--The hinged coffin--Shafto Adair's idea of the Famine,

[CHAPTER XIII.]

The Irish Relief Act, 10th Vic., c. 7--Rapid expansion of Public Works--They fail to sustain the people--Clauses of the new Relief Act--Relief Committees--Their duties--Union rating. Principal clergy members of Relief Committees--Duties of Government Inspectors--Finance Committees--Numbers on Public Works in February, 1847--Monthly outlay--Parliament gives authority to borrow £8,000,000--Reduction Of labourers on Public Works--Task work condemned--Rules drawn up by new Relief Commissioners--Rations to be allowed--Definition of soup--First Report of Commissioners--Remonstrances--Quantity of stationery used--Cooked food recommended--Monsieur Soyer comes to Ireland--His coming heralded by the London Journals--His soup--Jealousy--M. Jacquet on Soyer--The Lancet on him--Professor Aldridge, M.D., on Soyer's soup--Sir Henry Marsh on it--M. Soyer's model soup kitchen--A "gala day"--Ireland M. Soyer's "difficulty"--Last appearance!--Description of his "Model Soup Kitchen" (Note)--Reclamation of waste lands--Quantity reclaimable--Sir Robert Kane's view--Mr. Fagan on Reclamation--Mr. Poulette Scrope on the Irish question--Unreclaimed land in Mayo--The Dean of Killala--Commissary General Hewetson on reclamation and over-population--Opposition to reclamation--No reason given for it--Sir R. Griffith on it--Mr. Fetherstone a reclaimer of bog--Reclamation of bog in England--Second Report of Relief Commissioners--Relief Works closed too rapidly--The twenty per cent. rule--Mr. Labouchere's reply to Smith O'Brien--Letter from Colonel Jones--The Premier's promise--The Claremorris deanery--Effect of the dismissals in various parts of the country--Soup kitchens attacked--Third Report of the Relief Commissioners--Questions from Inspectors--O'Connell's last illness--His attempt to reach Rome--His death--His character--Remaining Reports of the Relief Commissioners--The Accountant's department--Number of rations--Money spent,

[CHAPTER XIV.]

The Fever Act--Central Board of Health--Fever Hospitals--Changes in the Act--Outdoor Attendance--Interment of the Dead--The Fever in 1846--Cork Workhouse--Clonmel--Tyrone--Newry--Sligo--Leitrim--Roscommon--Galway --Fever in 1847--Belfast--Death-rate in the Workhouses--Swinford--Cork--Dropsy--Carrick-on-Shannon --Macroom--Bantry Abbey--Dublin--Cork Street Hospital--Applications for Temporary Hospital accommodation--Relapse a remarkable feature--Number of cases received--Percentage of Mortality--Weekly Cost of Patients--Imperfect Returns--Scurvy--The cause of it--Emigration--Earlier Schemes of Emigration--Mr. Wilmot Horton--Present Stats of Peterborough (Note)--Various Parliamentary Committees on Emigration--Their Views--The Devon Commission--Its Views of Emigration--A Parliamentary Committee opposed to Emigration--Statistics of Emigration--Gigantic Emigration Scheme--Mr. Godley--Statement to the Premier--The Joint Stock Company for Emigration--£9,000,000 required--How to be applied--It was to be a Catholic Emigration--Mr. Godley's Scheme--Not accepted by the Government--Who signed it--Names (Note)--Dr. Maginn on the Emigration Scheme--Emigration to be left to itself--Statistics of Population--The Census of 1841--Deaths from the Famine--Deaths amongst Emigrants--Deaths amongst those who went to Canada--Emigration to the United States--Commission to protect Emigrants--Revelations--Mortality on board Emigrant Ships--Plunder of Emigrants--Committee of Inquiry--Its Report--Frauds about Passage Tickets--Evidence--How did any survive?--Remittances from Emigrants--Unprecedented--A proof of their industry and perseverance.

[CHAPTER XV.]

The Soup-kitchen Act--The harvest of 1847--Out-door Relief Act--Great extension of out-door relief--Number relieved--Parliamentary papers--Perplexing--Misleading--Sums voted--Sums expended--Sums remitted--Total Treasury advances under various Acts--Total remissions--Sum actually given as a free gift to meet the Famine--Charitable Associations--Sums collected and disbursed by them--Two Queen's Letters--Amount raised by them--Assisting distressed Unions--Feeding and clothing school children--Feeling about the Irish Famine in America--Meetings throughout the Union--Subscriptions--Money--Food--Number of Ships sent to Ireland with Provisions--Freight of Provisions--Ships of War--The "Jamestown" and "Macedonian"--Various Theories about the Blight--The Religious Theory--Peculiar--Quotations--Rev. Hugh M'Neill--Charles Dickens--The Catholic Cantons of Switzerland--Belgium--France--The Rhenish Provinces--Proselytism--Various causes for Conversions assigned--The late Archbishop Whately's Opinions--His Convert--He rejects the idea that Converts were bought--Statement of the late Archdeacon O'Sullivan--Dr. Forbes on the Conversions in the West--Mr. M'Carthy Downing's Letter--The Subscription of £1,000--Baron Dowse--Conclusion

[(NOTE A.)]—Absenteeism: Mr. M'Culloch's defence of it examined,

[(NOTE B.)]—Smith O'Brien's refusal to serve on a Committee of the House of Commons,

[(NOTE C.)]—Treasury Minute, dated August 31st, 1846

[(NOTE D.)]—The "Labouchere Letter," Authorizing Reproductive Employment,

[ALPHABETICAL INDEX.]

THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1847,

ETC.

CHAPTER I.

The Potato--Its introduction into Europe--Sir Walter Raleigh--The Potato of Virginia--The Battata, or sweet Potato--Sir John Hawkins--Sir Francis Drake--Raleigh's numerous exploring expeditions--Story of his distributing Potatoes on the Irish coast on his way from Virginia groundless--Sir Joseph Banks--His history of the introduction of the Potato--Thomas Heriot--His description of the Opanawk a correct description of the Potato--That root in Europe before Raleigh's time--Raleigh an "Undertaker"--The Grants made to him--The Famine after the War with the Desmonds--Introduction of the Potato into Ireland--Did not come rapidly into cultivation--Food of the poorest--Grazing--Graziers--Destruction of Irish Manufactures--Causes of the increasing culture of the Potato--Improvement of Agriculture--Rotation of Crops--Primate Boulter's charity--Buys Corn in the South to sell it cheaply in the North--Years of scarcity from 1720 to 1740--The Famine of 1740-41--The Great Frost--No combined effort to meet this Famine--Vast number of Deaths--The Obelisk at Castletown (Note)--Price of Wheat--Bread Riots--Gangs of Robbers--"The Kellymount Gang"--Severe punishment--Shooting down Food-rioters--The Lord Lieutenant's Address to Parliament--Bill "for the more effectual securing the payments of rents and preventing the frauds of tenants"--This Bill the basis of legislation on the Land Question up to 1870--Land thrown into Grazing--State of the Catholics--Renewal of the Penal Statutes--Fever and bloody flux--Deaths--State of Prisoners--Galway Physicians refuse to attend Patients--The Races of Galway changed to Tuam on account of the Fever in Galway--Balls and Plays!--Rt. Rev. Dr. Berkeley's account of the Famine--The "Groans of Ireland"--Ireland a land of Famines--Dublin Bay--The Coast--The Wicklow Hills--Killiney--Obelisk Hill--What the Obelisk was built for--The Potato more cultivated than ever after 1741--Agricultural literature of the time--Apathy of the Gentry denounced--Comparative yield of Potatoes a hundred years ago and at present--Arthur Young on the Potato--Great increase of its culture in twenty years--The disease called "curl" in the Potato (Note)--Failure of the Potato in 1821--Consequent Famine in 1822--Government grants--Charitable collections--High price of Potatoes--Skibbereen in 1822--Half of the superficies of the Island visited by this Famine--Strange apathy of Statesmen and Landowners with regard to the ever-increasing culture of the Potato--Supposed conquest of Ireland--Ireland kept poor lest she should rebel--The English colony always regarded as the Irish nation--The Natives ignored--They lived in the bogs and mountains, and cultivated the Potato, the only food that would grow in such places--No recorded Potato blight before 1729--The probable reason--Poverty of the English colony--jealousy of England of its progress and prosperity--Commercial jealousy--Destruction of the Woollen manufacture--Its immediate effect--"William the Third's Declaration--Absenteeism--Mr. M'Cullagh's arguments--See Note in Appendix--Apparently low rents--Not really so--No capital--Little skill--No good Agricultural Implements--Swift's opinion--Arthur Young's opinion--Acts of Parliament--The Catholics permitted to be loyal--Act for reclaiming Bogs--Pension to Apostate Priests increased--Catholic Petition in 1792--The Belief Act of 1793--Population of Ireland at this time--The Forty-shilling Freeholders--Why they were created--Why they were abolished--The cry of over-population.

The great Irish Famine, which reached its height in 1847, was, in many of its features, the most striking and most deplorable known to history. The deaths resulting from it, and the emigration which it caused, were so vast, that, at one time, it seemed as if America and the grave were about to absorb the whole population of this country between them. The cause of the calamity was almost as wonderful as the result. It arose from the failure of a root which, by degrees, had become the staple food of the whole working population: a root which, on its first introduction, was received by philanthropists and economists with joy, as a certain protection against that scarcity which sometimes resulted from short harvests. Mr. Buckland, a Somersetshire gentleman, sent in 1662 a letter to the Royal Society, recommending the planting of potatoes in all parts of the kingdom, to prevent famine, for which he received the thanks of that learned body; and Evelyn, the well-known author of "The Sylva," was requested to mention the proposal at the end of that work.

The potato was first brought into this country about three centuries ago. Tradition and, to some extent, history attributes its introduction to Sir Walter Raleigh. Whether this was actually the case or not, there seems to be no doubt about his having cultivated it on that estate in Munster which was bestowed upon him by his royal mistress, after the overthrow of the Desmonds.[1] Some confusion has arisen about the period at which the potato of Virginia, as I shall for the present call the potato, was brought to our shores, from the fact that another root, the batatas, or sweet potato, came into these islands, and was used as a delicacy before the potato of Virginia was known; and what adds to the confusion is, that the name potato, applied to the Virginian root, is derived from batatas, it not bearing in Virginia any name in the least resembling the word potato. Up to 1640 it was called in England the potato of Virginia, to distinguish it from the sweet potato, which is another evidence that it derived the name potato from batatas.[2] The latter root was extensively cultivated for food in parts of America, but it never got into anything like general cultivation here, perhaps because our climate was too cold for it. It is now only found in our hot-houses, where it produces tubers from one to two pounds in weight.

It has been asserted that Sir John Hawkins brought the potato to Ireland in 1565, and his kinsman Sir Francis Drake to England in 1585. Although this is not improbable, writers generally assume that it was the sweet potato which was introduced by those navigators.

Whether or not Raleigh's third expedition, which sailed from England in 1584, was the first to bring into these countries the potato of Virginia, there can be no reasonable doubt of its having been brought home by that expedition. The story of Raleigh having stopped on some part of the Irish coast on his way from Virginia, when he distributed potatoes to the natives, is quite groundless. Raleigh was never in Virginia; for although by his money and influence, and perhaps yet more by his untiring energy, he organized nine exploring expeditions, he did not sail with any of them except the first, which was commanded by his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. But this had to return disabled to England without touching land.[3]

Sir Joseph Banks, the well-known naturalist, and President of the Royal Society from 1777 till his death in 1820, was at great pains to collect the history of the introduction of the potato into these countries. His account is, that Raleigh's expedition, granted to him under patent "to discover such remote heathen and barbarous lands, not yet actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, as to him shall seem good," brought home the potato of Virginia. This Charter bears date 25th March, 1584, and was a new and more extensive one than the first granted to him, which was in June, 1578. With this expedition sailed one Thomas Heriot, called the Mathematician, who was probably sent out to examine and report upon the natural history of such countries as they might discover. He wrote an account of Virginia, and of the products of its soil, which is printed in the first volume of De Bry's collection of Voyages. Under the article "Roots," he describes a plant which he calls Opanawk. "These roots," he says, "are round, some as large as a walnut, others much larger; they grow in damp soil, many hanging together as if fixed with ropes. They are good food either boiled or roasted." This must strike anyone as a very accurate description of the potato. Gerarde, in his Herbal, published in 1597, gives a figure of the potato under the name of the potato of Virginia. He asserts that he received the roots from that country, and that they were denominated Naremberga.

Raleigh's expedition, which seems to have been already prepared, sailed in April, and having taken possession of that portion of America which was afterwards named Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, and by her own express desire, returned to England about the middle of September of the same year. Although, as already stated, in all likelihood the potato of Virginia was introduced into England and Ireland by that expedition, Sir Joseph Banks was of opinion that the root had come to Europe earlier. His reasons for thinking so are: 1. Clusius, otherwise L'Ecluse, the great botanist, when residing in Vienna, in 1598, received the potato from the Governor of Mons, in Hainault, who had obtained it the year before from one of the attendants of the Pope's Legate under the name of Taratouflè,[4] and learned from him that in Italy, where it was then in use, no person knew whether it came from Spain or America. From this we may conclude that the root was in Italy before it was brought to England; for this conversation happened only three years after the sailing of the expedition of 1584. It is further very probable that the root found its way from Spain into Italy, as those parts of America, where the potato was indigenous, were then subject to Spain. 2. Peter Cicca, in his Chronicle of 1553, says, the inhabitants of Quito and its vicinity have, besides mays (maize), a tuberous root which they eat and call papas; which Clusius with much probability guesses to be the same sort of plant that he received from the Governor of Mons.

There is one obvious difficulty in this reasoning: we are not at all sure that it was the potato of Virginia that Clusius obtained from the Governor of Mons, it may have been the sweet potato. However, the conclusion which Sir Joseph Banks draws from these details is, that potatoes were brought from the mountainous parts of South America in the neighbourhood of Quito, and that, as the Spaniards were the sole possessors of that country, there can be little doubt of their having been first carried into Spain. Further, that as it would take a considerable time to introduce them into Italy, and make the Italians acquainted with them to the extent of giving them a name, there is good reason to believe, that they had been several years in Europe before they had been sent to Clusius.

About 600,000 acres of land in Munster were declared forfeited to the Crown on the fall of the Desmonds. This was parceled out to "Gentlemen undertakers" on certain conditions; one being that they were bound, within a limited time, to people their estates with "Well-affected Englishmen." Raleigh became an undertaker, and by a legal instrument, bearing the Queen's name, dated from Greenwich, last of February, 1586, he had given to him 42,000 acres of this land, and by a further grant the year after, the Monastery of Molanassa and the Priory of Black Friars, near Youghal.[5]

Famine followed close upon the war with the Desmonds. "At length," says Hooker, "the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whatsoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes, wolves, or other ravening beasts."[6] Such was Munster when the great colonizer planted the potato there, in the hope, perhaps, of averting future famines!

It is generally assumed by writers on Ireland that, soon after the introduction of the potato, it became a general favourite, and was cultivated in most parts of the country as an important crop. This seems to be far from correct. Supposing the potato which we now grow, the Solanum tuberosum of botanists, to have come to Ireland in 1586, the usually accepted date, it does not seem to have been in anything like general favour or cultivation one hundred and forty years later, at least in the richer and more important districts of the country. In a pamphlet printed in 1723, one hundred and thirty-seven years after the introduction of the potato, speaking of the fluctuation of the markets, the writer says: "We have always either a glut or a dearth; very often there are not ten days distance between the extremity of the one and the other; such a want of policy is there (in Dublin especially) on the most important affair of bread, without a plenty of which the poor must starve." If potatoes were at this time looked upon as an important food-crop, the author would scarcely omit noticing the fact, especially in speaking of the food of the poor. At page 25 of the same pamphlet, after exposing and denouncing the corruptions of those who farmed tithes, the writer adds: "Therefore an Act of Parliament to ascertain the tithe of hops, now in the infancy of their great growing improvement, flax, hemp, turnip-fields, grass-seeds, and dyeing roots or herbs, of all mines, coals, minerals, commons to be taken in, etc., seems necessary towards the encouragement of them."[7] No mention of the potato.

In the next year, 1724, this pamphleteer was answered by an anonymous M.P., who mentions potatoes twice. Arguing against what he calls "extravagant stocks," he says: "Formerly (even since Popery) it was thought no ill policy to be well with the parson, but now the case is quite altered, for if he gives him [sic] the least provocation, I'll immediately stock one part of my land with bullocks and the other with potatoes ... so farewell tithes."[8] The fact of potatoes not being titheable at this period seems to have encouraged their cultivation. The next passage goes to show that they were becoming the food of those who could afford no better. Speaking of high rents, and what he calls "canting of land" by landlords, he says: "Again, I saw the same farm, at the expiration of the lease, canted over the improving tenant's head, and set to another at a rack-rent, who, though coming in to the fine improvements of his predecessor, (and himself no bad improver,) yet can scarce afford his family butter to their potatoes, and is daily sinking into arrears besides."[9] From the tone of this passage, and from the context, the writer seems to regard the potato as food to be used only by the very poorest; for he adduces its use to show to what a state rack-renting can bring even an industrious farmer.

The burthen of all the pamphlets of this period dealing with the land question, was an attack on landowners for their excessive desire to throw land into grass. One published in 1727 has this passage: "By running into the fancy of grazing after the manner of the Scythians, they [the landowners] are every day depopulating the country."[10] In another, printed in the same type, and apparently by the same hand, we read: "To bestow the whole kingdom on beef and mutton, and thereby drive out half the people, who should eat their share, and force the rest to send sometimes as far as Ægypt for bread to eat with it, is a most peculiar and distinguished piece of public economy of which I have no comprehension."[11] At this time there was extreme want in the country, on account, it was thought, of the great quantity of land which, within a short period, had been put out of tillage; graziers (whom the writer calls "that abominable race of graziers") being mad after land then as they are now. But there were other causes. William the Third, at the bidding of the English Parliament, annihilated the flourishing woollen manufacture of Ireland; her trade with the Colonies was not only cramped, but ruined, by the navigation laws in force; which, amongst other things, enacted that no colonial produce could come to Ireland until it had at first entered an English port, and had been landed there. Thus, whilst the fact that vast tracts of the soil had been put out of cultivation compelled the country to buy food abroad, the unjust and selfish destruction of her trade and commerce by England left her without the money to do so.

