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.
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