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.
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