The people being in a state of great destitution, the author of the "Memorial" quoted above, said, there should be raised by taxes on a few commodities, such as tea, coffee, etc., £110,000. £100,000 to buy 100,000 barrels of wheat, and £10,000 premium to those who would import it. To this the Author of the Answer replies:—"By talking so familiarly of £110,000 by a tax upon a few commodities, it is plain you are either naturally or affectedly ignorant of our present condition, or else you would know and allow, that such a sum is not to be raised here without a general excise; since, in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than England ever did in the height of the war. And when you have brought over your corn, who who will be the buyers? Most certainly, not the poor, who will not be able to purchase the twentieth part of it.... If you will propose a general contribution in supporting the poor on potatoes and buttermilk till the new corn comes in, perhaps you may succeed better, because the thing at least is possible."

Potato culture was clearly on the increase; the corn crop, however, was still looked to as the food of the nation. But if the growing of potatoes was on the increase, it seems to have partly arisen from the very necessity of the case. There was not land enough under tillage to give food to the people, it was laid down for grazing. Mountains, poor lands, and bogs were unsuitable to graziers, nor yet would they yield wheat, nor, in many instances, oats, or any white crop whatever; but the potato was found to succeed very well in such places, and to give a larger quantity of sustenance than such land would otherwise yield. Its cultivation was therefore spreading, but spreading, it would seem, chiefly amongst the poor Celtic natives, who had to betake themselves to the despised wastes and barren mountains. In the rich lowlands, and therefore amongst the English colony (for whom alone all the publications of those times were intended), the potato was still a despised article of food. And to this the latter part of the above-cited passage points. The proposal to sustain the people on potatoes and buttermilk until the new corn should come in, is evidently an ironical one, really meant to convey the degradation to which grazing had brought the country. Seventy or eighty years later the irony became a sad and terrible reality.

Meantime increased attention was given to the improvement of agriculture, arising, in a great measure, from the widespread panic which the passion for grazing had caused. Good and patriotic men saw but one result from it, a dangerous and unwise depopulation, and they called aloud for remedies against so terrible a calamity. The Author of the "Answer to the Memorial" quoted above, says, with bitter sarcasm:—"You are concerned how strange and surprising it would be in foreign parts to hear that the poor were starving in a rich country.... But why all this concern of the poor? We want them not as the country is now managed; they may follow thousands of their leaders, and seek their bread abroad. Where the plough has no work, one family can do the business of fifty, and you may send away the other forty-nine. An admirable piece of husbandry never known or practised by the wisest nations, who erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country."

This anxious desire to prevent the country from "running into grazing," called forth many treatises and pamphlets on the improvement of agriculture. Some writers undertook to show that agriculture was more profitable than grazing; others turned their attention to improve the implements of husbandry, and to lay down better rules for the rotation of crops. Potatoes must have been pretty extensively grown at this time, and yet they do not get a place in any of the rotations given. We have fallow, wheat, oats, rye, turnips, saintfoin, lucerne, barley, peas, beans, clover, rye-grass, and even buck-wheat, tares and lentils rotated in various ways, but the potato is never mentioned. The growth of turnips is treated with special importance. Hops, too, receive much consideration, and the Royal Dublin Society published in 1733 careful and elaborate instructions for their growth and management. The reason the growing of potatoes gets no place in any of the rotations of this period seems to be, that their culture was chiefly confined to the poor Celtic population in the mountainous and neglected districts; or, as the author whose pamphlet has a short introduction from Swift[12] says, "to the Popish parts of the kingdom." Those who wrote in favour of tillage instead of grazing, set great importance on the increase of population, and bewailed emigration as the effect of bad harvests and want of tillage. All such observations made at this period must be taken as referring to the English colony, or Protestant population, exclusively, for there was no desire to keep the Catholics from emigrating; quite the contrary; but they were utterly ignored in the periodical literature of the time, except when some zealot called for a more strict enforcing of the laws "to prevent the growth of Popery." And this view is supported by the writer quoted above, who says it would be for the "Protestant interest" to encourage tillage. Primate Boulter, bewailing the emigration which resulted from the famine of 1728, "the result of three bad harvests together," adds, "the worst is that it affects only the Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North."[13] He, in his tender anxiety for the Protestant colony, purchased corn in the South to sell it cheaply in the North, which caused serious food riots in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Clonmel, and other places. These riots were of course quelled, and the rioters severely punished. The broad rich acres of the lowlands were in the hands of the Protestants; and these being specially suited to grazing were accordingly thrown into grass, whilst the Catholic Celts planted the potato in the despised half-barren wilds, and were increasing far more rapidly than those who were possessed of the choicest lands of the kingdom.

But a terrible visitation was at the threshold of Celt and Saxon in Ireland; the Famine of 1740 and '41. There were several years of dearth, more or less severe between 1720 and 1740. "The years 1725, 1726, 1727, and 1728 presented scenes of wretchedness unparalleled in the annals of any civilized nation," says a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine.[14] A pamphlet published in 1740 deplores the emigration which was going forward as the joint effect of bad harvests and want of tillage: "We have had," says the author, "twelve bad harvests with slight intermission." To find a parallel for the dreadful famine which commenced in 1740, we must go back to the close of the war with the Desmonds.[15] Previous to 1740 the custom of placing potatoes in pits dug in the earth, was unknown in Ireland. When the stems were withered, the farmer put additional earth on the potatoes in the beds where they grew, in which condition they remained till towards Christmas, when they were dug out and stored.[16] An intensely severe frost set in about the middle of December, 1739, whilst the potatoes were yet in this condition, or probably before they had got additional covering. There is a tradition in some parts of the South that this frost penetrated nine inches into the earth the first night it made its appearance. It was preceded by very severe weather. "In the beginning of November, 1739, the weather," says O'Halloran, "was very cold, the wind blowing from the north east, and this was succeeded by the severest frost known in the memory of man, which entirely destroyed the potatoes, the chief support of the poor."[17] It is known to tradition as the "great frost," the "hard frost," the "black frost," etc. Besides the destruction of the potato crop it produced other surprising effects; all the great rivers of the country were so frozen over that they became so many highways for traffic; tents were erected upon the ice, and large assemblies congregated upon it for various purposes. The turnips were destroyed in most places, but the parsnips survived. The destruction of shrubs and trees was immense, the frost making havoc equally of the hardy furze and the lordly oak; it killed birds of almost every kind, it even killed the shrimps of Irishtown Strand, near Dublin, so that there was no supply of them at market for many years from that famous shrimp ground.[18] Towards the end of the frost the wool fell off the sheep, and they died in great numbers.[19]

On Saturday, the 29th of December, there was a violent storm in Dublin, which did much damage to the shipping in the river; and the cruiser, "Man of War," which was at the North Bull, being in great danger, "cut her cables, and ran up between the walls as far as Sir John's Key,[20] where," adds the chronicler, "she now lies frozen up."[21] Another curious incident is recorded which proves the intensity of the frost at this time: the pressgang was very busy on the river catching sailors to man the navy for the war with Spain, and under the above date we are informed that more than one hundred pressed men walked on shore on the ice with several of the crews; but, it is added, "they gave their honour they would return."[22]

The frost continued about eight or nine weeks, during which all employment ceased; the potato crop was destroyed, and the mills being frozen up no corn could be ground. The effect on the population was general and immediate. In the middle of January the destitution was so great, that subscriptions to relieve the people were set on foot in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Clonmel, Wexford, and other places. Some landlords distributed money and food to their starving tenants; but, I am sorry to have to say, that the number of such cases on record is very limited.[23] There was no general combined effort to meet the calamity, the Government taking no action whatever, except that the Lord Lieutenant (the Duke of Devonshire) gave to the starving citizens of Dublin £150 in two donations, and forbade, by proclamation, the exportation of grain, meal, bread, etc., except to England, "apprehending," says his Excellency, "that the exportation of corn will be bad for the kingdom during this extreme season." Later on in the Famine, and when about two hundred thousand of the people had died of hunger and pestilence, there was another proclamation ordering a general fast for the success of his Majesty's arms against the King of Spain! But the fasting does not seem to have had much effect; Admiral Vernon, commander of the fleet at the seat of war in the West Indies, took Portobello, but had to give it up again; he attacked Carthagena with all his forces, was repulsed, and so the war ended.

To add to the miseries of the people there was a great drought all the winter and spring.[24] A person writing from the West on the 15th of April, says: "There has not been one day's rain in Connaught these two months." The price of provisions continued to rise. Wheat, quoted towards the end of January in the Dublin market at £2 1s. 6d. the quarter, reached £2 15s. 6d. in April, £3 14s. in June, and £3 16s. 6d. in August. About the end of May there was a very formidable bread riot in the city. Several hundred persons banded themselves together, and, proceeding to the bakers' shops and meal stores, took the bread and meal into the streets, and sold them to the poor at low prices. Some gave the proceeds to the owners, but others did not. They were evidently not thieves, and at least a portion of them seem to have been even respectable, yet they were punished with much severity, several having been whipped, and one transported for seven years. Some days after the riot the Lord Mayor issued a proclamation giving permission to "foreign bakers and others" to bake bread in Dublin; he also sent to all the churchwardens of the city to furnish him with information of any persons who had concealed corn on their premises; he denounced "forestallers," who met in the suburbs the people coming in with provisions, in order to buy them up before they reached the market; thus in a great measure justifying the rioters who were whipped and transported. The bakers began to bake household bread, which for some time they had ceased to do, and prices fell.[25]

Throughout the country there were numerous gangs of robbers, most of them undoubtedly having sprung into existence through sheer starvation; some, probably taking advantage of the Famine, pursued with more profit and boldness a course of life to which they had been previously addicted. The most noted of these was "the Kellymount gang." Their head-quarters seem to have been Coolcullen Wood, about seven miles from Kilkenny, but they extended their operations into the King and Queen's Counties, and even to Galway. They were so formidable that a strong military force had to be sent against them. This gang committed no murders, disdained to take anything but money, horses, and sheep; sometimes divided their plunder with the starving people; and had in the outset pledged their honour not to rob any of the gentlemen of the County Kilkenny. They were dispersed, after giving much trouble to the military; many were taken prisoners, tried by a Special Commission, and of course hanged; for, while the Government did nothing to alleviate the horrors of the Famine, it put the law in force with a bloody severity. The number of persons condemned to death at the Spring Assizes of 1741 was really appalling. There was a sort of small food riot at Carrick-on-Suir, where a boat laden with oats was about sailing for Waterford, when the starving people assembled to prevent the food they so much needed from being taken away. Their conduct was clearly illegal, but they were at death's door with hunger, and ought to have been treated with some consideration and patience. A justice of the peace, with eighteen foot soldiers and a troop of horse, came out and ordered them to disperse; they would not, or at least they did not do so with sufficient alacrity. One account, published a fortnight or so after the occurrence, asserts with a feeble timidity akin to falsehood, that stones were thrown by the people. Be that as it may, they were fired upon; five starving wretches were shot dead on the spot, and eleven badly wounded. To give the finishing touch to this wicked slaughter, the Lords Justices, Primate Boulter and Lord Chancellor Jocelyn, in the absence of the Lord Lieutenant, came out with a proclamation, offering a handsome reward for the apprehension of any of those who had escaped the well-directed fire of the soldiery.

The Famine continued through the year 1741 and even deepened in severity, provisions still keeping at starvation prices. The Duke of Devonshire met the Parliament on the 6th of October, and in the course of his address said: "The sickness which hath proved so mortal in several parts of the kingdom, and is thought to have been principally owing to the scarcity of wholesome food, must very sensibly affect His Majesty, who hath a most tender concern for all his subjects, and cannot but engage your serious attention to consider of proper measures to prevent the like calamity for the future, and to this desirable end the increase of tillage, which would at the same time usefully employ the industrious poor, may greatly contribute." In answer to this portion of the speech, they promise to "prepare such laws as, by encouraging tillage, and employing the industrious poor, may be the means for the future to prevent the like calamity." A Committee was appointed to inquire into "the late great scarcity," and some matters connected with tillage. They met many times; now and then reported to the House that they had made some progress, and at last the heads of a bill were presented by Mr. Le Hunte, the Chairman, which were ordered to be sent to England. Nothing, as far as I can discover, resulted from this proceeding, unless indeed it was a bill passed in 1743 "to prevent the pernicious practice of burning land," which is probable enough, as the heads of this bill were presented to the House by the same Mr. Le Hunte. During the time this Committee was sitting and reporting, and sitting again, Mr. Thos. Cuffe, seconded by Mr. George M'Cartney, presented the heads of a bill "for the more effectual securing the payment of rents and preventing the frauds of tenants," which was received and read and committed by a Committee of the whole House on presentation, and was hurried through its other stages, apparently without discussion, but certainly without opposition; and this in the second year of a Famine, now combined with pestilence, which slaughtered one-eighth of the whole population.[26] The Act was a temporary one, but was never afterwards allowed to die out. It was renewed in various reigns, and is the foundation of the Acts which were in force up to 1870 "for the more effectual securing the payment of rents."

The land had been thrown into grazing to an alarming extent for years, so that the acreage for producing grain and other such food was very limited; the people fell into listless despair from what they had endured in 1740, and did not cultivate the ground that was still left for tillage. The Catholics were paralyzed and rendered unfit for industrious pursuits, by an active renewal of the worst penal statutes. The prospect of a war with Spain, which was actually declared in October, 1739, was made the pretext for this new persecution, and all the severities recommended by Primate Boulter were put into rigid execution. These measures plunged the people into the deepest distress: horror and despair pervaded every mind.[27]

Such was the state of Ireland in 1741, when bloody flux and malignant fever came to finish what the Famine had left undone. These scourges, unlike the Famine, fell upon the castle as well as on the hovel, many persons in the higher ranks of life having died of them during the year; amongst whom we find several physicians; the son of Alderman Tew; Mr. John Smith, High Sheriff of Wicklow; Mr. Whelan, Sub-Sheriff of Meath; the Rev. Mr. Heartlib, Castle Chaplain; Mr. Kavanagh, of Borris House, and his brother; the son of the Lord Mayor-Elect; two judges, namely, Baron Wainright and the Right Hon. John Rogerson, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. The prisoners died in thousands in the jails, especially poor debtors, who had been long incarcerated. In November, 1741, the prisoners in Cork jail sent a petition to Parliament, in which they say, that "above seven hundred persons died there during the late severe seasons, and that the jail is now so full that there is scarce room for their lying on the floors." The fever was so general in Limerick that there was hardly one family in the whole city who had not some member ill of it. Galway was cruelly scourged by the Famine, to meet which little or nothing seems to have been done by those whose bounden duty it was to come to the relief of their starving brethren. When fever appeared on the terrible scene, the town became one great lazaretto. Under date of July the 8th, the following intelligence comes from that unhappy place: "The fever so rages here that the physicians say it is more like a plague than a fever, and refuse to visit patients for any fee whatever."[28] "The gentlemen of the county" met, in a way peculiar to themselves, this twofold calamity which threatened utter annihilation to their historic capital. To counteract the inevitable results of famine, they announced that they would give the reward of £30 for the first, and £10 for every other robber that would be prosecuted to conviction, and this in addition to whatever the Government would allow. What excessive liberality! They must have had plenty of money. The plague, which no physician would attend, they dealt with by a proclamation also, of which they seemed proud, for they published it repeatedly in the journals of the time. Here is an extract: "The town of Galway being at this time very sickly, the gentlemen of the county think proper to remove the races that were to be run for at Park, near the said town of Galway, to Terlogh Gurranes, near the town of Tuam, in the said county." What humane, proper-thinking "gentlemen" they were, to be sure; and such precise legal phraseology! But their enticing bill of fare contained more than the "races that were to be run for;" it announced balls and plays every night for the entertainment of the ladies.

The learned and kind-hearted Dr. Berkeley, Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, under date 21st May, 1741, writes to a a friend in Dublin:—"The distresses of the sick and poor are endless. The havoc of mankind in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and some adjacent places, hath been incredible. The nation probably will not recover this loss in a century. The other day I heard one from the county of Limerick say, that whole villages were entirely dispeopled. About two months since I heard Sir Richard Cox say, that five hundred were dead in the parish, though in a county I believe not very populous. It were to be wished people of condition were at their seats in the country during these calamitous times, which might provide relief and employment for the poor. Certainly if these perish the rich must be sufferers in the end." The author of a letter entitled "The Groans of Ireland," addressed to an Irish. Member of Parliament, thus opens his subject:—"I have been absent from this country for some years, and on my return to it, last summer, found it the most miserable scene of universal distress that I have ever read of in history: want and misery in every face; the rich unable almost as they were willing to relieve the poor; the roads spread with dead and dying bodies; mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, going on a car to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished. This universal scarcity was ensued by fluxes and malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts: whole villages were left waste by want, and sickness, and death in various shapes; and scarcely a house in the whole island escaped from tears and mourning. The loss must be upwards of 400,000, but supposing it 200,000, (it was certainly more) it was too great for this ill-peopled country, and the more grievous as they were mostly of the grown-up part of the working people." "Whence can this proceed?" he asks; and he answers, "From the want of proper tillage laws to guide and to protect the husbandman in the pursuit of his business." [29]

This writer further says, the terrible visitation of 1740 and '41 was the third famine within twenty years; so that in view of these and other famines, since and before, Ireland might be not inaptly described as the land of Famines. Almost the first object one sees on sailing into Dublin Bay is a monument to Famine. This beautiful bay, as far-famed as the Bay of Naples itself, has often been put in comparison with it. More than once has it been my lot to witness the tourist on board the Holyhead packet, coming to Ireland for the first time, straining his eyes towards the coast, when the rising sun gave a faint blue outline of the Wicklow mountains, and assured him that he had actually and really before him, "The Holy Hills of Ireland." Nearer and nearer he comes, and Howth at one side and Wicklow Head at the other define what he, not unjustly, regards as the Bay. And surely on a bright clear morning, with just enough of sunlight, it is as fair a scene as mortal eye can rest on. The Dublin and Wicklow hills, which at first seemed to rise from the shore, recede by degrees, and with their undulating graceful outlines, become a charming background. Wicklow Head drops quietly out of the landscape, and Howth to the north, and Bray Head to the south, now become the bold gigantic flanking towers of what is more strictly regarded as Dublin Bay. The traveller's eyes, beaming with enjoyment, survey the fine perpendicular rock of Bray Head, with the railway marking a thin line upon its side nearly midway above the sea, and almost suspended over it. And then there is that beautiful cone, the Sugarloaf mountain; further still away, the loftier Djous, overhanging a dark, misty valley, which marks the spot where the waters of Powerscourt tumble down the rock a height of three hundred feet; on, on across the Dublin range to Montpelier, the valley of the Liffey, the city—notable to the north-west by its dusky-brown atmosphere; then the historic plains of Clontarf; Howth once again, and the panorama is complete. But he nears the shore rapidly, and the harbour grows more distinct, Kingstown, rising from it with its terraces, and spires, and towers, looking important and aristocratic. The rich and varied fringe of gardens, and lawns, and villas from Dalkey to Seapoint, mark at once the fashionable watering-place; whilst Dalkey Castle, standing over the great precipitous quarry from which Kingstown harbour was built, and the Obelisk on Killiney Hill indicate points from which commanding views can be obtained.

