The peasantry there were in an awful
condition. In many cases they had not even a rotten potato left. They
have consumed even the seed potatoes, unable any longer to resist the
pangs of hunger." The Rev. Mr. Doyle, of Graig, in the county Kilkenny,
writing on the 13th of April, says, he had made a visitation of his
parish and found five hundred and eighty-three distressed families,
comprising two thousand seven hundred and thirty individuals; of this
number fifty-one had constant employment, two hundred and seventy none
at all; the rest got occasional work; three-fourths of the whole had not
three days' provisions. Sir Lucius O'Brien, (afterwards Lord Inchiquin),
as Chairman of the Ennis Board of Guardians, took occasion to remark,
"on the heartlessness of some of the Dublin papers, when speaking of the
famine." "Everyone acquainted with the country, knew," he said, "that at
this moment the people are in many places starving."[95]
The people assembled in considerable numbers in parts of the South
calling for food or employment. A man died of starvation on the public
works in Limerick. At a meeting in Newry for the purpose of taking
measures against the scarcity, and whilst some were denying its
existence in that locality, the Right Rev.
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