Then down the hill he slowly went, etc.
[106] The author was present at the two days' discussion. As Smith O'Brien, on leaving, went towards the door, several persons seizing him by the hands and arms, said to him, in a spirit of earnest, but friendly appeal—"Sure you are not going away, Sir. O'Brien?" He only answered by a determined shake of his head, and moved on. For some time after the departure of Smith O'Brien and his supporters silent depression reigned in the Hall. John Augustus O'Neill, in an eloquent speech, endeavoured to put the meeting in good spirits again, but with very limited success. Every one seemed to feel that a great calamity had occurred. O'Brien and Mitchel spoke with cool, collected determination—more especially the latter. John O'Connell took his stand on the Rules of the Association, as embodied in the Peace Resolutions. I was near him during his speech on each day; and although evidently labouring under the gravity of the occasion, he never ceased to be master of himself. His style was clear, but his voice being neither powerful nor resonant, he failed to make that impression upon his hearers which was warranted by his reasoning. Meagher's delivery of the sword speech had more of ostentation than grace in it. A common gesture of his (if it can be called such) was to place his arms a-kimbo, and turn his head a little to one side, suggesting the idea that this attitudinizing was meant to attract admiration to himself rather than to his argument. His voice was good, but his intonation unmusical, and he invariably ended his sentences on too high a note; but his fiery rhetoric carried the audience almost completely with him, and he was cheered again and again to the echo.
[107] Many a fine, stalwart peasant said to me, during the great era of the Monster Meetings, "I'm afraid, sir, we'll never get the union without fighting for it." I know for a fact, that wives and daughters and sisters endeavoured to dissuade fathers and husbands and brothers from going to the great Tara Meeting—suspecting, as they said, that "bad work would come out of it," i.e., fighting.
[108] Daily and Weekly Press. Census of Ireland, 1851.
[109] Correspondence relating to the measures adopted for the relief of the distress in Ireland (Commissariat Series), p. 3.
[110] This estimate is said to have been compiled from the best available sources for Thom's Almanac and Directory for 1847. The quantity of potatoes in each of the four Provinces, and their probable value were:
| Ulster, | 352,665 acres, | valued at | £4,457,562 | |
| Munster, | 460,630 | 6,030,739 10s. | ||
| Leinster, | 217,854 | 2,814,150 | ||
| Connaught, | 206,292 | 2,645,468 | ||
| ----------- | ----------------- | |||
| 1,237,441 | £15,947,919 10s. |
[111] Letters on the state of Ireland, by the Earl of Rosse: London, 1847. Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1993. These letters were originally sent to the Times, but that journal having refused them insertion, the noble author published them in a pamphlet. The Rev. Theobald Mathew said, I do not know on what authority, that two millions of acres of potatoes were irrevocably lost, being worth to those who raised them £20 an acre. This estimate would make the loss £40,000,000.
[112] Mayne on the Potato Failure. The potato crop, for the most part, continued to look well up to the end of July, but the blight had appeared, in the most decided way, during the first half of that month, although not then very apparent to a casual observer. Mr. Mayne, like many persons at the time, attributed the blight to an insect which some called Aphis Vastator, others Thrips minutissima. There was a glass case in the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, showing this insect feeding on the leaves and stalks of the potato plant. Mr. Mayne and those who agreed with him, seem, in this instance, to have mistaken cause for effect. Indeed the insect, it would appear, was a natural parasite of the potato, and some observers have gone so far as to assert that the Aphis Vastator abounded more on healthy plants than upon those affected with the blight.
[113] Letter to the Duke of Leinster quoted in Irish Census for 1851. M. Zander, of Boitzenberg, in Prussia, published, about this time, a method by which full sized potatoes could be produced in one year from the seed, and he further stated that the seedlings so produced had resisted the blight. The old idea was, that it took three years to produce full-sized potatoes from the seed. M. Zander's method was tried in various parts of Ireland and England, its chief peculiarity being that the seed was sown on a light hot bed, and the plants so produced were transferred to the ground in which they were to produce the crop. Full-sized potatoes were the result, each plant producing, on an average, 1½ lbs. of potatoes, or rather more than 29 tons to the Irish acre. This method appeared satisfactory to those who interested themselves about it, but it does not seem to have been followed up.