The morrow, and let us suppose the tourist ascends to the massive but friendly gate which admits to that same Obelisk hill. Was ever such an ascent open to him before? The broad, winding avenue, literally carpeted with its firm green satin sward, defined by a belt of graceful planting at either side, whilst in nooks and cozy places are inviting seats for the weak and weary to rest awhile, and gain breath to enable them to pursue their journey upwards. The Obelisk, as it is called, stands on the highest point; the view from it on every side is unrivalled for beauty—the sublime it has not—but the beautiful is perfect. The mountains, which yesterday morning at sea, gave the first glimmering indication of the Irish coast, assume new shapes, and are thrown into new combinations. Inland, the landscape stretches on till it touches the sky in all directions except where the mountains intervene. Looking north, over the flat plain of Clontarf, he beholds the lofty Mourne range, relieved against the sky; glancing along the Dublin mountains he has that wooded and villaed slope, far as the eye can reach, which forms the southern suburb, a rival for which no city in Europe can boast: to the east are the deep clear waters of the sea, four hundred feet beneath; and he gazes with delight on the tranquil and gracefully curved strand, stretching three or four miles on to Bray, which fringes that charming inlet known as Killiney Bay; its waves sending upwards, in measured cadence, their soft, distinct, suggestive murmurs, whilst they spend themselves on the shore of the ever new, ever delightful, ever enchanting Vale of Shangannah, immortalized by our Irish poet, Denis Florence M'Carthy. But this old Obelisk itself, what is it?—What brought it here? The tourist reads: "Last year being hard with the POOR, the walls about these HILLS, and THIS, etc., erected by JOHN MALPAS, Esq., June, 1742." The story of Ireland is before him; it is told in the landscape, and the inscription, it may be expressed in two words—Beauty and Starvation.

The famine of 1741 did not deter farmers from the culture of the potato; on the contrary, it increased rapidly after that period, and we now find it, for the first time, recognised as a rotation crop. They preferred to turn their attention to improve its quality and productiveness, and to take measures for its protection from frost, rather than to abandon its culture. And, indeed, it was as much a matter of necessity as choice that they did so. The potato, on a given area, supplied about four times as much food as any other crop; and, from the limited breadth of land then available for tillage, the population would be in continual danger of falling short of food, unless the potato were cultivated to a large extent. The agricultural literature of the country from 1741 until the arrival of the celebrated traveller, Arthur Young, in Ireland, consisted chiefly of fierce attacks upon graziers—of a continual demand for the breaking up of grass lands into tillage—of plans for the establishment of public granaries to sustain the people in years of bad harvests, and of the results of experiments undertaken to improve the culture of the potato. The writers on these subjects also frequently denounced the rich for the wretchedness and misery to which they allowed the labouring poor to be reduced. The author of a pamphlet, which went through several editions, thus attacks them, in the edition of 1755:—"The want of trade and industry causes such inequality in the distribution of their (the people's) property, that while a few of the richer sort can wantonly pamper appetites of every kind, and indulge with the affluence of so many monarchs, the poor, alas! who make at least ninety-nine of every hundred among them, are under the necessity of going clad after the fashion of the old Irish, whose manners and customs they retain to this day, and of feeding on potatoes, the most generally embraced advantage of the inhabitants, which the great Sir Walter Raleigh left behind him."[30] This writer's remarks apply chiefly to Cork, Waterford, Kerry, and Limerick. He proceeds: "The feeding of cattle on large dairies of several hundred acres together, may be managed by the inhabitants of one or two cabins, whose wretched subsistence, for the most part, depends upon an acre or two of potatoes and a little skimmed milk."[31]

Many think that the yield per acre of potatoes has greatly increased with time in Ireland. This opinion, although true, is not true to the extent generally supposed; for, when Arthur Young travelled in this country, and even before it, the yield, as far as recorded, seems nearly equal to the quantity produced at present, except in some peculiar cases. A well-known agriculturist, John Wynne Baker, writing in 1765, says, in a note to his "Agriculture Epitomized," that he had in the past year (1764) of apple potatoes (not a prolific kind) in the proportion of more than one hundred and nine barrels an acre.

Arthur Young came to Ireland in 1776, and he brings his account of the country down to 1779. Thirty-six years had elapsed since the great Famine, only one generation, and he found the famous root of Virginia a greater favourite than ever. From Slane, in Meath, he writes that potatoes are a great article of culture at Kilcock, where he found them grown for cattle; store bullocks were fed upon them, and they were even deemed good food for horses when mixed with bran. In Slane itself, the old custom, which was the chief cause of the famine of 1740, still prevailed; for he says, the people there were not done taking up their potatoes till Christmas. The potato culture, he elsewhere remarks, has increased twenty-fold within the last twenty years, all the hogs in the country being fattened on them. They were usually given to them half-boiled. Wherever he went he almost invariably found the food of the people, at least for nine months of the year, to be potatoes and milk, excepting parts of Ulster, where they had oatbread, and sometimes flesh meat. In the South, for the labourers of Sir Lucius O'Brien and their families, consisting of two hundred and sixty-seven souls, the quantity of potatoes planted, as appears from a paper given to him, was forty-five acres and a quarter, ranging from a quarter of an acre to four acres for each family. As to yield, the lowest he gives is forty barrels per acre, Irish of course; and the highest reported to him was at Castle Oliver, near Bruff, namely, one hundred and fifty barrels (Bristol).[32] The average produce of the entire country he gives at three hundred and twenty-eight bushels per acre—about sixty-six barrels. "Yet, to gain this miserable produce," he says, "much old hay, and nineteen-twentieths of all the dung in the kingdom is employed." Potatoes grown on the coast were frequently sent to Dublin by sea; and Lord Tyrone told Arthur Young at Curraghmore, that much of the potatoes grown about Dungarvan were sent thither, together with birch-brooms. The boats were said to be freighted with fruit and timber!

Amongst the endless varieties of the potato which appeared from time to time, that known as the "apple" was the best in quality, and stood its ground the longest, having been a favourite for at least seventy or eighty years. The produce recorded above as raised by Mr. Wynne Baker was as we have seen from this species, what kind gave the still greater yield at Castle Oliver is not recorded. Thus it is perfectly clear that in 1780, and even before that time, the staple food of the Irish nation was once again the potato. In fact, it was cultivated to a far greater extent than before 1740, which caused the population to increase with wonderful rapidity.[33]

The prolific but uncertain root on which the Irish people became, year after year, more dependent for existence, once again dashed their hopes in 1821, and threw a great part of the South and West into a state of decided famine. The spring of that year was wet and stormy, retarding the necessary work, especially the planting of potatoes. The summer was also unfavourable, May was cold and ungenial; in June there was frost, with a north wind, and sometimes a scorching sun. The autumn, like the spring, was wet and severe, rain falling to a very unusual extent. The consequent floods did extensive injury; not merely were crops of hay floated off the lowland meadows, but in various places fields of potatoes were completely washed out of the ground and carried away. The crops were deficient, especially the potato crop, much of which was left undug until the ensuing spring, partly on account of the inclement weather, partly because it was not worth the labour. The low grounds were, in many instances, inundated to such a depth that even the potatoes in pits could not be reached. About the middle of December "the Shannon at Athlone," says an eye-witness, "looked like a boundless ocean," covering for weeks the potato fields, souring the crop, and preventing all access to the pits. The loss of the potato in this year, and its cause, are thus epitomised in the following extract from the Report of the London Tavern Committee:—"From the most authentic communications, it appeared that the bad quality and partial failure of the potato crop of the preceding year (1821)—the consequence of the excessive and protracted humidity of the season—had been a principal cause of the distress, and that it had been greatly aggravated by the rotting of the potatoes in the pits in which they were stored. This discovery was made at so late a period that the peasantry were not able to provide against the consequences of that evil."[34] From the letters published in their own Report, the Committee would have been abundantly justified in adding, that the distress was greatly increased by the almost total want of employment for the labouring classes, arising from the fact, that very many of the landlords in the districts that suffered most were absentees. A writer on this Famine, who, in general, is inclined to be severe in his strictures upon the people, thus opens the subject:—"The distress which has almost universally prevailed in Ireland has not been occasioned so much by an excessive population as by a culpable remissness on the part of persons possessing property, and neglecting to take advantage of those great resources, and of those ample means of providing for an increasing population, which Nature has so liberally bestowed on this country."[35]

The winter and spring of 1822 continued very wet, and it was extremely difficult to perform any agricultural work. Seed potatoes were excessively scarce, and the first relief that reached the country was a prudent and timely one; it consisted of fourteen hundred tons of seed potatoes, bought by the Government in England and Scotland. Charitable persons at home also gave seed potatoes, cut into sets, to prevent their being used for food; yet, in many instances, those sets were taken out of the ground by the starving people and eaten. Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Mayo, and Galway were the counties most severely visited. These, according to the accounts given in the public journals of the time, were in a state of actual famine. Potatoes were eight pence a stone in districts where they usually sold from one penny to two pence. But although the potato had failed, food from the cereal crops was abundant and cheap enough if the people had money to buy it. "There was no want of food of another description for the support of human life; on the contrary, the crops of grain had been far from deficient, and the prices of corn and oatmeal were very moderate. The calamities of 1822 may, therefore, be said to have proceeded less from the want of food itself, than from the want of adequate means of purchasing it; or, in other words, from the want of profitable employment."[36] Poor Skibbereen, that got such a melancholy notoriety in the later and far more terrible Famine of '47, was reported, in May, 1822, to be in a state of distress "horrible beyond description." Potatoes were not merely dear, they were inferior, not having ripened for want of sufficient heat; and, furthermore, they soured in the pits. The use of such unwholesome food soon brought typhus fever and dysentery upon the scene, which slaughtered their thousands. In parts of the West the living were unable to bury the dead, more especially in Achill, where, in many cases, the famine-stricken people were found dead on the roadside. A Committee appointed by the House of Commons to investigate this calamity reported, amongst other things, that the Famine was spread over districts representing half the superficies of the country, and containing a population of 2,907,000 souls.

There are no statistics to give an accurate knowledge of the numbers that died of want in this Famine, and of the dysentery and fever which followed. If the Census of 1821 can be relied on, which I much doubt, the famine and pestilence of the succeeding year did not in the least check the growth of the population, as it increased in the ten years from 1821 to 1831, fifteen per cent.; an increase above the average, even in the absence of any disturbing cause.

This famine was met by Government grants; by the contributions from the London Tavern Committee; the Dublin Mansion House Committee, and, to a limited extent, by private charity.[37] In June, 1822, Parliament voted £100,000 "for the employment of the poor in Ireland, and other purposes relating thereto, as the exigency of affairs may require." And in July, £200,000, "to enable His Majesty to take such measures as the exigency of affairs may require." The London Tavern Committee, with the aid of a King's letter, received subscriptions amounting to £304,180 17s. 6d., of which £44,177 9s. was raised in Ireland. The Dublin Mansion House Committee collected £30,406 11s. 4-1/2d. Thus, the whole sum from charitable collections was £334,587 8s. 10-1/2d., of which £74,584, 0s. 4-1/2d. was raised in Ireland. This, with the grant of £300,000 from Government, makes a grand total of £634,587 8s. 10-1/2d. The sum appears to have been quite sufficient, as the London Tavern Committee closed its labours whilst it had yet in hands £60,000, which sum was partly distributed and partly invested in ways considered beneficial to this country.[38]

Every two or three years from 1821 to the great blight of '45 and '46, a failure of some kind, more or less extensive, occurred to the potato crop, not merely in Ireland, but in almost every country in which it was cultivated to any considerable extent. Reviewing, then, the history of this famous root for over a period of one hundred years, we find, that although it produces from a given acreage more human food than any other crop, it is yet a most treacherous and perishable one; and it may, perhaps, surprise future generations, that the statesmen and landed proprietors of that lengthened period did nothing whatever to regulate the husbandry of the country, in such a way as to prevent the lives of a whole people from being dependant on a crop liable to so many casualties. Perhaps the social and political condition of Ireland, during these times, will be found to have had something to do with this culpable apathy.

It is commonly assumed that the subjugation of Ireland was effected by Elizabeth, but the submission to English rule was only a forced one; the spirit of the nation was one of determined opposition, which was abundantly shown at Aughrim and Limerick, and on many a foreign field besides. Great Britain knowing this, and being determined to hold the country at all risks, was continually in fear that some war or complication with foreign powers would afford the Irish people an opportunity of putting an end to English rule in Ireland, and of declaring the country an independent nation. As progress in wealth and prosperity would add to the probabilities of success in such an event, it was the all but avowed—nay, truth compels me to say, the frequently avowed policy of England to keep Ireland poor, and therefore feeble, that she might be held the more securely. For that reason she was not treated as a portion of a united kingdom, but as an enemy who had become England's slave by conquest, who was her rival in manufactures of various kinds, who might undersell her in foreign markets, and, in fact, who might grow rich and powerful enough to assert her independence.

The descendants of the Norman adventurers who got a footing here in the twelfth century; English and Scotch planters; officials and undertakers who, from time to time, had been induced to settle in Ireland by grants of land and sinecures, were, by a legal fiction, styled The Nation, although they were never more than a small fraction of it. For a great number of years every writer, every public man, every Act of Parliament, assumed that the English colony in Ireland was the Irish nation. Denunciations of Papists, the "common enemy"—gross falsehoods about their principles and acts—fears real or pretended, of their wicked, bloodthirsty plots, thickly strewn in our path as we journey through this dismal period of our history—reveal to us, as it were by accident, that there was another people in this island, besides those whom the law regarded as the nation; but they had no rights, they were outlaws—"the Irish enemy." One hundred and fifty years ago Primate Boulter expressed his belief that those outlaws made four-fifths of the population, and the English colony only one-fifth; but the colonists held the rich lands; the bulk of the people, who formed the real nation, were in the bogs, the lonely glens, and on the sterile mountains, where agriculture was all but impossible, except to the great capitalist. Capital they had none, and they were forced to subsist, as best they could, on little patches of tillage among the rocks, whose debris made the land around them in some sort susceptible of cultivation. By degrees those outlaws discovered that the potato, coming from the high moist soil of Quito, found in the half-barren wilds of Ireland, if not a climate, a soil at least congenial to its nature. It was palatable food, as it became acclimatized; it grew where no other plant fit for human food would grow; it was a great fertilizer; it was prolific: no wonder the poor Celt of our bogs and mountains, in time, made the potato more associated with the name of Ireland than it ever was with its native country, Virginia.

Before 1729 we have no record of the potato having suffered from blight or frost, or anything else. But this is not to be wondered at; even though such things occurred, the outlaws, who were its chief cultivators, excited neither interest nor pity in the hearts of the ruling minority. They were watched and feared; they were known to be numerous; and many were the plans set on foot to reduce their numbers, and cause them to become extinct, like the red deer of their native hills. Surely, then, a potato blight, followed by a famine, would not be regarded as a calamity, unless it affected the English colony. The Celtic nation in Ireland could have no record of such a visitation, unless in the fugitive ballad of some hedge schoolmaster.[39] Anyhow, the Celt, forced to live for the most part, in barren wilds, where it was all but impossible to raise sufficient food, found the potato his best friend, and his race increased and multiplied upon it, in spite of that bloody code which ignored his existence, and with regard to which Lord Clare, no friend to Ireland, thus expresses his views in his speech on the Union: "The Parliament of England seem to have considered the permanent debility of Ireland as the best security of the British crown, and the Irish Parliament to have rested the security of the colony upon maintaining a perpetual and impossible barrier against the ancient inhabitants of the country."[40]

Another cause for the increased cultivation of the potato may be found in the poverty of the English colony itself. Whilst the people of whom that colony was composed, through the Parliament that represented them, pursued the Catholic natives with unmitigated persecution, they were themselves the object of jealous surveillance, both by the Parliament and the commercial classes of England. Long before the times of which I am writing, the English always showed uneasiness at the least appearance of amalgamation between the descendants of the Norman invaders and the natives, although their fears on this head were to a great extent set at rest by the change of religion in England, which change extended in a very considerable degree to the English colony in Ireland. After the Reformation there was not much danger of a union between the Catholic Celt and the Protestant Norman. Still another jealousy remained—a commercial jealousy. The colonization of Ireland meant, in the English mind, the complete extirpation of the natives, and the peopling of this island by the adventurers and their descendants; but it is a strange fact, that even had this actually happened, we can, from what we know of the history of the period, assert with truth, that still their commercial prosperity and progress would be watched, and checked, and legislated against, whenever they would even seem to clash, or when there was a possibility of their clashing, with the commercial supremacy of Great Britain. Not to go into all the commercial restraints imposed on Irish manufactures by the English Parliament, let us take what, perhaps, was the most important one—that imposed on the woollen manufacture. For a long period this branch of industry had flourished in Ireland. We not only manufactured what we required for ourselves, but our exports of woollens were very considerable. This manufacture existed in England also, and the Englishmen engaged in it were determined to have the foreign markets to themselves. After many previous efforts, they at length induced both Houses of the English Parliament to address William the Third on what they were pleased to consider a grievance—the grievance of having foreign markets open to Irish woollens equally with their own. To those addresses the King replied that he would do all in his power to "discourage" the woollen trade in Ireland, to encourage the linen trade, and to promote the trade of England.[41] Accordingly, a duty equal to a prohibition was imposed upon the exportation of Irish woollens, except, indeed, to England and Wales, where they were not required—England at the time manufacturing more woollens than were necessary for her home consumption. About forty thousand people in Ireland were thrown out of bread by this law, nearly every one of whom were Protestants; for that trade was almost entirely in their hands, so that neither Palesman nor Protestant was spared when their interests seemed opposed to those of England. William's declaration on this occasion about encouraging the linen manufacture in Ireland was regarded as a compact, yet it was violated at a later period by the imposition of duties.[42] The jealousy and unkindness of the prohibitory duty on the export of woollens is exposed by the able author of the "Groans of Ireland," who says: "It is certain that on the coasts of Spain, and Portugal, and the Mediterranean, in the stuffs, etc., which we send them, we, under all the difficulties of a clandestine trade, undersell the French eight per cent., and it is as certain that the French undersell the English as much—it has been said—eleven per cent."[43] So that although the English manufacturer was unable to compete with the Frenchman abroad, his narrow selfishness would not permit Ireland to do so, although she was in a position to do it with advantage to herself.

