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.