It was about this time that the Premier appointed Drs. Lindley and Playfair to come to Ireland for the purpose of investigating the causes of the blight, and if possible to apply remedies. He summoned the latter to Drayton Manor before leaving, and both were struck by the very short time in which the blight rendered the potato worthless for food. Sir Robert says to Sir James Graham on the 18th of October: "We have examined here various potatoes that have been affected; and witnessing the rapidity of decay, and the necessity of immediate action, I have not hesitated to interrupt Playfair's present occupation, and to direct his attention to this still more pressing matter."[75] Two days later Sir James sends his chief a desponding letter in reply, and, with much good sense, says he is not sanguine about any chemical process, within the reach of the peasantry, arresting the decay in tubers already affected; besides the rainfall continues so great that, independently of disease, he feels the potatoes must rot in the ground from the wet, unless on very dry lands. He then mentions a matter of the utmost consequence which had not been alluded to before. "There are many points," he says, on which a scientific inquiry may be most useful, "particularly the vital one with respect to the seed for next year."[76]
In his letter of the 13th of October, given above, the Premier opened his mind to his friend, the Home Secretary, that he was a convert to the repeal of the Corn Laws, but even to him he put forward the potato blight in Ireland as the cause. Some days afterwards, in a very carefully worded letter to Lord Heytesbury, he introduces the same business. "The accounts from Ireland of the potato crop, confirmed as they are by your high authority," says Sir Robert, "are very alarming, and it is the duty of the Government to seek a remedy for the 'great evil.'" Of course it was, and he had made up his mind to apply one which he knew was distasteful to most of his colleagues; but time was pressing, and he must bring it forward, so making a clean breast of it, he states his remedy in a bold clear sentence to the Protectionist Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. "The remedy," he writes, "is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food—that is the total and absolute repeal for ever of all duties on all articles of subsistence."[77] Sir Robert Peel seldom penned so clear a sentence, but its very clearness had an object, for he seems to desire to shut out discussion on any of the other remedies which were put forward in Ireland. He then goes on to join the temporary relief of Irish distress with the permanent arrangement of the Corn Law question. "You might," he says, "remit nominally for one year; but who will re-establish the Corn Laws once abrogated, though from a casual and temporary pressure? I have good ground therefore for stating that the application of a temporary remedy to a temporary evil does in this particular case involve considerations of the utmost and most lasting importance."
These passages were indited by a minister who, coolly, and without any sufficient authority whatever, assumed that there was no other remedy for the failure of the potato crop in Ireland but a repeal of the Corn Laws, and that it was the remedy the Irish public were calling for, to meet the threatened danger. And yet so far from this being the case, it was never propounded by any one as a principal remedy at all. What the Irish public thought about the impending famine, and what they said about it was, that the oat crop was unusually fine and more than sufficient to feed the whole population, and that it should be kept in the country for that purpose. A most obvious remedy; but the Premier had other plans in his head, and could not see this one, because he would not. Like Nelson on a memorable occasion, he persisted in keeping his telescope to the eye that suited his own purpose. He does not condescend to give a reason for his views, he only expresses them. He had no confidence in the old-fashioned remedy of keeping the food in the country, but he did put his trust in the remedy of sending 3,000 miles for Indian corn—a food which, he elsewhere admits he fears the Irish cannot be induced to use. He thought it quite right, and in accordance with political science, to allow, or rather to compel Ireland, threatened with famine, to sell her last loaf and then go to America to buy maize, the preparation of which, she did not understand. Political economists will hardly deny that people ought not to sell what they require for themselves—that they should only part with surplus food. But to sell wheat and oats, and oatmeal and flour with one hand and buy Indian corn with the other to avoid starvation could be hardly regarded as the act of a sane man. "There had been—it was hinted, and we believe truly, in Lord John Russell's letter from Edinburgh—some talk in the Cabinet, and there was some discussion in the press, about opening the Irish ports by proclamation. Opening the Irish ports! Why the real remedy, had any interference with the law been necessary, would have been to close them—the torrent of food was running outwards."[78] So did the leading Tory periodical put this obvious truth some months later.
The Viceroy, replying to the Premier's letter on the 17th of October, says he is deeply impressed with the extent and alarming nature of the failure of the potato crop, and has no doubt on his mind that it is general. The Premier had, sometime before, suggested Special Commissioners to collect information, but the Lord Lieutenant does not think they would be able to collect more accurate information than that already furnished by the county inspectors. He suggests that when the potato digging is more advanced it would be well to move the Lieutenants of counties to call meetings of the resident landholders, with a view of ascertaining the amount of the evil, and their opinion of the measures most proper to be adopted. He sees no objection to such a course, though he dutifully adds that the Premier may.
There could be no objection whatever to such a course. It was, so far as it went, the right course, because it would have called upon the proprietors of the soil to discharge the duties of their position, and to take counsel as to the best mode of doing it. In his after correspondence with Lord Heytesbury the Premier never alluded to this suggestion in any way! Of course it fell to the ground.