Impoverished by such legislation, the English colony itself, Protestant and all as it was, had to lower its dietary standard and cultivate the potato, or, at least, promote its cultivation by the use of it.

Another of the alleged causes for the poverty of the country, and the consequent increase of potato culture, was absenteeism. In 1729 a list of absentees was published by Mr. Thomas Prior, which ran through several editions. The list includes the Viceroy himself, then an absentee, which he well might be, at that time and for long afterwards, as Primate Boulter was the ruler of Ireland. Mr. Prior sets down in his pamphlet the incomes of the absentees, and the total amounts to the enormous annual sum of £627,769 sterling, a sum in excess of the entire revenue of the country, which, though increasing year after year, even twenty-nine years afterwards was only £650,763.

Besides the exhausting drain by absentee proprietors, there was another kind of absenteeism, namely, that of Englishmen who, through Court or other influence, obtained places in Ireland, but discharged the duties of them, such as they were, by deputy. Mr. Prior cites the following instance as an example:—"One of those Englishmen who got an appointment in Ireland landed in Dublin on a Saturday evening, went next day to a parish church, received the Sacrament there, went to the Courts on Monday, took the necessary oaths, and sailed for England that very evening! This was certainly expedition, but still coming over at all was troublesome: so those who had obtained appointments in Ireland got an Act quietly passed in the English Parliament dispensing them from visiting Ireland at all, even to take possession of those offices to which they were promoted."[44]

That a large proportion of the owners of the soil of a country should reside out of it, has been always regarded as a great evil, as well as a real loss to that country. Mr. M'Cullagh's elaborate attempt to prove there is no real pecuniary loss inflicted by mere absenteeism convinces no impartial man, least of all does it convince those who experience, daily in their own persons, the evils which inevitably result from absenteeism. It is fallacious with regard to any country, but especially so as regards Ireland, which, in his argument, he assumes to have her proportion of the profit from the manufactured exports of the United Kingdom, whereas she is not a manufacturing country at all, having as exports, only some linen and the food that should be kept at home to be consumed by her people. When taxes are to be levied and battles to be fought, we are always an integral part of the United Kingdom; but when there is a question of encouraging or extending manufactures, we are treated as the rival and the enemy of England.[45]

The avarice and tyranny of landlords, is usually set down as a principal cause of the great poverty and misery of the Irish people, during a long period. If we examine the rents paid one hundred and fifty, or even one hundred years ago, they will appear trifling when compared with the rents of the present day; so that, at first, one is inclined to question the accuracy of those writers who denounce the avarice and rack-renting propensities of the landlords of their time. But when we examine the question more closely, we find so many circumstances to modify and even to change our first views, that by degrees we arrive at the belief, that the complaints made were substantially true. If the rents of those times seem to us very low, we must remember that the land, for the most part, was in a wretched condition; that the majority of farms had much waste upon them, and that the portions tilled were not half tilled; so that whilst the acreage was large, the productive portion of the land was only a percentage of it. Then, agricultural skill was wanting; good implements were wanting; capital was wanting; everything that could improve the soft and make it productive, was wanting. These and many other causes made rents that seem trifling to us, rack-rents to the farmers who paid them. Swift had no doubt at all upon the matter, for he says: "Another great calamity is the exorbitant raising of the rents of lands. Upon the determination of all leases made before the year 1690, a gentleman thinks that he has but indifferently improved his estate if he has only doubled his rent-roll. Farms are screwed up to a rack-rent; leases granted but for a small term of years; tenants tied down to hard conditions, and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to the best advantage by the certainty they have of the rent being raised on the expiration of their lease, proportionably to the improvements they shall make."[46] As to the unlimited power of landlords, and its tyrannical use, Arthur Young, writing in 1779, less than one hundred years ago, says: "The age has improved so much in humanity, that even the poor Irish have experienced its influence, and are every day treated better and better; but still the remnant of the old manners, the abominable distinction of religion, united with the oppressive conduct of the little country gentlemen, or rather vermin, of the kingdom, who were never out of it, altogether bear still very heavy on the poor people, and subject them to situations more mortifying than we ever behold in England. The landlord of an Irish estate, inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever concerns the poor to no law but that of his will ... A long series of oppressions, aided by very many ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission. Speaking a language that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of written liberty." And again, this enlightened Protestant English gentleman says of the Irish landlord, that "nothing satisfies him but an unlimited submission."[47]

Forty years later, some of their more obvious, not to say essential duties, were brought under the notice of Irish landlords, but in vain. The writer quoted above on the Famine of 1822 says: "It is therefore a duty incumbent on all those who possess property, and consequently have an interest in the prosperity of this country, to prevent a recurrence of this awful calamity [the Famine], and to provide for those persons over whom fortune has placed them, and whom they should consider as entrusted to their care, and entitled to their protection; and this can only be successfully carried into execution by their procuring and substituting other articles of food, so as to leave the poor only partially dependant on the potato crop, for their support."[48]

Some Acts of Parliament, without perhaps intending it, gave a further impulse to potato cultivation in Ireland. As if the violation of the treaty of Limerick by William the Third; the exterminating code of Anne; its continuance and intensification, under the first and second George were not a sufficient persecution of the native race, statutes continued to be enacted against them, during the first twenty-five years of George the Third's reign—that is, up to 1785, But although this was the case, the necessity of making some concessions to them began to be felt by their rulers, from the time the revolt of the American colonies assumed a dangerous aspect. So that, whilst, on the one hand, the enactment of persecuting laws was not wholly abandoned, on the other, there sprang up a spirit, if not of kindness, at least of recognition, and perhaps of fear. "It was in the year 1744," says Sir Henry Parnell, "that the Irish Legislature passed the first Act towards conciliating the Catholics."[49] And a very curious concession it was. It was entitled—"An Act to enable His Majesty's subjects, of whatever persuasion, to testify their allegiance to him."[50] Previously, the Catholics dared not to approach the foot of the throne even to swear, that they were ready to die in defence of it. But, two years before this an Act was passed of no apparent political significance, which was of much more practical value to the Catholics. It was "An Act to encourage the reclaiming of unprofitable bogs."[51] This Act made it lawful "for every Papist, or person professing the Popish religion," to lease fifty acres, plantation measure, of such bog, and one half acre of arable land thereunto adjoining, "as a site for a house, or for the purpose of delving for gravel or limestone for manure." Certain immunities were granted, and certain restrictions imposed. The immunities were, that, for the first seven years after the bog was reclaimed, the tenant should be free from all tithes, cesses, or applotment; the restrictions were: (1) that no bog should be deemed unprofitable, unless it were at least four feet from the surface to the bottom of it, when reclaimed—the Act having been especially passed for the reclaiming of unprofitable bogs; (2) that no person should be entitled to the benefit of the Act, unless he reclaimed ten plantation acres; (3) that half whatever quantity was leased, should be reclaimed in twenty-one years; (4) that such bog should be at least one mile from any city or market-town. Alas, how utterly prostrate the Catholics must have been, when this was regarded as a concession to them! Yet it was, and one of such importance, that "in times of less liberality it had been repeatedly thrown out of Parliament, as tending to encourage Popery, to the detriment of the Protestant religion;" and to counter-balance it, the pension allotted to apostate priests in Anne's reign was, in the very same Session of Parliament, raised from £30 to £40 per annum, by the Viceroy, Lord Townsend.[52] The wretched serfs were of course glad to get any hold upon the soil, even though it was unprofitable bog, and largely availed themselves of the provisions of the Act. Ten or twelve years later, we find Arthur Young speaking with much approval of the many efforts that were being made, in various parts of Ireland, to reclaim the bogs—efforts resulting, no doubt, in a great measure, from this Bill. In the process of reclaiming the bogs, the potato was an essential auxiliary.

But of all the means of increasing the growth of that renowned esculent in Ireland, the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 must, at least in more recent times, be accorded the first place. That Act, it is said, was the result of the fears excited in England by the French Revolution. Whether this was so or not, the concessions it made were large for the time; and its effect upon potato culture in Ireland is unquestionable. Dr. Beaufort, in his Ecclesiastical Map, gives our whole population in 1789 as 4,088,226. Sir Henry Parnell says the Catholics were, at this time, at least three-fourths of the population.[53] And this agrees with the estimate which the Catholics themselves made of their numbers at the period; for, in a long and remarkable petition, presented to the House of Commons in January, 1792, they say: "Behold us then before you, three millions of the people of Ireland." These three millions became, by the Bill of '93, entitled to the elective franchise; or, as the Bill itself more correctly expressed it, "such parts of all existing oaths," as put it out of their power to exercise the elective franchise, were repealed. The Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of this important privilege, which they had not enjoyed since the first year of George the Second's reign—a period of sixty-six years.[54] They soon began to influence the elections in at least three out of the four provinces; but they influenced them only through their landlords, not daring, for a full generation after, to give independent votes. A landlord had political influence in proportion to the number of voters he brought, or rather drove, to the poll. To secure and extend this influence, the manufacture of forty-shilling freeholders went on rapidly, and to an enormous extent. The Catholics were poor, numerous, subservient, and doubtless grateful for recent concessions; so bits of land, merely sufficient to qualify them for voting, were freely leased to them, which they as freely accepted.[55] On these they built cabins, relying on the potato for food, and on a little patch of oats or wheat, to pay their rent and taxes. By the influence of O'Connell and the Catholic Association, the forty-shilling freeholders broke away from landlord influence in the great General Election of 1826, and supported the candidates who promised to vote for Catholic Emancipation, in spite of every threat. From that day their doom was sealed; the landlords began to call loudly for their disfranchisement, and accordingly they were disfranchised by the Relief Bill of 1829, but of course they still retained their little holdings. Immediately the landlords began to utter bitter complaints of surplus population; they began to ventilate their grievances through the English and Irish press, saying that their land was overrun by cottiers and squatters—the main cause of all this being kept in the background, namely, the immense and continuous increase of forty-shilling freeholders, by themselves, and for their own purposes. But the moment those poor men presumed to vote according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, they were sacrificed to landlord indignation; they were declared to be an incumbrance on the soil that ought to be removed. Landlords began to act upon this view: they began to evict, to exterminate, to consolidate; and in this fearful work the awful Famine of '47 became a powerful, and I fear in many cases even a welcome, auxiliary to the Crowbar Brigade.[56]

Thus was the cultivation of the potato extended in various ways, until it had become the principal food of nineteen-twentieths of the population long before the Famine of '47.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Raleigh earned this property by some terrible services. He was an officer in the expedition of the Lord Deputy Gray, when he attacked the Italian camp on Dun-an-oir, at Smerwick harbour in Kerry. After some time the Italians yielded, but on what precise terms it is now impossible to say, the accounts of the transaction are so various and conflicting. Indeed, O'Daly says the English were the first to send a flag of truce. Anyhow, the Italian garrison, which had come to aid the Irish, fell into the power of the English, and here is Dr. Leland's account of what followed:—"Wingfield was commissioned to disarm them, and when this service was performed an English company was sent into the fort. The Irish rebels found they were reserved for execution by martial law. The Italian general and some of the officers were made prisoners of war, but the garrison was butchered in cold blood; nor is it without pain that we find a service so horrid and detestable committed to Sir Walter Raleigh."

[2] The people of Quito said papas. The Spaniards corrupted this to battata, and the Portuguese to the softer batata.

[3] Edwards (Life of Sir W. Raleigh. M'Millan, 1868), says Hooker is the only contemporary writer who asserts that Raleigh sailed with this expedition, and Edwards adds, "It is by no means certain that he did so." But from the following entry in the State Papers of Elizabeth's reign it appears quite certain that he did sail with it:—"The names of all the ships, officers, and gentlemen, with the pieces of ordnance, etc., gone in the voyage with Sir Humfrey Gylberte,—Capt. Walter Rauley, commanding the Falcon," etc.—State Papers (Domestic), Vol. 126, No. 149, Nov. 18 & 19, 1578.

Mr. Edwards may not have met this entry, as he does not refer to it.

In spite of his many failures, Raleigh was, to the last, confident in the final success of his scheme for colonizing America. After the failure of nine expeditions, and on the ere of his fall, he said: "I shall yet live to see it (America) an English nation." (Edwards.)

[4] Perhaps Kartoffel, one of the German names for potato, is a corruption of this.

[5] Mr. Edwards says, I know not on what authority, that the land given to Raleigh was about 12,000 acres. The grants are set forth plainly enough in the following entries:—"The Queen, desirous to have the Province of Munster, in the realm of Ireland, re-peopled and inhabited with civil, loyal, and dutiful subjects, in consideration of the great charge and trouble which Sir Walter Raleghe sustained in transporting and planting English people into the province, and in recompense of his good service rendered in Ireland, pursuant to her royal letters dated the last of February, 1586 to the Lord Deputy and Lord Chancellor directed, and intending to bestow upon him three seignories and a-half of land, ... 'lying as near to the town of Youghall as they may be conveniently,' each seignory containing 12,000 acres of tenanted land, not accounting mountains, bogs, or barren heath." And again: "And as Sir Walter made humble suit, to enable him the better to perform the enterprize for the habitation and repeopling of the land, to grant him and his heirs, in fee-farm for ever, the possessions of the late dissolved abbey or monastery called Molanassa, otherwise Molana, and the late dissolved priory of the Observant Friars, or the Black Friars, near Youghall, ... and, as they lie adjoining the lands already granted to him, her Majesty is pleased to comply with his request, and by her letters, dated at Greenwich the 2nd of July, 1587, directed to the Lord Deputy, expressed her intention to that effect." Patent and Close Rolls, Chancery, Ireland, reg. Elizabeth, Mem. 5, 41, 1595, p. 323.

As the lands at first granted did not measure the 42,000 acres, the Lord Deputy is instructed to issue a commission to measure off so much of other escheated lands adjoining "as shall be requisite to make up the full number and quantity of three seignories and a-half of tenantable land, without mountains, bogs, or barren heath; To hold for ever in fee-farm, as of the Castle of Carregroghan, in the Co. of Cork, in free soccage and not in capite."—Ibid. p. 327.

Alas! how soon he tired of the great and coveted prize.

[6] Hooker, Suppl. to Holinshed's Chronicle, p. 183.

[7] Some Considerations for the Promoting of Agriculture and Employing the Poor, addressed to Members of the House of Commons, by R.L. V.M. Haliday Collection of pamphlets in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 54.

[8] Page 18.

[9] Page 35.

[10] Short View of the State of Ireland. Haliday Pamphlets, Vol. 74.

[11] An answer to a paper called "A Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland." Same Vol.

[12] "Answer to Memorial," signed A.B., March 25, 1728.

[13] "Letter to the Duke of Newcastle."

[14] Vol. I., p. 166.

[15] "The famine of 1741 was not regarded with any active interest in England or in any foreign country, and the subject is scarcely alluded to in the literature of the day. No measures were adopted, either by the Executive or the Legislature, for the purpose of relieving the distress caused by this famine."—Irish Crisis, by Sir C.E. Trevelyan, Bart., p. 13.

[16] Probably the origin of the potato pit, as we now have it, in Ireland was the following advice given in Pue's Occurrences of Nov. 29th, 1740:—

"Method of securing potatoes from the severest frost.

"Dig up your potatoes in the beginning of December, or sooner, and, in proportion to your quantity of potatoes, dig a large hole about ten foot deep in such place as your garden or near your house where the ground is sandy or dry, and not subject to water; then put your potatoes into the hole, with all their dirt about them, to within three feet of the surface of the ground. If you have sand near you, throw some of it among the potatoes and on top of them. When you have thus lodged your potatoes, then fill up the rest of the hole with the earth first thrown out, and, with some stuff, raise upon the hole a large heap of earth in the form of a large haycock, which you may cover with some litter or heath. By the covering of earth of five or six feet deep, your potatoes will be secured against the severest frosts, which are not known to enter over two feet into the ground. The same pit will serve you year after year, and when the frosts are over you may take out your potatoes."

[17] "O'Halloran on the Air."

[18] Exshaw's Magazine.

[19] Pue's Occurrences, March 11, 1740.

[20] Sir John Rogerson's Quay, of course.

[21] Pue's Occurrences, Jan 1, 1740.

[22] This storm visited other parts of the coast. The news from Dundalk under the same date is, that the Jane and Andrew of Nantz was wrecked there, "the weather continuing very stormy, with a very great frost." Accounts from Nenagh under date of Jan. 5th say:—"The Shannon is frozen over, and a hurling match has taken place upon it; and Mr. Parker had a sheep roast whole on the ice, with which he regaled the company who had assembled to witness the hurling match." Under January 29th we have a ludicrous accident recorded, namely, "that the Drogheda postboy's horse fell at Santry, near Dublin, and broke his neck. One of the postboy's legs being caught under the horse got so frozen that he could not pull it out!" At length some gentlemen who were passing released him.—Ibid.

[23] I find by the newspapers of the time that Primate Boulter acted with much generosity, especially in the second year of the famine, feeding many thousands at the workhouse at his own expense. He also appealed to his friends to subscribe for the same purpose. The Right Honourable William Conolly, then living at Leixlip Castle, distributed £20 worth of meal in Leixlip, and ordered his steward to attend to the wants of the people there during the frost. Lords Mountjoy and Tullamore, Sir Thomas Prendergast, and other influential persons commenced a general collection in Dublin, but it was only for the starving artizans of Dublin. The co-heirs of Lord Ranelagh ordered £110 to be distributed in Roscommon; Lady Betty Brownlow, then abroad, sent home £440 for her tenants in the North; Chief Justice Singleton gave twenty tons of meal to be sold in Drogheda at one shilling and a penny a stone; the Rt. Hon. Wm. Graham did the same—it was then selling from one shilling and sixpence to one shilling and eightpence a stone; Lord Blundell gave £50 to his tenants; Dean Swift gave £10 to the weavers of the Liberty.

