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.
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