On the 19th of October, Mr. Buller, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, wrote to Sir Robert Peel that he was after making the tour of several of the counties of the Province of Connaught, and the result was, that he found the potato crop affected in localities where people thought the blight had not reached. Mr. Buller's was a private letter to the Premier in anticipation of a more formal report from the Society, because, as he says, he "did not wish a moment to elapse" before informing him of the extent of the fearful malady, in order that no time should be lost, in adopting the necessary measures of precaution and relief for Ireland. He concludes by announcing, that a panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembers since the cholera; which panic, he thinks, will go on increasing as the extent of the failure becomes better known.
Subordinates like Lord Heytesbury and Sir James Graham, writing to their chief can only hint their views. Both did so more than once with regard to the immediate action to be taken in securing food for the Irish people, to replace the potatoes destroyed by the blight. In one of the Viceroy's letters to the Premier, he quotes some precedents of what had been done in former years by proclamation in Ireland, especially referring to proclamations issued by Lord Cornwallis in 1800-1. He also refers to some Acts of Parliament, no longer, however, in force. Sir James Graham writing some days later to the Premier, says: "The precedents for proceeding by proclamation from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and not by Order in Council, are directly in point;" adding of course that such proclamations should be followed by an Act of Indemnity. Surely, anybody can see, that for a Government to meet an extraordinary evil by an extraordinary remedy, would not only be sanctioned by an Act of Indemnity, but would be certain to receive the warm approval of Parliament.
Sir Robert Peel wanted neither county meetings nor proclamations; so, writing to Sir James Graham on the 22nd of October, he says,—all but misstating Lord Heytesbury's views on proclamations:—"Lord Heytesbury, from his occasional remarks on proclamations, seems to labour under an impression that there is a constitutional right to issue them. Now there is absolutely none. There is no more abstract right to prohibit the export of a potato than to command any other violation of law. Governments have assumed, and will assume, in extreme cases, unconstitutional power, and will trust to the good sense of the people, convinced by the necessity to obey the proclamation, and to Parliament to indemnify the issuers. The proclamations to which Lord Heytesbury refers may be useful as precedents, but they leave the matter where they found it in point of law; they give no sort of authority. I have a strong impression that we shall do more harm than good by controlling the free action of the people in respect to the legal export of these commodities, or the legal use of them."[79]
The above passage naturally drew from Sir James Graham the following remarks: "I enclose another letter from the Lord Lieutenant, giving a worse account of the potato crop as the digging advances, but stating that we are as yet unacquainted with the full extent of the mischief. I think that Lord Heytesbury is aware that the issue of proclamations is the exercise of a power beyond the law, which requires subsequent indemnity, and has not the force of law. The precedents which he cites illustrate this known truth; yet proclamations remitting duties, backed by an order of the Custom-house not to levy, are very effective measures, though the responsibility which attaches to their adoption is most onerous, especially when Parliament may be readily called together."[80]
Some days later the Lord Lieutenant announced to the Premier that Professors Lindley and Playfair had arrived in Dublin, and also gave a set of queries which he had placed in their hands—all very useful, but one of special importance—"What means can be adopted for securing seed potatoes for next year?" This communication contained the following passage:—"There is a great cry for the prohibition of exportation, particularly of oats. With regard to potatoes, it seems to be pretty generally admitted that to prohibit the exportation of so perishable a produce would be a very doubtful advantage. Towards the end of next week we shall know, I presume, the result of the deliberations of her Majesty's Government; and as by that time the digging will be sufficiently advanced to enable us to guess at the probable result of the harvest, I shall then intimate to the several Lieutenants the propriety of calling county meetings, unless I should hear from you that you disapprove of such proceedings. The danger of such meetings is in the remedies they may suggest, and the various subjects they may embrace in their discussions, wholly foreign to the question before them."[81] Three days later (Oct. 27) he again writes to the Premier: "Everything is rising rapidly in price, and the people begin to show symptoms of discontent which may ripen into something worse. Should I be authorized in issuing a proclamation prohibiting distillation from grain? This is demanded on all sides." There is no reply to this letter given by Sir Robert Peel in his Memoirs, and yet he must have written one. He certainly wrote to the Lord Lieutenant between the 3rd and the 8th of November; for the Mansion House deputation was received at the Viceregal Lodge on the 3rd, and we find the Viceroy in a letter to the Premier on the 8th explaining what he had said to the deputation on the 3rd; so that the Premier must, in the meantime, have put him on his defence; "it is perfectly true," writes Lord Heytesbury, "that I did, in my answer to the Lord Mayor, say there was no immediate pressure in 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." But neither this passage, nor anything in the subsequent part of the letter, sufficiently explains what he had written eleven days before, namely, that everything was rising rapidly in price.