An obelisk 140 feet in height, supported upon open arches, and surrounded by a grove of full-grown trees, stands on a hill near Maynooth, and can be seen to advantage both from the Midland and the Great Southern Railway. It is usually known as "Lady Conolly's Monument." From its being built without any apparent utility, illnatured people sometimes call it "Lady Conolly's Folly." It is said to have been designed by Castelli (Anglicised "Castells"), the architect of Carton, Castletown House, and Leinster House, Kildare Street, now the Royal Dublin Society House. It bears on the keystones of its three principal arches the suggestive date, "1740." It was erected to give employment to the starving people in that year, not by Lady Louisa Conolly, as is generally supposed, but by a Mrs. Conolly, as the following information, kindly supplied by the Marquis of Kildare, will show:—

"I find in my notes," says the Marquis, "that the obelisk was built by Mrs. Conolly, widow of the Rt. Hon. Wm. Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. She had Castletown for her life, and died in 1752, in her ninetieth year. Mrs. Delany, in her Autobiography, vol. iii, p. 158, mentions that her table was open to her friends of all ranks, and her purse to the poor.... She dined at three o'clock, and generally had two tables of eight or ten people each.... She was clever at business.... A plain and vulgar woman in her manners, but had very valuable qualities. 1740 was a year of great scarcity, and farmers were ploughing their wheat in May to sow summer barley. In March Mrs. Conolly's sister, Mrs. Jones, wrote to another sister, Mrs. Bound, that Mrs. Conolly was building an obelisk opposite a vista at the back of Castletown House, and that it would cost £300 or £400 at least, and she wondered how she could afford it. The nephew of the Speaker, also the Rt. Hon. Wm. Conolly, lived at Leixlip Castle till he succeeded to Castletown in 1752. He married Lady Anne Wentworth, daughter of an Earl of Strafford. His son was the Right Hon. Thos. Conolly, who married Lady Louisa Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond. From her Castletown passed to the father of the present Mr. Conolly, after the death of Lady Louisa."

Mrs. Jones must have made a very erroneous guess at the expense of building the obelisk, even at that time; now, instead of three or four hundred pounds, double as many thousands would scarcely build it. Although erected by Mrs. Conolly, it stands on the Duke of Leinster's property. The site is the finest in the neighbourhood, and she obtained it from the Earl of Kildare, by giving him a portion of the Castletown estate instead. Lately those two pieces of ground have been re-exchanged, and when they came to be measured, they were found to be of exactly the same extent.

[24] The coming of the thaw was indicated by some accidents on the ice. Under date 10th Feb. it was reported from Derry that the ice gave way there, and several persons were drowned. In Dublin, at the same date, a man was also drowned who attempted to cross the river on the ice near the Old Bridge. But a boy was more fortunate. He, too, was on the ice on the Liffey, and the part on which he stood becoming detached was driven by the current through Ormond and Essex Bridges; he kept his position, however, on the floating ice till he was taken off in a boat.

[25] The following story is told in Pue's Occurrences, in May, 1740:—A broguemaker had been committed to Dungannon jail for some offence, but managed to make his escape. He was pursued and searched for in vain. The jailer gave him up as lost when, one day, after being at large during five weeks, he presented himself at the jail to the astonishment of the jailer, who questioned him as to the cause of his return. He replied, that he had travelled to Dublin, and had gone through a great part of Munster, but finding nowhere such good quarters as he had in Dungannon jail, he came back.

[26] On the passing of this bill Sir Charles E. Trevelyan remarks with quiet severity:—"There is no mention of grants or loans; but an Act was passed by the Irish Parliament, 1741 (15 George II, cap. 8), for the more effectual securing the payment of rents and preventing frauds by tenants."—Irish Crisis, p. 13.

[27] Matthew O'Connor's History of the Irish Catholics, p. 222.

[28] The Judges held the assizes in Tuam instead of Galway this year, on account of the fever in the latter place.—Dutton's Galway.

[29] The Groans of Ireland, in a letter to an M.P., 1741. The estimated population in 1731 was 2,010,221. Rutty says it was computed, perhaps, with some exaggeration, that one-fifth of the people died of famine and pestilence. This agrees with the higher estimate above.

[30] Philo-Ierne, London, May 20, 1755. Reprinted in Cork with the author's name, Richard Bocklesly, Esq., M.D. It is hardly necessary to say that the "people" referred to in the above extract mean merely the English colony in Ireland.

[31] Ibid., pp. 5 & 6—He seems to use the word "dairy" here in a sense somewhat different from its present application.

[32] The Bristol barrel contained 22 stones—one stone more than the Irish barrel.

[33] A disease called the Curl appeared in the potato in Lancashire in 1764. It was in that Shire the potato was first planted in England; and we are told the Curl appeared in those districts of it in which it was first planted. The nature of the disease is indicated by its name. The stalk became discoloured and stunted almost from the beginning of its growth; it changed its natural healthy green for a sickly greenish brown, the leaves literally curling like those of that species of ornamental holly known as the "screw-leaved." The plant continued to grow, and even to produce tubers, but they never attained any considerable size, and from their inferior quality could not be used for food. The Curl appeared in Ireland about the year 1770, where it caused much loss, as we find a large quantity of grain was imported for food about that period. Isolated cases of the Curl were not unfrequent in this country long after it ceased to cause alarm to the farmer. I have seen many such cases, especially where potatoes were planted on lea. On examining the set beneath a plant affected with Curl, I invariably found it had not rotted away as was usual with those sets that produced healthy plants. There were as many remedies propounded for the Curl as for the blight of 1846-7 with a like result—none of them were of any use.

[34] Report of the Committee for the "Relief of the Distressed Districts in Ireland," appointed at a general meeting, held at the City of London Tavern, on the 7th May, 1822.

[35] Impartial Review. Miliken, Dublin, 1822.

[36] Report of Parliamentary Committee.

[37] Amongst the means resorted to at this time to raise funds for the starving Irish was a ball at the Opera House in London, at which the King was present, and which realized the large sum of £6,000. This piece of information the Irish Census Commissioners for 1851, curiously enough, insert in that column of their Report set apart for "Contemporaneous Epidemics."

[38] The chief part of this £60,000 is still under the management of the "Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor of Ireland."

[39] The following extract from a letter of Mr. Secretary Legge, dated London, May 4, 1740, and addressed to Dublin Castle, expresses very naively an English official's feelings about the terrible frost and famine of that year:—"I hope the weather, which seems mending at last, will be of service to Ireland, and comfort our Treasury, which, I am afraid, has been greatly chilled with the long frost and embargo."—Records, Birmingham Tower, Chief Sec.'s Department, Box 10.

[40] Speech, p. 26; quoted by Plowden, vol. i., p. 253. Note.

[41] Answer to Address of Commons, 2nd July, 1698.

[42] Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, App., p. 149.

[43] Groans of Ireland, p. 20.

[44] Mr. Prior's Pamphlet was dedicated to the Viceroy, Lord Carteret, and both Houses of Parliament, which proves how certain he was of his facts and statements.

[45] See Note A in Appendix, for a fuller discussion of the question of Absenteeism.

[46] "The present miserable state of Ireland." How like the Ireland of the other day!

[47] Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, App., p. 40.

[48] Impartial Review, p. 3.

[49] History of the Penal Laws.

[50] 13 & 14 Geo. II, cap. 35.

[51] 11th & 12th Geo. II, cap. 21.

[52] Plowden.

[53] History of the Penal Laws.

[54] By the 1st Geo. II, cap. 9, sec. 7, it was enacted that no Papist could vote at an election, without taking the oath of supremacy—an oath which no Catholic could take. Primate Boulter thought he saw a disposition on the part of the English colony to make common cause with the natives in favour of Irish, interests, and taking alarm at the prospect of such a dreadful calamity, he got the Ministers to pass this law. It is said it was carried through Parliament under a false title, being called a Bill for Regulating, etc.; but it would have passed under any title.

[55] The feelings of the Irish Catholics for these concessions are curiously illustrated, by an inscription on the Carmelite Church in Clarendon Street, Dublin, in which the year 1793 is called, "the first year of restored liberty," and George the Third is proclaimed as the "best of kings." Here is the full inscription:—

D. O. M.

Sub invocatione B.V. Mariæ.

C.

Primum hujus Ecclesiæ lapidem

posuit Johannes Sweetman, Armiger.

Memoriale hoc grati animi restitutæ

Catholicæ Libertatis Georgio

tertio Regum optimo, annuente Parlia-

mento ac toto populo

acclamante, Dedicat Patriæ Pietas. Anno

supradictæ Libertatis primo.

Regni vigesimo tertio, ab Incarnatione

1793, die Octobris tertio.

T. BEAHAN,

Arch

[56] Forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland and forty-shilling freeholders in England were quite different classes. The latter, by the statute, 8 Henry VI, cap. 7, passed in 1429, must be "people dwelling and resident in the counties, who should have free land or tenement to the value of forty shillings by the year at least, above all charges;" whilst in Ireland, every tenant having a lease for a life was entitled to a Parliamentary vote, provided he swore that his farm was worth forty shillings annual rent, more than the rent reserved in his lease.

Mr. Pim writes:—"A numerous tenantry having the right to vote, and practically obliged to exercise that right at the dictation of their landlord, was highly prized.... When the Emancipation Act was passed in 1829, the forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised, and, being no longer of use to their landlords, every means has since been employed to get rid of them."—The Condition and Prospects of Ireland, by Jonathan Pim, late M.P. for Dublin City.

"It is in vain to deny or to conceal the truth in respect to that franchise [the forty-shilling franchise]. It was, until a late period, the instrument through which the landed aristocracy—the resident and the absentee proprietor, maintained their local influence—through which property had its weight, its legitimate weight, in the national representation. The landlord has been disarmed by the priest.... that weapon which [the landlord] has forged with so much care, and has heretofore wielded with such success, has broken short in his hand."—Mr. Peel's Speech in the House of Commons, 5th March, 1829, introducing the Catholic Relief Bill.

Leaving out the "legitimate weight" of landed proprietors, as exercised through the forty-shilling freeholders, the above statement, besides being a remarkable one from such a cautious Minister, is not far from being correct.

CHAPTER II.

The Potato Blight of 1845--Its appearance in England--In Ireland--Weather--Scotland--Names given to the Blight--First appearance of the Blight in Ireland--Accounts of its progress--The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland--Its action--The Dublin Corporation --O'Connell--His plan for meeting the Crisis--Deputation to the Lord Lieutenant--How it was received--Lord Heytesbury's Reply--It displeases the Government--The Times' Commissioner--His suggestions--Mr. Gregory's Letter--Mr. Crichton's--Sir James Murray on the Blight--Action of the Clergy--The Mansion House Committee--Resolutions--Analysis of five hundred letters on the Blight--Partial cessation of the Rot caused by the Blight--Report of Professors Lindley and Playfair--Estimated loss--Query Sheets sent out--Corporation Address to the Queen--Her Reply--Address of the London Corporation asking for Free Trade--The Potato Blight made a party question--Dean Hoare's Letter--Failure of remedies.

The disease which cut off at least one-half of the potato crop of Ireland in 1845, and completely destroyed that of 1846, had made its appearance several years before, in other countries. It is said to have existed for a long time in the western parts of America, before it appeared in Europe; but as it was at first confounded with dry rot and wet rot, the American may have been a different disease from ours. What seems certain is, that the potato disease, as known to us, made its first appearance in Germany; and in the year 1842, travelling thence into Belgium, it manifested itself in a very destructive form in the neighbourhood of Liege. It visited Canada in 1844, and in 1845 it appeared in almost every part of the United Kingdom, being observed first of all in the Isle of Wight, where it was most virulent on wheat lands which had been manured with guano.

In the first week of September, the potatoes in the London market were, to a very considerable extent, found to be unfit for human food. To the eye they did not show any sign of disease, but when boiled and cut its presence was but too evident, by the black, or rather brownish-black mass they presented. The potato fields began to be examined, and the provincial journals soon teemed with accounts of the destructive visitation, with speculations concerning its cause, and suggestions as to probable remedies. The descriptions of the disease given by the English newspapers do not quite agree with the symptoms observed somewhat later in Ireland. "Whatever may have been the cause," says one account, "it is certain that, externally, the disease indicates itself by a fungus or moss producing decomposition of the farinaceous interior."[57] "The disease is very general in this locality," says another, "beginning with a damp spot on some part of the potato."[58] A third observer writes: "The commencement of the attack is generally dated here from Tuesday, the 19th ultimo. A day of the heaviest rain almost ever known. It first appears a bluish speck on the potato, and then spreads rapidly."[59]

Whether it was that, in England, in their anxiety about the tuber, people paid little or no attention to the stems or leaves of the potato; or, that the earlier symptoms differed from the later, matters but little, the disease was certainly the same throughout the United Kingdom. In Ireland it was first observed on the leaves of the plant as brown spots of various shapes and sizes, pretty much as if a dilution of acid had fallen upon them like drops of rain. Sometimes the blight made its appearance near high hedges, or under trees; sometimes portions of a field would be greatly affected with it before other parts were touched at all; and I have sometimes observed the very first symptoms of the disease opposite an open gateway, as if a blighting wind had rushed in, making for some distance a sort of avenue of discoloured leaves and stalks, about the width of the gateway at first, but becoming wider onwards. When the decomposition produced by the blight was in a somewhat advanced stage, the odour from the potato field, which was very offensive, was perceptible at a considerable distance. There may have been cases in this country in which the disease was first observed in the tubers, but they must have been rare. It appeared in Scotland with the same symptoms as in Ireland. A contemporary account says: "In various parts of Scotland the potatoes have suffered fearfully from the blight. The leaves of the plant have, generally speaking, first been affected, and then the root." From this mode of manifesting itself, the potato disease was commonly called in Ireland, as in Scotland, the Potato Blight. It had other names given to it; potato murrain, cholera in the potato, and so on; but Potato Blight in Ireland, at least, was and is its all but universal name. The whole stem soon became affected after the blight had appeared on the leaves, more especially if the weather was damp; and for some time before the period for digging out the crop had arrived, the potato fields showed nothing but rank weeds, with here and there the remains of withered-up stems—bleached skeletons of the green healthy plants of some weeks before.

I have a vivid recollection of the blight as it appeared in the southern portion of Kildare in 1850. The fifteenth of July in that year—St. Swithin's day—was a day of clouds and lightning, of thunder and terrific rain. It was one of those days that strike the timid with alarm and terror: sometimes it was dark as twilight; sometimes a sudden ghastly brightness was produced by the lightning. That the air was charged with electricity to a most unusual extent was felt by everybody. Those who had an intimate knowledge of the various potato blights from '45 said, "This is the beginning of the blight." So it was. It is well known that after the blight of '45 the potatoes in Ireland had scarcely shown any blossom for some years, even those unaffected by the blight, or affected by it only to a small extent; and the few exceptional blossoms which appeared produced no seed. This feebleness of the plant was gradually disappearing, and in 1850 it was remarked as a very hopeful sign that the potatoes blossomed almost as of old. The crop having been sown much earlier than was customary before '45, most of the fields, on this memorable fifteenth of July, were rich with that beautiful and striking sheet of blossom, which they show when the plant is in vigorous health. Next day—a still, oppressive, sultry, electric sort of day—I, in company with some others, visited various potato fields. There was but one symptom that the blight had come; all the blossoms were closed, even at mid-day: this was enough to the experienced eye—the blight had come. Heat, noontide sun, nothing ever opened them again. In some days they began to fall off the stems; in eight or ten days other symptoms appeared, and so began the Potato Blight of 1850, a mild one, but still the true blight. How like this fifteenth of July must have been to the nineteenth of August, 1845, described above by the Cambridge Chronicle.

The blight of 1845 was noticed in Ireland about the middle of September. Like the passage birds, it first appeared on the coast, and, it would seem, first of all on the coast of Wexford. It soon travelled inland, and accounts of its alarming progress began to be published in almost every part of the country. Letters in the daily press from Cork, Tyrone, Meath, Roscommon, and various other places, gave despairing accounts of its extent and rapidity. A Meath peasant writes:—"Awful is our story; I do be striving to blindfold them (the potatoes) in the boiling. I trust in God's mercy no harm will come from them." The Very Rev. Dr. M'Evoy, P.P., writing from Kells, October the 24th, says:—"On my most minute personal inspection of the state of the potato crop in this most fertile potato-growing locale, is founded my inexpressibly painful conviction, that one family in twenty of the people will not have a single potato left on Christmas Day next.... With starvation at our doors, grimly staring us, vessels laden with our whole hopes of existence, our provisions, are hourly wafted from our every port. From one milling establishment I have last night seen no less than fifty dray-loads of meal moving on to Drogheda, thence to go to feed the foreigner, leaving starvation and death the soon and certain fate of the toil and sweat that raised this food."

From other places the accounts were more favourable. "I have found no field without the disease," writes Mr. Horace Townsend to the Southern Reporter, "but in great variety of degree; in some at least one-third of the crop is tainted, in others not a tenth, and all the remainder seems sound as ever." From Athy, Kilkenny, Mayo, Carlow, and Newry, the accounts were that the disease was partial, and seemed in some cases arrested. But these hopeful accounts had, almost in every instance, to be contradicted later on. The blight did not appear in all places at once; it travelled mysteriously but steadily, and from districts where the crop was safe a few days before, the gloomiest accounts were unexpectedly received. The special correspondent of a Dublin newspaper, writing from the West, explains this when he says: "The disease appeared suddenly, and the tubers are sometimes rotten in twenty-four hours afterwards."[60]

On the 18th of October, "The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland" held a special meeting relative to the disease in the potatoes. They had, some short time before, appointed a sub-committee on the subject, Professor (now Sir Robert) Kane being its Chairman. He stated to the meeting that the sub-committee had sat the two previous days, but were not as yet prepared with anything definite on the subject. They, however, communicated some advice to farmers, under eight heads, founded on experiments. This advice, whether useful or not, was, for the most part, not within the power of small farmers to put in practice; but the sub-committee made one observation that should have aroused all the energies of those who had the lives of the people in their hands. They said that, "on mature consideration of the evidence now before them, it was advisable that the Council should direct the attention of the Irish Government to the now undoubted fact, that a great portion of the potato crop in this country was seriously affected by the disease in question." A cautious, well-weighed sentence, which, coming from such a responsible quarter, was full of portentous meaning for the future. The Dublin Corporation took up the question of the Potato Blight with much and praiseworthy earnestness. They appointed a committee to enquire and report on the subject. A meeting of this committee was held in the City Assembly House on the 28th of October; the Lord Mayor, John L. Arabin, presided, who, from the accounts which had reached him, gave a gloomy picture of the progress of the disease. The late Mr. William Forde, then Town Clerk, in a letter to the committee, said he had recently inspected the produce of eight or ten acres dug and housed in an apparently sound state three weeks before, and that now it was difficult to find a sound potato amongst them. That all might not, however, be gloom, he added that he never saw so much corn safe and thatched in the haggards as he had seen this year.

