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 L100,000 "for the employment of the poor in Ireland, and other purposes relating thereto, as the exigency of affairs may require." And in July, L200,000, "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 L304,180 17s. 6d., of which L44,177 9s. was raised in Ireland. The Dublin Mansion House Committee collected L30,406 11s. 4-1/2d. Thus, the whole sum from charitable collections was L334,587 8s. 10-1/2d., of which L74,584, Os. 4-1/2d. was raised in Ireland. This, with the grant of L300,000 from Government, makes a grand total of L634,587 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 L60,000, 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 L627,769 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 L650,763.

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 L30 to L40 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," &c—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 L20 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 L110 to be distributed in Roscommon; Lady Betty Brownlow, then abroad, sent home L440 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 L50 to his tenants; Dean Swift gave L10 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 L300 or L400 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 L6,000. 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 L60,000 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. Mariae. C. Primum hujus Ecclesiae lapidem posuit Johannes Sweetman, Armiger. Memoriale hoc grati animi restitutae Catholicae Libertatis Georgio tertio Regum optimo, annuente Parliamento ac toto populo acclamante, Dedicat Patriae Pietas. Anno supradictae 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, L74,000 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 L74,000 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."