The remedy is just as clear,—to induce the peasantry of Ireland no longer to depend upon an article of food, which is difficult to procure, cumbrous to convey, possesses so little nourishment that it must be consumed in large quantities, 2 creates a strange, unhealthy distaste for other food, 3 is subject to so many diseases from humidity and frost, and which has wrought such grievous desolation through the length and breadth of the land. 4
1 Edinburgh Review, No. 175, p. 233.
2 The evidence taken before the Poor Law Commissioners,
previously to the establishment of the New Poor Law in
Ireland, proves that “ten pounds, twelve pounds, and even
fourteen pounds of potatoes are usually consumed by an Irish
peasant each day.”—Letters on the Condition of the People
of Ireland, by J. Campbell Forster, Esq., the Times'
Commissioner.
3 “When this famine was at the worst in Connamara, the sea
off the coast there teemed with turbot, to such an extent
that the laziest of fishermen could not help catching them
in thousands; but the common people would not touch them.”—
Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxi., p. 435.
4 Cobbett called the potato, that “root of poverty.”
How that remedy is to be applied, let legislators and landlords tell; meanwhile, my friend, and I, having sorrowfully sipped our pint of sherry, shall essay to cheer ourselves with a mild cigar, and a farewell walk to the Claddagh.
The shades of eve were falling fast, as we set forth, and we were just in time to see the last haul of the nets, and the silver salmon lying on the bank. Then we revived our spirits by a little conversation with young Claddagh, (merry and mischievous urchins), and by a distribution of copper, every halfpenny of which raised such a tumulus of rags as would have kept a paper mill at work for weeks. Then—
“the sun set,
And all the land was dark.”