It was at this meeting O'Connell first brought forward his plan for dealing with the impending famine, a plan which met with no favour from those in power, there not having been a single suggestion put forward in it which was taken up by them. The crisis, he said, was one of terrible importance; the lives of the people were at stake; the calamity was all but universal; something must be done, and done immediately, to meet it. Private subscriptions would not be sufficient; they might meet a local, but not a national calamity like the present. By a merciful dispensation of Providence there was one of the best oat crops that we ever have had in the country, but that crop was passing out of Ireland day by day. Then, quoting from the Mark Lane Express, he said, sixteen thousand quarters of oats were imported from Ireland to London alone in one week. His proposal was, that a deputation should be appointed to wait on the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Heytesbury) to urge certain measures on the Government, in order to mitigate the calamitous state of the country. 1. The first measure he proposed was the immediate stoppage of distillation and brewing, 2. Next, that the export of provisions of every kind to foreign countries should be immediately prohibited, and our own ports open to receive provisions from all countries. From this prohibition he, strangely enough, excepted England, although he had just shown that it was England which was carrying away our provisions with the most alarming rapidity. He probably made this exception to induce the Government to lend a more willing ear to his other propositions. He adduced the example of Belgium, Holland, and even of Russia and Turkey, in support of this view; all these countries having closed their ports against the exportation of provisions, under analagous circumstances. 3. But all this, he said, was not enough; the Government must be called on to assist the country in buying provisions—called on, not in a spirit of begging or alms-seeking—but called on to supply from the resources of Ireland itself money for this purpose. Let our own money be applied to it. The proceeds of the Woods and Forests in this country are, he said, £74,000 a year; money, which instead of being applied to Irish purposes, had gone to improve Windsor and Trafalgar Square—two millions of Irish money having been already expended in this manner. This is no time to be bungling at trivial remedies; let a loan of a million and a half be raised on this £74,000 a year, which, at four per cent., would leave a portion of it for a sinking fund; let absentees be taxed fifty per cent., and every resident ten per cent. By these means abundant funds would be found to keep the people alive. Let there be got up in each county machinery for carrying out the relief: let the projected railways be commenced, and let the people be put to work from one end of the country to the other, and let them be paid in food. He concluded, amidst the applause of the gentlemen present, by moving, that a deputation do wait on His Excellency to lay this plan before him, and to explain to him the pressing necessity which existed for its adoption.

To the Tory Government of the day, especially to a politician like Lord Heytesbury, the scheme, in all likelihood, appeared very extravagant, and yet at this distance of time, and with the history of that terrible period before us, it was, on the whole, sound, statesmanlike, and practical.

In accordance with O'Connell's suggestion, a deputation was appointed to wait on the Lord Lieutenant. He received them at the Phoenix Park, on Wednesday, the 3rd of November. They were coldly received. This may be in part accounted for by the fact, that the two or three previous years were remarkable for the great Repeal agitation; O'Connell himself having baptized the year 1843, the Repeal year. Then the State trials came, in which the Repeal leaders fought the Government, inch by inch, putting it to enormous cost, trouble, and anxiety. To be sure it succeeded, at last, in securing a verdict, and in sending O'Connell and some four or five others to Richmond prison; but their imprisonment there, like their journey to it, was a continuous triumph. Besides, the Government were in the end defeated by an appeal to the House of Lords, and the State prisoners set free in the fall of 1844. O'Connell, it was known through the Press, had propounded a scheme to meet the impending famine, which was, in substance, the one laid before the Viceroy. It is not much to be wondered at, that a small politician and narrow party-man, as Lord Heytesbury was, should think it a victory to make the deputation feel his high displeasure at the manner in which agitators had been, for so long a period, bearding the Government to which he belonged.

The deputation was highly respectable, and ought to have been influential, consisting, as it did, of the Duke of Leinster, Lord Cloncurry, the Lord Mayor, O'Connell, Henry Grattan, Sir James Murray, John Augustus O'Neill, and some twenty other gentlemen of position. The journals of the next morning informed the public that the deputation was "most formally" received. The Lord Mayor read to His Excellency the resolutions drawn up by the committee by which the deputation was appointed. They stated—(1), That famine and pestilence were immediately imminent, unless the Government took prompt measures against them; (2), That this could be best done by employing the people in works of national utility; (3), That the ports ought to be closed against the exportation of corn; (4), That public granaries ought to be established in various parts of the country, the corn to be sold to the people at moderate prices; and (5), That the use of grain for distillation ought to be stopped.

The Lord Lieutenant read the following reply:—

"My Lord Mayor and Gentlemen,—It can scarcely be necessary for me to assure you that the state of the potato crop has for some time occupied, and still occupies, the most anxious attention of the Government.

"Scientific men have been sent over from England to co-operate with those of this country, in endeavouring to investigate the nature of the disease, and, if possible, to devise means to arrest its progress. They have not yet terminated their enquiries; but two reports have already been received from them, which have been communicated to the public.

"The Government is also furnished with constant reports from the stipendiary magistrates and inspectors of constabulary, who are charged to watch the state of the potato disease, and the progress of the harvest. These vary from day to day, and are often contradictory; it will, therefore, be impossible to form an accurate opinion on the whole extent of the evil till the digging of the potatoes shall be further advanced. To decide, under such circumstances, upon the most proper measures to be adopted, would be premature; particularly as there is reason to hope that, though the evil exists to a very great extent in some localities, in others it has but partially manifested itself.

"There is no immediate pressure in the market. I will, however, lose no time in submitting your suggestions to the consideration of the Cabinet. The greater part of them can only be enforced by legislative enactment, and all require to be maturely weighed before they can be adopted. It must be clear to you, that in a case of such great national importance, no decision can be taken without a previous reference to the responsible advisers of the Crown."

When the Lord Lieutenant had concluded reading the above answer, he immediately commenced bowing the deputation out. As they were about to withdraw, O'Connell made an observation about distilleries. Lord Heytesbury, not condescending to mention him by name, said, that the observation of the gentleman who had spoken was one deserving of much consideration, and one which had not been overlooked by the Government, when it had the matter under discussion; and again began bowing them out, "which," writes one of those present, "was distinctly understood, and the deputation forthwith retired."

Although there is clear evidence in Sir Robert Peel's memoirs of himself, that Lord Heytesbury immediately submitted the views of the deputation to the Cabinet, His Excellency's letter, which no doubt accompanied them, is not given, neither is the address itself; nor does the Premier or Home Secretary discuss these views, or in any way allude to them in subsequent communications. The evidence we have, that they were in the hands of the Cabinet without delay, is contained in a letter of Lord Heytesbury himself, dated 8th of November, given in the Peel Memoirs, the name of its recipient, contrary to his usual practice, being suppressed by Sir Robert Peel. The Lord Lieutenant's address to the deputation was evidently found fault with, at least in one particular, at head quarters—and he is on his defence in this letter. "It is perfectly true" writes His Excellency, "that I did, in my answer to the Lord Mayor, say there was no immediate pressure on the market; but you must not give too wide a meaning to that observation, which had reference merely to his demand that the exportation of grain should be prohibited and the ports immediately thrown open. My meaning was that there was nothing so pressing as to require us to act without waiting for the decision of the responsible advisers of the Crown. But the danger may be upon us before we are aware of its being near; for, as I said in a former letter, the sudden decay of potatoes dug up in an apparently sound state sets all calculation at defiance. Some precautionary measures must be adopted, and adopted promptly, for there is danger in delay."

It is worthy of remark, that the only part of the Viceroy's answer to the deputation, that could weaken the arguments in favour of Free Trade, was his saying, "there was no immediate pressure on the market;" and this was the only part found fault with by the un-named minister to whom the above defence was addressed.

The reception accorded to the deputation was soon known through, the city, and the chief liberal daily journal opened its leader on the subject next morning in this indignant fashion:—"They may starve! Such in spirit, if not in words, was the reply given yesterday by the English Viceroy, to the memorial of the deputation, which, in the name of the Lords and Commons of Ireland, prayed that the food of this kingdom be preserved, lest the people thereof perish."[61]

Meantime the newspapers were filled with accounts of the progress of the disease, with remedies to arrest it, and with suggestions of various kinds for warding off the impending famine. Mr. Campbell Foster, then travelling in Ireland as "Times' Commissioner," made some very sensible suggestions, which, he says, he had obtained during his journeys through the country. (1). He says it was generally agreed, that the potato crop of 1845 was about one-fifth more than the average of other years. This arose partly from the greater breadth of land that had been placed under potato culture, and partly from the unusually abundant produce of the crop. Although he admits the general opinion that, at the time[62] about one-third of the crop was lost, still, if even then the disease could be arrested, his opinion was, that there would be food enough in the country for the wants of the people. "Various plans," he writes, "such as quick lime, layers of ashes, kiln drying, exposure to the air, and ventilation have been suggested, to obtain dryness. Most of these are utterly futile, as beyond the general means and comprehension of the people." He then gives a simple plan of ventilation which was within the reach of every peasant. It was, to make an air passage under the whole length of the potato pit, and to have one or two vent holes, or chimnies, on the surface of it. The next thing to guard against was frost, which always descends perpendicularly. This being the fact, the only thing required was simply a sod to place over the chimney, or vent hole, every night, or when it might be raining hard, to keep the potatoes dry and free from frosting. His second important suggestion was, to save seed for the coming year—a point, strange to say, that was never sufficiently attended to throughout the whole of this calamitous time, though occasionally spoken of. He says truly, that the vitality of the potato being at the top, where the eyes cluster, in preparing to boil the meal of potatoes each day, the tops ought to be out off and preserved for seed. In doing this, carefully and sufficiently, the quantity of the edible portion of the potato lost would be the merest trifle. He might have added, that the top is usually the least nutritious, or "mealy" part of the potato, which would make the loss still less. His third suggestion, he says, he received from a Sligo miller. It was a plan to prevent extortion and high prices, should a famine really come. It consisted in this, that a "nominal subscription" should be entered into by each county, and that a committee of the leading men of each county should be formed, having at their disposal this subscription, should it be found necessary to call it in: that these committees should, each, purchase, as they might deem it expedient, say one thousand tons of oatmeal at the lowest present price, holding this oatmeal over in stores till the next spring or summer, and that then it should be retailed, under proper superintendence by a storekeeper for cash, at a moderate profit, merely sufficient to cover the storeage and salary of the storekeeper: that the committee should raise money for the purchase of the oatmeal by their joint notes, which the banks would at once discount; all sales of the meal to be lodged each day in the bank to the account of the promissory notes outstanding. On winding up the transaction the oatmeal would be at least worth its present value; and if sold at a small profit, enough to cover the expenses, there would be no necessity for calling in any portion of the subscriptions; but should there be a loss on the sale, the proportion to each subscriber, according to the amount of his subscription, would be trifling. One good effect of this plan would be, that these stores would regulate the prices of oatmeal in the market, and would prevent the ruin of the farmers by extortioners and meal-mongers, and insure to them, if they must unfortunately buy food, that food at a reasonable rate. Mr. Foster adds: "These three plans will, if carried out, I feel assured by all that I have seen and heard, insure, first, the arrest of the disease in the potatoes, and the preservation of food for the people; secondly, seed for next year; and lastly, if there should occur the calamity of a famine, there will be a substituted food secured for the people at a reasonable price."

All these suggestions were well worthy of serious and immediate attention when they were written, and although every mode of saving the tuber was, to a great extent, a failure, the mode suggested above was at least as good as any other, and far simpler than most of them. But the third suggestion, about a county organization to keep the food in the country was admirable, practicable, effective; but as the poorer classes, from various causes, could not, and, in some instances, would not carry out any organized plan, the Times' Commissioner warns the Government to look to it. He says: "I am as firmly convinced as that I am now writing to you, such is the general apathy, want of exertion, and feeling of fatality among the people—such their general distrust of everybody, and suspicion of every project—such the disunion among the higher classes, with similar apathetic indifference, that unless the Government steps forward to carry out, to order, to enforce these or similar plans for the national welfare, not any of them will be generally adopted, and nothing will be done. Christmas is approaching, when the potato pits, most of them, will be opened; the poor people will clasp their hands in helpless despair, on seeing their six months' provisions a mass of rottenness; there will be no potatoes for seed next season; a general panic will seize all, and oatmeal for food will be scarcely purchasable by the people at any price. The Goverment, however, have been warned—let them act promptly, decisively, and at once, and not depend on the people helping themselves; for such is the character of the people that they will do nothing till starvation faces them."[63]

Mr. Foster collected his letters on Ireland into a volume in March, 1846, and says, with justice, in a note to the above passage, "the truth of this prediction, in every particular, is now unhappily being verified."

Although Mr. Foster is here, as in several other places throughout his letters on Ireland, unjustly severe upon the people—poor, helpless, unaided, uncared for as they were by those whose sacred duty it was to come to their assistance—still many of his views, as in the present instance, are full of practical good sense. He gave many valuable hints for the amelioration of Irish grievances, and several of his recommendations have been since embodied in Acts of Parliament; but when he says the people will do nothing, are apathetic, and so on, he ought to remember that in such a fearful crisis, combined effort alone is of value. This must come from the leaders of the people. The best army cannot fight without generals, and in this battle against famine the Irish people had no leaders: their natural leaders, the proprietors of the soil, did next to nothing—the Government of the country did next to nothing. The Government alone had the power to combine, to direct, to command; it was called upon from all parts of the country to do so—the Viceroy was waited on—Mr. Foster himself, in the passage quoted above, warned the Government to act, and to act at once, and yet what had it done up to the time he closed his Irish tour? Where was the real, the culpable, the unpardonable apathy?

Mr. Gregory, writing from Coole Park on the 12th of November, says, he cannot get the people to take precautions against the disease. By putting drains under his own pits, and holes in them for ventilation, and throwing turf mould and lime upon them, he says they are still safe. His opinion is, that half the potatoes in his neighbourhood are tainted. The police-sergeant of the Kinvara district makes a return, the result of an examination of fifty-two acres of potatoes in eighteen fields of from one and a-half to seven acres. The least diseased field, one of four acres, had twelve tubers in the hundred diseased. In a field of seven acres, ninety-six in every hundred were diseased, and the average losses in all the fields was seventy per cent. Charles K. O'Hara, Chairman of the Sligo Board of Guardians, writes to the Mansion House Committee: "In many instances the conacre tenants have refused to dig the crops, and are already suffering from want of food." Mr. Crichton, of Somerton, Ballymote, says, the disease in his locality is not so bad as it is elsewhere, but still it is his opinion that many families about him cannot count on having a potato left in January. Mr. Christopher Hamilton, Land Agent, of Leeson Street, writing to the Marquis of Lansdowne, says, he "ascertained by personal inspection that a great proportion of the ordinary food of the people had become useless, and that from the nature of the blight it is impossible to depend on any adequate proportion being saved." Mr. Hamilton praises the submission of the people under the trial.

On the 24th of November, Sir James Murray, M.D., published a remarkable letter, headed "Surgery versus Medicine," in which, I believe, he came as near the immediate cause of the disease as any writer who has dealt with the subject. He attributes it to electrical agency. "During the last season," he writes, "the clouds were charged with excessive electricity, and yet there was little or no thunder to draw off that excess from the atmosphere. In the damp and variable autumn this surcharge of electrical matter was attracted by the moist, succulent, and pointed leaves of the potato." As medicine is found to be useless for the disease, he recommends the use of the knife to cut away the diseased parts, and to keep the sound portions on shelves.

The clergy of every denomination came forward with a zeal and charity worthy of their sacred calling. Out of hundreds of letters written by them, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of making a few extracts. The Rev. Mr. Killen, Rector of Tyrrilla, Co. Down, writes: "This is the famous potato-growing district. One-third of the crop is already affected, both in the pits and those in the ground." The Rev. Mr. M'Keon, of Drumlish, in his letter to the Mansion House Committee, says: "The people must starve in summer, having paid their rents by selling their oats; their rents being rigorously exacted on the Granard and Lorton estates." The Rev. James M'Hall, of Hollymount, Mayo, mentions the startling fact, that a poor man in his neighbourhood having opened a pit, where he had stored six barrels of potatoes, of sixty-four stone each, found he had not one stone of sound potatoes! The Rev. John Stuart, Presbyterian minister in Antrim, declares that fully one-half of the crop is lost in his district. He adds: "Some have tried lime dust, and pits aired with tiles, and in a few days have found a mass of rottenness." The Rev. Mr. Waldron, Parish Priest of Cong, writes, that he had examined the crop in every village in his parish, and reports that more than one-half of it is lost on sound lands, above three-fourths on others. "The panic," he continues, "which at first took the people has lately subsided into silent despair and hopelessness." A Protestant clergyman in Mayo, who had thirty men digging his potatoes, of the species called Peelers, "thinks they did not dig as much sound potatoes as two men would do in a sound year." The Rev. Mr. Cantwell, of Kilfeacle, makes the suggestive announcement that "parents are already counting the potatoes they give their children." The good Rector of Skull, Dr. Robert Traill, writes to Lord Bernard with prophetic grief. "Am I to cry peace, peace, where there is no peace? But what did I find in the islands? the pits, without one single exception in a state of serious decay, and many of the islanders apprehending famine in consequence. Oh, my heart trembles when I think of all that may be before us."

Meantime the accounts of the progress of the disease were every day more disheartening; the Government appeared to do nothing except publish a few reports from those "Scientific men sent over from England," alluded to by the Viceroy in his reply to the deputation of the 3rd of November. The Mansion House Committee met on the 19th of that month and unanimously passed the following resolutions, Lord Cloncurry being in the chair:—

1. "That we feel it an imperative duty to discharge our consciences of all responsibility regarding the undoubtedly approaching calamities, famine and pestilence, throughout Ireland, an approach which is imminent, and almost immediate, and can be obviated only by the most prompt, universal and efficacious measures for procuring food and employment for the people.

2. "That we have ascertained beyond the shadow of doubt, that considerably more than one-third of the entire of the potato crop in Ireland has been already destroyed by the potato disease; and that such disease has not, by any means, ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, it is daily extending more and more; and that no reasonable conjecture can be formed with respect to the limits of its effects, short of the destruction of the entire remaining potato crop.

3. "That our information upon the subject is positive and precise and is derived from persons living in all the counties of Ireland. From persons also of all political opinions and from clergymen of all religious persuasions.

4. "We are thus unfortunately able to proclaim to all the inhabitants of the British Empire, and in the presence of an all-seeing Providence, that in Ireland famine of a most hideous description must be immediate and pressing, and that pestilence of the most frightful kind is certain, and not remote, unless immediately prevented.

