accounts were
unexpectedly received. The special correspondent of a Dublin newspaper,
writing from the West, explains this when he says: "The disease appeared
suddenly, and the tubers are sometimes rotten in twenty-four hours
afterwards."[60]

On the 18th of October, "_The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of
Ireland_" held a special meeting relative to the disease in the
potatoes. They had, some short time before, appointed a sub-committee on
the subject, Professor (now Sir Robert) Kane being its Chairman. He
stated to the meeting that the sub-committee had sat the two previous
days, but were not as yet prepared with anything definite on the
subject. They, however, communicated some advice to farmers, under eight
heads, founded on experiments. This advice, whether useful or not, was,
for the most part, not within the power of small farmers to put in
practice; but the sub-committee made one observation that should have
aroused all the energies of those who had the lives of the people in
their hands. They said that, "on mature consideration of the evidence
now before them, it was advisable that the Council should direct the
attention of the Irish Government to the now undoubted fact, that a
great portion of the potato crop in this country was seriously affected
by the disease in question." A cautious, well-weighed sentence, which,
coming from such a responsible quarter, was full of portentous meaning
for the future. The Dublin Corporation took up the question of the
Potato Blight with much and praiseworthy earnestness. They appointed a
committee to enquire and report on the subject. A meeting of this
committee was held in the City Assembly House on the 28th of October;
the Lord Mayor, John L. Arabin, presided, who, from the accounts which
had reached him, gave a gloomy picture of the progress of the disease.
The late Mr. William Forde, then Town Clerk, in a letter to the
committee, said he had recently inspected the produce of eight or ten
acres dug and housed in an apparently sound state three weeks before,
and that now it was difficult to find a sound potato amongst them. That
all might not, however, be gloom, he added that he never saw so much
corn safe and thatched in the haggards as he had seen this year.

It was at this meeting O'Connell first brought forward his plan for
dealing with the impending famine, a plan which met with no favour from
those in power, there not having been a single suggestion put forwa