he 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 tempor