5. "That we arraign in the strongest terms, consistent with personal respect to ourselves, the culpable conduct of the present administration, as well in refusing to take any efficacious measure for alleviating the existing calamity with all its approaching hideous and necessary consequences; as also for the positive and unequivocal crime of keeping the ports closed against the importation of foreign provisions, thus either abdicating their duty to the people or their sovereign, whose servants they are, or involving themselves in the enormous guilt of aggravating starvation and famine, by unnaturally keeping up the price of provisions, and doing this for the benefit of a selfish class who derive at the present awful crisis pecuniary advantages to themselves by the maintenance of the oppressive Corn Laws.

6. "That the people of Ireland, in their bitter hours of misfortune, have the strongest right to impeach the criminality of the ministers of the crown, inasmuch as it has pleased a merciful Providence to favour Ireland in the present season with a most abundant crop of oats. Yet, whilst the Irish harbours are closed against the importation of foreign food, they are left open for the exportation of Irish grain, an exportation which has already amounted in the present season to a quantity nearly adequate to feed the entire people of Ireland, and to avert the now certain famine; thus inflicting upon the Irish people the abject misery of having their own provisions carried away to feed others, whilst they themselves are left contemptuously to starve.

7. "That the people of Ireland should particularly arraign the conduct of the ministry in shrinking from their duty, to open the ports for the introduction of provisions by royal proclamation, whilst they have had the inhumanity to postpone the meeting of Parliament to next year.

8. "That we behold in the conduct of the ministry the contemptuous disregard of the lives of the people of Ireland, and that we, therefore, do prepare an address to her Majesty, most humbly praying her Majesty to direct her ministers to adopt without any kind of delay the most extensive and efficacious measures to arrest the progress of famine and pestilence in Ireland.

"Signed,

"JOHN L. ARABIN,

"Lord Mayor of Dublin."

It does not appear that the address to the Queen agreed to by the last resolution was ever presented, which omission is sufficiently accounted for by the resignation of the Peel Cabinet, which occurred a few days afterwards, on the 8th of December.

Not to prolong those extracts, I will here quote an analysis of five hundred letters received by the Mansion House Committee, which was given by the Earl of Mountcashel at a meeting of farmers held in Fermoy, in the county Cork. "I have seen," says his Lordship, "an analysis of five hundred letters received by the Mansion House Committee, made by Mr. Sinnott, the Secretary. Of those, one hundred and ninety-seven have come from clergymen of the Established Church; one hundred and forty-three from Roman Catholic clergymen; thirty from Presbyterian clergymen; one hundred and seven from deputy-lieutenants and magistrates; and the remainder from poor-law guardians and so forth. Taking all these communications together, one hundred and fifty eight calculated upon a loss of less than one-third of the potato crop; one hundred and thirty-five upon the loss of a full third; one hundred and thirty-four, that one-half of the crop was destroyed, and forty apprehended a destruction of more than one-half. With respect to the residue of the crops, there are two hundred and sixteen letters in which no opinion is given, whilst the writers of one hundred and one think that the remainder of the crop may be saved, and one hundred and eighteen are of a contrary opinion. Thus, we have all classes and parties in the country—Protestant and Presbyterian clergymen more numerous than Roman Catholic clergymen—peers, deputy-lieutenants, magistrates, poor-law guardians—all concurring in the main fact, that a vast portion of the food of millions of the people has been destroyed whilst all is uncertainty as to the remainder."

With this information before them and a vast deal more besides, it is not to be wondered at that the Mansion House Committee passed the resolutions given above. A strong protest, indeed, but it came from a body of men who had laboured with energy and diligence from the very first day the Committee was formed. One of the earliest acts of that Committee was to prepare a set of queries, that, through them, they might put themselves in communication with persons of position and intelligence throughout the entire country. The result was that they felt themselves compelled to pass a deliberate censure upon the apathy of the Government; and it will be found, in the course of this narrative, that the want of prompt vigorous action on the part of the Government, more especially at this early stage of the famine, had quite as much to do with that famine as the failure of the potato crop itself.

In November a cessation of the rot was observed in some districts, but in that month the assertion made in the first resolution of the Mansion House Committee, that more than one-third of the potato crop was lost, was not only vouched for by hundreds of most respectable and most trustworthy witnesses, as we have seen, but it was accepted as a truth by every party. Moreover, the Government, whose culpable apathy and delay was denounced on all sides, except by its partizans, was in possession of information on the subject, which made the loss of the potato crop at least one-half instead of one-third. Professors Lindley and Playfair made a report to Sir Robert Peel, bearing date the 15th of November, from which he quoted the following startling passage in his speech on the address, on the 22nd of January, 1846:—"We can come to no other conclusion," they write, "than that one-half of the actual potato crop of Ireland is either destroyed, or remains in a state unfit for the food of man. We, moreover, feel it our duty to apprize you that we fear this to be a low estimate."[64]

Estimating the value of the potato crop of 1845 in Ireland at £18,000,000, not a high estimate, it was now certain that food to the value of £9,000,000 was already lost, yet no answer could be had from the Viceroy or the Premier but the stereotyped one, that the matter was receiving the most serious consideration of the Government. And on they went enquiring when they should have been acting. With the information given by Professors Lindley and Playfair in their hands, they appointed another Commission about this time, which sat in Dublin Castle and was presided over by Mr. Lucas, then Under-Secretary. Its Secretary, Captain Kennedy, applied to the Mansion House Committee for information. That body at once placed its whole correspondence at the disposal of the Commissioners; the Lord Mayor had an interview with Sir Thomas Freemantle, one of them, by whom he was assured that the Government was fully prepared to take such steps as might be found necessary for the protection of the people, when the emergency should arise.

Most people thought it had arisen already.

On the 8th of December, a full fortnight after this interview, a set of queries, similar to those issued months before by the Mansion House Committee, were printed and circulated by the new Commissioners, asking for information that had already come in from every part of the country —even to superabundance.

On the 10th of December the Corporation of Dublin agreed to an address to the Queen, calling her Majesty's attention to the potato blight, and the impending famine consequent upon it. In their address they respectfully bring before her two facts then lately elicited, or rather confirmed, by the Devon Commission—namely, that four millions of the labouring population of Ireland "are more wretched than any people in Europe—their only food the potato, their only drink water." They add, that even these facts do not convey to her Majesty an adequate idea of the destitution by which the Irish people are threatened, or of the numbers who shall suffer by the failure of the potato crop; facts related of the inhabitants of a country which, of late years, may be justly styled the granary of England, exporting annually from the midst of a starving people food of the best kind in sufficient abundance for treble its own inhabitants. They assure her Majesty that fully one-third of their only support for one year is destroyed by the potato blight, which involves a state of destitution for four months of a great majority of her Majesty's Irish subjects. They say, with respectful dignity, that they ask no alms; they only ask for public works of utility; they ask that the national treasury should be "poured out to give employment to the people at remunerative wages." Finally they pray her Majesty to summon Parliament for an early day.

The Corporation did not get an opportunity of presenting their address to the Queen until the 3rd of January following—four-and-twenty days after it was agreed to. This delay, no doubt chiefly arose from the resignation of the Peel ministry on the 5th of December; the failure of Lord John Russell to form a Government, and the consequent return of Sir Robert Peel to office on the 20th of the same month, after a fortnight's interregnum.

In the Queen's reply to the Dublin address she deplores the poverty of a portion of her Irish subjects, their welfare and prosperity being objects of her constant care; she has, she says, ordered precautions to be taken; she has summoned Parliament for an early day, and looks with confidence to the advice she shall receive from the united council of the realm.

The Corporation of London addressed her Majesty on the same occasion, deploring the sufferings and privations of a large portion of her subjects in England, Ireland, and Scotland, which they attributed to "erroneous legislation, which, by excluding the importation of food, and restricting commerce, shuts out from the nation the bounty of Providence." They, therefore prayed that the ports of the kingdom might be opened for the free importation of food. While the Corporation of London did not, we may presume, exclude the peculiar distress of Ireland from their sympathies, their real object in going to Windsor was to make an anti-Corn Law demonstration. So much was this the case, that the deputation consisted of the enormous number of two hundred gentlemen. The Queen's reply to them was hopeful. She said she would "gladly sanction any measure which the legislature might suggest as conducive to the alleviation of this temporary distress, and to the permanent welfare of all classes of her people."

It is a noticeable fact, and one to be deplored, that even the potato blight was made a party question in Ireland. If we except the Protestant and dissenting clergy, and a few philanthropic laymen, the upper classes, especially the Conservatives, remained aloof from the public meetings held to call attention to it, and its threatened consequences. The Mansion House Committee, which did so much good, was composed almost exclusively of Catholics and Liberals; and the same is substantially true of the meetings held throughout the country—in short, the Conservatives regarded, or pretended to regard, those meetings as a new phase of the Repeal agitation. Then, as the distress must chiefly occur amongst the poor Catholics, who were repealers, it was, they assumed, the business of repealers and agitators to look to them and relieve them. The Premier himself was not free from these feelings. In the memorandum which he read to the Cabinet on the 1st of November, amongst many other things, he says: "There will be no hope of contributions from England for the mitigation of this calamity. Monster meetings, the ungrateful return for past kindness, the subscriptions in Ireland to Repeal rent and O'Connell tribute, will have disinclined the charitable here to make any great exertions for Irish relief."[65] There was even, I fear, something behind all this—the old feeling of the English colony in Ireland, that it was no business of theirs to sustain the native race, whose numerical strength they regarded, now as ever, to be a standing threat and danger to themselves.

The sentiments of the leading journals of the Tory party quite coincided with this view. They kept constantly asserting that the ravages of the potato blight were greatly exaggerated; and they eagerly seized on any accidental circumstance that could give them a pretext for supporting this assertion. The chief Dublin Conservative journal, the Evening Mail, on the 3rd of November, writing about the murder of Mr. Clarke, "inclines to believe that the agrarian outrage had its origin in a design to intimidate landlords from demanding their rents, at a season when corn of all kinds is superabundant, and the partial failure of the potato crop gives a pretence for not selling it. And if we recollect," it continues, "that the potato crop of this year far exceeded an average one, and that corn of all kinds is so far abundant, it will be seen that the apprehensions of a famine in that quarter are unfounded, and are merely made the pretence for withholding the payment of rent." Such was the language of a newspaper supposed largely to express landlord feeling in Ireland, and supposed, too, to be the chief organ of the existing Government, represented by Lord Heytesbury.

Later on in the month, a Protestant dignitary, Dean Hoare of Achonry, wrote a letter to the Mansion House Committee, in which, whilst he gave substantially the same views of the potato failure as hundreds of others, he complained in a mild spirit of the people in his locality as being "very slow" to adopt the methods recommended for preserving the potatoes from decay. Another Tory journal of the time, since amalgamated with the former, made this letter the pretence of an attack on the Mansion House Committee, accusing it of withholding Dean Hoare's letter, because it gave a favourable account of the state of the potato crop, and an unfavourable one of the peasantry—charging it with "fraud, trickery and misrepresention," and its members with "associating for factious purposes alone." In reply, it was clearly shown that the Committee did not withhold the Dean's letter, even for an hour, and as clearly shown that the Evening Packet, the journal in question, antedated his letter by a day, in order to sustain its charge of suppression.

The Packet also omitted those portions of the letter which represented the loss of the potato crop as extensive, and which called on the Government to employ the people.[66]

The Freeman's Journal of the 24th of November, in commenting on the way in which its Tory contemporary dealt with Dean Hoare's letter, says: "The Packet, in its last issue, has returned to its appointed task of denying that the failure of the potato crop is so extensive as to demand extraordinary measures on the part of the Government." Although, at the time, this could be nothing more than a bold guess, it is highly probable that the writer of it hit the mark, for in his memoirs, published by his literary executors, Earl Stanhope and Lord Cardwell, we find the Premier, in the middle of October giving this caution to the Lord Lieutenant: "I need not recommend to you the utmost reserve as to the future, I mean as to the possibility of Government interference."[67]

A few days after the Packet had published the above sentiment, the Evening Mail said, "there was a sufficiency—an abundance of sound potatoes in the country for the wants of the people." And it goes on to stimulate farmers to sell their corn, by threats of being forestalled by Dutch and Hanoverian merchants. In the beginning of December, a Tory provincial print, not probably so high as its metropolitan brethren in the confidence of its party, writes: "It may be fairly presumed the losses have been enormous.... We repeat it, and we care not whom it displeases, that there are not now half as many sound potatoes in the country as there were last December." The Editor seemed to feel he was doing a perilous thing in stating a fact which he knew would be displeasing to many of his readers.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] Morning Post, 11th September.

[58] Ipswich Gazette, 9th September.

[59] Cambridge Chronicle for September.

[60] But the disease was not so rapid as this in all cases.

[61] Freeman's Journal, Nov. 4.

[62] The letter is dated Cork, 22nd Nov., 1845

[63] All the italics in the above quotations are Mr. Foster's own.

[64] The last short sentence about the "low estimate" was not quoted by Sir Robert, although it immediately follows the previous one in the portion of the communication given in the Memoirs. Part 3, page 171.

[65] Memoirs, part 3, page 143.

[66] The remedies which Dean Hoare said the people were "slow" to adopt, were proved to be worthless, and in some instances even pernicious. The steward on Mr. Leslie's estate in Monaghan writes that, "The potatoes dug and arranged according to the advice of the Government Commissioners had become diseased and useless." On the very day the Dean's letter was written, there was a meeting of the landlords of Cavan held; and in a Report emanating from that meeting, signed by Lord Farnham, the following passage occurs: "With reference to the potatoes stored with solid substance, or packing stuff, intervening in any form, in pit, on floors, or lofts, the use of packing stuff appears to be highly prejudicial. In the words of an extensive contractor the heap becomes 'a mass of mortar.'" The report adds: "This description includes the plan of pitting recommended by her Majesty's Commissioners, which we strongly deprecate."

[67] Memoirs, part 3, page 123.

CHAPTER III.

Lord Heytesbury and Sir Robert Peel--The Potatoes of last year!--Is there a stock of them?--Sir R. Peel and Free Trade--Strength of his Cabinet--Mr. Cobden proposes a Committee of Inquiry--His speech--Its effect--Committee refused--D'Israeli's attack on Sir R. Peel (note.)--Sir Robert puts forward the Potato Blight as the cause for repealing the Corn Laws--The extent of the Failure not exaggerated--Sir James Graham and Sir R. Peel--Appointment of Drs. Lindley and Playfair to investigate the Blight--Sir R. Peel announces that he is a convert to the repeal of the Corn Laws--States his views, but does not reason on them--The Quarterly Review--Special Commissioners--Mr. Butler's letter--Sir James Graham and the Premier--Proceeding by Proclamation instead of by Order in Council--Sir James's sharp reply--Agitation to stop distillation--County Meetings proposed by the Lord Lieutenant--Cabinet Council--The Premier puts his views before it in a memorandum--The Corn Laws--Some of the Cabinet displeased with his views--On the 6th November he submits another memorandum to the Cabinet--Lord Stanley dissents from the Premier's views--The Cabinet meet again next day and he concludes the memorandum--On the 29th November he sends to each of his colleagues a more detailed exposition of his views--Several reply--Another Mem. brought before them on the 2nd December--The Cabinet in permanent session--On the 5th of December Sir Robert resigns--Lord John Russell fails to form a Government--The old Cabinet again in power--Mr. Gladstone replaces Lord Stanley.

As stated in the last chapter, the deputation that waited on the Lord Lieutenant was superciliously bowed out, the moment his Excellency had finished the reading of his reply; so that the usual courtesy extended to such bodies, of having some conversation and friendly discussion on the subject of the address, was denied to the noblemen and gentlemen who presented themselves at the Viceregal Lodge on the 3rd of November. Yet, more than a fortnight previously, Lord Heytesbury had written to the Premier, expressing great concern at the accounts daily received of the blight. "The reports," he writes, "continue to be of a very alarming nature, and leave no doubt upon the mind but that the potato crops have failed almost everywhere."[68] This admission he took care not to make to the deputation, although its truth had not only been verified but strengthened by the accounts which he continued to receive between the date of the letter and the 3rd of November. In the Premier's communication, to which Lord Heytesbury was replying, are, amongst others, the following queries:—"At what period would the pressure be felt? Would it be immediate, if the reports of the full extent of the evil are confirmed, or, is there a stock of old potatoes sufficient to last for a certain time?" The Viceroy replies, that he is assured, "there is no stock whatever of last year's potatoes in the country." That is, in the middle of October, 1845, no stock of the potatoes grown in 1844 had remained! Such was the knowledge which the Premier of England (once an Irish Secretary), and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland possessed of the nature and constitution of the potato!

One of Sir Robert Peel's biographers, evidently a great admirer of his, says of him that he was a freetrader in principle long before 1845[69]; whilst his enemies assert, that having been placed by the Tory party at the head of a Protectionist Government, he betrayed that party and suddenly threw himself into the arms of the Corn Law League. Neither of these views appears to be quite correct. The common, and it would seem, the more accurate opinion about him is, that he was a politician by profession—a man of expediency—and that on the question of the Corn Laws he did no more than he had previously done with regard to Catholic emancipation,—followed the current of public opinion, which he always watched with the most anxious care,—and turning round, carried through Parliament a measure which he had long and strenuously opposed. There was, to be sure, this difference in his conduct with regard to those two great measures, that, whilst up to the time he undertook, in conjunction with the Duke of Wellington, to free the Catholics, he never advocated their claims, on the other hand, he had been twice a party to modifications of the Corn Laws, first in 1828, and secondly in 1842. In the latter year he, cautiously indeed, but not unsubstantially, legislated in the direction of free trade.

He became First Lord of the Treasury in August, 1841, and soon afterwards brought before the Cabinet the question of the duties on the importation of food, more especially of corn. He recommended his colleagues to make the revision of those duties a Cabinet question; and he further submitted "a proposal in respect to the extent to which such revision should be carried, and to the details of the new law."[70] A bill founded on his views was passed in the Parliament of 1842, "providing for a material diminution in the amount of the import duties on the several kinds of foreign grain." But these changes did not satisfy the Corn Law Leaguers, who sought complete repeal; but they had the effect of alarming the Premier's Tory supporters, and led to the resignation of one Cabinet Minister—the Duke of Buckingham. His partizans endeavoured to obtain from him a guarantee that this Corn Law of 1842 should, as far as he was concerned, be a final measure; but, although he tells us, that he did not then contemplate the necessity for further change, he uniformly refused to fetter either the Government or himself by such an assurance. Yet, in proposing the introduction of the tariff in 1842, he seems to have foreshadowed future and still more liberal legislation on the subject. "I know that many gentlemen," he said, "who are strong advocates for free trade may consider that I have not gone far enough. I know that. I believe that on the general principle of freetrade there is now no great difference of opinion; and that all agree in the general rule, that we should purchase in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest."

