On 26 June the Royal Assent was given to an Act (9–10 Vic., c. 22), called “An Act to amend the Laws relating to the Importation of Corn.” This regulated the duty on corn by a sliding scale of prices, which was to be in force until
1 Feb., 1849, when it was fixed at 1s. per quarter. The passing of this Act caused general rejoicing throughout the country, and put an end to a great deal of political rancour.
The inauguration of Sir Walter Scott’s Monument, at Edinburgh, took place on 15 Aug., the anniversary of his birth. It was erected in 1840–44, after designs by Mr. George M. Kemp, at a cost of £15,650. It is cruciform, with a Gothic spire, chiefly modelled on the details of Melrose Abbey; and includes, beneath its basement arches, a Carrara marble sitting statue of Scott, with his dog Maida, by his side, which is the work of Mr. Steel, and cost £2,000.
The potato crop utterly failed again in Ireland, and the outlook there was indeed black. In the Times of 2 Sep., its correspondent, writing from Dublin, on 31 Aug., says: “As it is now an admitted fact, on all sides, that the destruction of the early potato crop is complete, there can be no earthly use
in loading your columns with repetitions of the sad details, as furnished day after day in the accounts published by the Irish newspapers. It will, therefore, nearly suffice to say that, according to the reports from all quarters, the crisis of deep and general distress cannot be much longer averted, and that it will require all the energies of both Government and Landlords to mitigate the inevitable consequences of a calamity, of which both parties have been duly forewarned. In the meantime, the following statement in a Limerick paper of Saturday, is another curious illustration of the Irish ‘difficulty’.
“‘In the Corn Market, this day, there appeared about 4,000 bushels of oats, and about an equal quantity of wheat. All this grain was purchased up, principally for exportation, whilst the food of the people, as exhibited this day in the Potato Market, was a mass of disease and rottenness. This is an anomaly which no intricacies of political economy—no legal quibbles, or crochets—no Government arrangements can reconcile. In an agricultural country which produces the finest corn for the food of man, we have to record that the corn is sold and sent out of the country, whilst the individuals that raised it by their toil and labour, are threatened with all the horrors of starvation.’
“From a multiplicity of concurrent statements respecting the pestilence, I shall merely subjoin one, which appears in the last Tralee paper: ‘A man would hardly dig in a day, as much sound potatoes as himself would consume. But that is not the worst of it. Common cholera has set in among the people of the town, owing to the use of potatoes, which contain a large quantity of poisonous matter. A professional gentleman in this town, of considerable experience and unquestioned integrity, assures me, that he has attended, within the last fortnight, in this town and neighbourhood, more than 12 cases of common cholera, and that he would think a person as safe in consuming a certain quantity of arsenic, as in using the potatoes now exposed for sale.’”
This is how the Famine of 1846–7 began, and what followed is a matter of history, which everyone ought to know, and
ponder well over, but it can hardly come under the name of Gossip. There were, naturally, a few food riots in different parts of the country, but everyone tried to do their best, even in a blundering way, to alleviate the distress. The Archbishop of Canterbury composed a Special Form of Prayer, to be used on Sunday, 11 Oct.