The opposition, more especially the freetraders, received this sentiment with rapturous applause, so the adroit statesman added: "I know the meaning of those cheers. I do not now wish to raise a discussion on the Corn Laws or the Sugar duties, which (I contend) are exceptions from the general rule."[71] His exceptions were futile, because they were illogical, which of course he must have known; they were therefore only meant to reassure, to some extent, the affrighted Protectionist gentlemen behind him.

The anti-Corn Law League, not accepting the concessions made in 1842 as final, continued to agitate and insist upon total repeal. They held meetings, made able speeches, published pamphlets, delivered lectures, and continued to keep before the English public the iniquity, as they said, of those laws which compelled the English artizan to eat dear bread. Sir Robert, as a politician and statesman, watched the progress of this agitation, as also the effect of the changes made in 1842; and he tells us he was gradually weakened in his views as to the protection of British grown corn. "The progress of discussion," he says, "had made a material change in the opinions of many persons with regard to the policy of protection to domestic agriculture, and the extent to which that policy should be carried;"[72] while the success of the changes made in 1842, falsifying, as they did, all the prophecies of the Protectionists, tended further to shake his confidence in the necessity of maintaining those laws.

Since its formation in August, 1841, Sir Robert Peel's Government had continued to carry its measures through Parliament with overwhelming majorities; still the question of free trade was making rapid progress throughout the country, especially in the great towns, the anti-Corn Law League had become a power, and thoughtful men began to see that the principle it embodied could not be long resisted in a commercial nation like England. The Parliamentary Session of 1845 opened with an attempt, on the part of Lord John Russell, the leader of the Opposition, to compel the Government to declare its policy on free trade. Sir Robert Peel was silent, probably because, at the moment, he had no fixed policy about it; or, if he had, he was not the man to declare it at an inconvenient time. Great agricultural distress prevailed, a fact admitted by both sides of the House: the Protectionist members maintained that it was caused by the concessions already made to free trade, the free traders, on the contrary, held it to be the result of the continuance of absurd protective duties. Meantime, Mr. Cobden came forward with a proposal, which, unless agreed to must necessarily put the Protectionists in the wrong. He asked for a Committee of Inquiry into the causes of this distress, before which he undertook to prove that it was caused by the Corn Laws. For some time it had been whispered abroad that Sir Robert Peel was fast inclining to freetrade, and only looked to the country for sufficient support to justify him in declaring his views openly: the leading members of the League were not slow to make use of those rumours: and, in his strikingly able speech, calling for the Committee, Mr. Cobden more than hinted that the Premier, although not yet a free trader before the country, was one at least in heart. "There are politicians in the House," said he, "men who look with an ambition—probably a justifiable one—to the honors of office; there may be men who—with thirty years continuous service, having been pressed into a groove from which they can neither escape nor retreat—may be holding office, and high office: maintained there probably at the expense of their present convictions which do not harmonize very well with their early opinions. I make allowances for them; but the great body of honorable gentlemen opposite came up to this House, not as politicians, but as the farmer's friends, and protectors of the agricultural interests. Well! what do you propose to do? You have heard the Prime Minister declare that, if he could restore all the protection which you have had, that protection would not benefit the agriculturists. Is that your belief? If so, why not proclaim it; but if it is not your conviction, you will have falsified your mission in this House by following the right hon. baronet into the lobby, and opposing inquiry into the condition of the very men who sent you here. I have no hesitation in telling you, that if you give me a Committee of this House I will explode the delusion of agricultural protection. I will bring forward such a mass of evidence, and give you such a preponderance of talent and of authority, that when the Blue Book is published and sent forth to the world your system of protection shall not live in the public opinion for two years afterwards." And again he said with irresistible logic: "I ask you to go into this Committee with me. I will give you a majority of county members. I ask you only to go into a fair inquiry as to the causes of the distress of your own population. Whether you establish my principle or your own, good will come out of the inquiry; and I do therefore beg and entreat you not to refuse it."

The effect of this speech in the House and throughout the country was very great. The anti-Corn Law League printed it by the million and scattered it broad-cast over the land; it was even said that it had no inconsiderable effect on Sir Robert Peel himself, and many of his friends believed that Mr. Cobden exercised, on the occasion, "a real influence over him." The Premier refused the Committee, but remained silent; Sidney Herbert it was whom his chief entrusted with the arduous duty of replying to the great Leaguer. In the course of his speech he said, "it would be distasteful to the agriculturists to come whining to Parliament at every period of temporary distress; but in adverse circumstances they would meet them manfully, and put their shoulder to the wheel."[73]

On the 9th of August the Parliamentary Session of 1845 closed, leaving Sir Robert Peel still at the head of that imposing majority which had sustained him since 1841. Not long after commenced those gloomy reports of potato blight which continued to increase, until the fact was placed beyond the possibility of doubt.

It was not originally Sir Robert Peel's desire to propose a repeal of the Corn Laws in the session of 1846; he would have much preferred the postponement of the question for a year or so, in order to prepare the public mind for his altered opinions; besides, he not unreasonably hoped that the success of the changes of 1842 would have so enlightened his party as to induce them to accept further and greater changes in the commercial tariff. Meantime, he could be feeling his way with them by the aid of trusted friends, and be making them, in various ways, familiar with the new sacrifices he was about to require at their hands. Hence, the potato blight was, in more senses than one, an untoward event for himself and his Cabinet, since it hurried him into the doing of that, which he hoped to have done without giving any very violent shock to the opinions or prejudices of his Tory supporters.

Sir Robert, if not a man of great forecast or intuition, was certainly one to make the most of circumstances as they arose, provided he had time for reflection. When the news of the potato failure in Ireland became an alarming fact, he recast his plan, and put that failure foremost amongst his reasons for repealing the Corn Laws; in fact, in his own adroit way he left it to be understood, that this was the immediate and urgent cause for dealing with the question—nay more, that the real, the only question he was dealing with was the potato blight, and the threatened famine in Ireland; and that, in anxiously seeking for an adequate remedy for such terrible evils, he could find but one—the total repeal of the Corn Laws. Some in his own Cabinet, and numbers of thoughtful people throughout the country, saw a variety of plans for meeting the failure distinct from such repeal; very many even, so far from regarding it as a remedy against Irish famine, considered it would be a positive injury to this country, under existing circumstances; but Sir Robert Peel, with that charming frankness and simplicity, the assumption of which had become a second nature to him, could see but one remedy for poor Ireland—a repeal of the Corn Laws. Others, which were hinted to him by some of his colleagues, he dexterously avoids discussing, and only repeats his own great conviction—repeal the Corn Laws and save poor, famine-threatened Ireland.

From the end of August to the beginning of October several communications passed between the Premier and Sir James Graham, relative to the failure of the potato. During that period the accounts were very varied, partly from the disease not having made very much progress, and partly because there was not as yet sufficient time to examine the crop with care; but a perusal of the correspondence which reached the Government, so far as it is given in Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs, and his speeches in Parliament, prove that the accounts in newspapers, and above all in letters received and published by the Mansion House Committee, did not overstate the failure, but rather the reverse—this fact is more especially evident from the joint letter of Professors Lindley and Playfair already quoted.

Of all the ministers, Sir James Graham seems to have had the greatest share of the Premier's confidence; Sir Robert thus writes to him from Whitehall on the 13th of October:—"The accounts of the state of the potato crop in Ireland are becoming very alarming. I enclose letters which have very recently reached me. Lord Heytesbury says that the reports which reach the Irish Government are very unsatisfactory. I presume that if the worst should happen which is predicted, the pressure would not be immediate. There is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in Irish reports, that delay in acting upon them is always desirable; but I foresee the necessity that may be imposed upon us at an early period of considering whether there is not that well grounded apprehension of actual scarcity that justifies and compels the adoption of every means of relief which the exercise of the prerogative or legislation might afford. I have no confidence in such remedies as the prohibition of exports or the stoppage of distilleries. The removal of the impediments to import is the only effectual remedy."

Sir James Graham wrote to the Premier from Netherby on the same day enclosing a communication from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, which is not given in the Peel Memoirs, but which Sir James says, "conveys information of the most serious kind, which requires immediate attention." He goes on to give it as his opinion that the time had come when speculation was reduced to certainty, as the potatoes were being taken out of the ground; it was therefore the duty of the Government to apply their attention without delay to measures for the mitigation of this national calamity. He refers to Belgium and Holland, and says it is desirable to know, without loss of time, what has been done by our Continental neighbours in similar circumstances. Indian corn might, of course, he says, be obtained on cheap terms, "if the people would eat it," but unfortunately it is an acquired taste. He thinks the summoning of Parliament in November a better course than the opening of the ports by an Order in Council.[74] On receipt of the above Sir Robert again wrote to the Home Secretary: "My letter on the awful question of the potato crop will have crossed yours to me. Interference with the due course of the law respecting the supply of food is so momentous and so lasting in its consequences, that we must not act without the most accurate information. I fear the worst. I have written to the Duke also."

It was about this time that the Premier appointed Drs. Lindley and Playfair to come to Ireland for the purpose of investigating the causes of the blight, and if possible to apply remedies. He summoned the latter to Drayton Manor before leaving, and both were struck by the very short time in which the blight rendered the potato worthless for food. Sir Robert says to Sir James Graham on the 18th of October: "We have examined here various potatoes that have been affected; and witnessing the rapidity of decay, and the necessity of immediate action, I have not hesitated to interrupt Playfair's present occupation, and to direct his attention to this still more pressing matter."[75] Two days later Sir James sends his chief a desponding letter in reply, and, with much good sense, says he is not sanguine about any chemical process, within the reach of the peasantry, arresting the decay in tubers already affected; besides the rainfall continues so great that, independently of disease, he feels the potatoes must rot in the ground from the wet, unless on very dry lands. He then mentions a matter of the utmost consequence which had not been alluded to before. "There are many points," he says, on which a scientific inquiry may be most useful, "particularly the vital one with respect to the seed for next year."[76]

In his letter of the 13th of October, given above, the Premier opened his mind to his friend, the Home Secretary, that he was a convert to the repeal of the Corn Laws, but even to him he put forward the potato blight in Ireland as the cause. Some days afterwards, in a very carefully worded letter to Lord Heytesbury, he introduces the same business. "The accounts from Ireland of the potato crop, confirmed as they are by your high authority," says Sir Robert, "are very alarming, and it is the duty of the Government to seek a remedy for the 'great evil.'" Of course it was, and he had made up his mind to apply one which he knew was distasteful to most of his colleagues; but time was pressing, and he must bring it forward, so making a clean breast of it, he states his remedy in a bold clear sentence to the Protectionist Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. "The remedy," he writes, "is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food—that is the total and absolute repeal for ever of all duties on all articles of subsistence."[77] Sir Robert Peel seldom penned so clear a sentence, but its very clearness had an object, for he seems to desire to shut out discussion on any of the other remedies which were put forward in Ireland. He then goes on to join the temporary relief of Irish distress with the permanent arrangement of the Corn Law question. "You might," he says, "remit nominally for one year; but who will re-establish the Corn Laws once abrogated, though from a casual and temporary pressure? I have good ground therefore for stating that the application of a temporary remedy to a temporary evil does in this particular case involve considerations of the utmost and most lasting importance."

These passages were indited by a minister who, coolly, and without any sufficient authority whatever, assumed that there was no other remedy for the failure of the potato crop in Ireland but a repeal of the Corn Laws, and that it was the remedy the Irish public were calling for, to meet the threatened danger. And yet so far from this being the case, it was never propounded by any one as a principal remedy at all. What the Irish public thought about the impending famine, and what they said about it was, that the oat crop was unusually fine and more than sufficient to feed the whole population, and that it should be kept in the country for that purpose. A most obvious remedy; but the Premier had other plans in his head, and could not see this one, because he would not. Like Nelson on a memorable occasion, he persisted in keeping his telescope to the eye that suited his own purpose. He does not condescend to give a reason for his views, he only expresses them. He had no confidence in the old-fashioned remedy of keeping the food in the country, but he did put his trust in the remedy of sending 3,000 miles for Indian corn—a food which, he elsewhere admits he fears the Irish cannot be induced to use. He thought it quite right, and in accordance with political science, to allow, or rather to compel Ireland, threatened with famine, to sell her last loaf and then go to America to buy maize, the preparation of which, she did not understand. Political economists will hardly deny that people ought not to sell what they require for themselves—that they should only part with surplus food. But to sell wheat and oats, and oatmeal and flour with one hand and buy Indian corn with the other to avoid starvation could be hardly regarded as the act of a sane man. "There had been—it was hinted, and we believe truly, in Lord John Russell's letter from Edinburgh—some talk in the Cabinet, and there was some discussion in the press, about opening the Irish ports by proclamation. Opening the Irish ports! Why the real remedy, had any interference with the law been necessary, would have been to close them—the torrent of food was running outwards."[78] So did the leading Tory periodical put this obvious truth some months later.

The Viceroy, replying to the Premier's letter on the 17th of October, says he is deeply impressed with the extent and alarming nature of the failure of the potato crop, and has no doubt on his mind that it is general. The Premier had, sometime before, suggested Special Commissioners to collect information, but the Lord Lieutenant does not think they would be able to collect more accurate information than that already furnished by the county inspectors. He suggests that when the potato digging is more advanced it would be well to move the Lieutenants of counties to call meetings of the resident landholders, with a view of ascertaining the amount of the evil, and their opinion of the measures most proper to be adopted. He sees no objection to such a course, though he dutifully adds that the Premier may.

There could be no objection whatever to such a course. It was, so far as it went, the right course, because it would have called upon the proprietors of the soil to discharge the duties of their position, and to take counsel as to the best mode of doing it. In his after correspondence with Lord Heytesbury the Premier never alluded to this suggestion in any way! Of course it fell to the ground.

On the 19th of October, Mr. Buller, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, wrote to Sir Robert Peel that he was after making the tour of several of the counties of the Province of Connaught, and the result was, that he found the potato crop affected in localities where people thought the blight had not reached. Mr. Buller's was a private letter to the Premier in anticipation of a more formal report from the Society, because, as he says, he "did not wish a moment to elapse" before informing him of the extent of the fearful malady, in order that no time should be lost, in adopting the necessary measures of precaution and relief for Ireland. He concludes by announcing, that a panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembers since the cholera; which panic, he thinks, will go on increasing as the extent of the failure becomes better known.

Subordinates like Lord Heytesbury and Sir James Graham, writing to their chief can only hint their views. Both did so more than once with regard to the immediate action to be taken in securing food for the Irish people, to replace the potatoes destroyed by the blight. In one of the Viceroy's letters to the Premier, he quotes some precedents of what had been done in former years by proclamation in Ireland, especially referring to proclamations issued by Lord Cornwallis in 1800-1. He also refers to some Acts of Parliament, no longer, however, in force. Sir James Graham writing some days later to the Premier, says: "The precedents for proceeding by proclamation from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and not by Order in Council, are directly in point;" adding of course that such proclamations should be followed by an Act of Indemnity. Surely, anybody can see, that for a Government to meet an extraordinary evil by an extraordinary remedy, would not only be sanctioned by an Act of Indemnity, but would be certain to receive the warm approval of Parliament.

Sir Robert Peel wanted neither county meetings nor proclamations; so, writing to Sir James Graham on the 22nd of October, he says,—all but misstating Lord Heytesbury's views on proclamations:—"Lord Heytesbury, from his occasional remarks on proclamations, seems to labour under an impression that there is a constitutional right to issue them. Now there is absolutely none. There is no more abstract right to prohibit the export of a potato than to command any other violation of law. Governments have assumed, and will assume, in extreme cases, unconstitutional power, and will trust to the good sense of the people, convinced by the necessity to obey the proclamation, and to Parliament to indemnify the issuers. The proclamations to which Lord Heytesbury refers may be useful as precedents, but they leave the matter where they found it in point of law; they give no sort of authority. I have a strong impression that we shall do more harm than good by controlling the free action of the people in respect to the legal export of these commodities, or the legal use of them."[79]

The above passage naturally drew from Sir James Graham the following remarks: "I enclose another letter from the Lord Lieutenant, giving a worse account of the potato crop as the digging advances, but stating that we are as yet unacquainted with the full extent of the mischief. I think that Lord Heytesbury is aware that the issue of proclamations is the exercise of a power beyond the law, which requires subsequent indemnity, and has not the force of law. The precedents which he cites illustrate this known truth; yet proclamations remitting duties, backed by an order of the Custom-house not to levy, are very effective measures, though the responsibility which attaches to their adoption is most onerous, especially when Parliament may be readily called together."[80]

Some days later the Lord Lieutenant announced to the Premier that Professors Lindley and Playfair had arrived in Dublin, and also gave a set of queries which he had placed in their hands—all very useful, but one of special importance—"What means can be adopted for securing seed potatoes for next year?" This communication contained the following passage:—"There is a great cry for the prohibition of exportation, particularly of oats. With regard to potatoes, it seems to be pretty generally admitted that to prohibit the exportation of so perishable a produce would be a very doubtful advantage. Towards the end of next week we shall know, I presume, the result of the deliberations of her Majesty's Government; and as by that time the digging will be sufficiently advanced to enable us to guess at the probable result of the harvest, I shall then intimate to the several Lieutenants the propriety of calling county meetings, unless I should hear from you that you disapprove of such proceedings. The danger of such meetings is in the remedies they may suggest, and the various subjects they may embrace in their discussions, wholly foreign to the question before them."[81] Three days later (Oct. 27) he again writes to the Premier: "Everything is rising rapidly in price, and the people begin to show symptoms of discontent which may ripen into something worse. Should I be authorized in issuing a proclamation prohibiting distillation from grain? This is demanded on all sides." There is no reply to this letter given by Sir Robert Peel in his Memoirs, and yet he must have written one. He certainly wrote to the Lord Lieutenant between the 3rd and the 8th of November; for the Mansion House deputation was received at the Viceregal Lodge on the 3rd, and we find the Viceroy in a letter to the Premier on the 8th explaining what he had said to the deputation on the 3rd; so that the Premier must, in the meantime, have put him on his defence; "it is perfectly true," writes Lord Heytesbury, "that I did, in my answer to the Lord Mayor, say there was no immediate pressure in the market; but you must not give too wide a meaning to that observation, which had reference merely to his demand that the exportation of grain should be prohibited and the ports immediately thrown open." But neither this passage, nor anything in the subsequent part of the letter, sufficiently explains what he had written eleven days before, namely, that everything was rising rapidly in price.