he extent and alarming nature of the
failure of the potato crop, and has no doubt on his mind that it is
general. The Premier had, sometime before, suggested Special
Commissioners to collect information, but the Lord Lieutenant does not
think they would be able to collect more accurate information than that
_already_ furnished by the county inspectors. He suggests that when the
potato digging is more advanced it would be well to move the Lieutenants
of counties to call meetings of the resident landholders, with a view of
ascertaining the amount of the evil, and their opinion of the measures
most proper to be adopted. He sees no objection to such a course, though
he dutifully adds that the Premier may.

There could be no objection whatever to such a course. It was, so far as
it went, the right course, because it would have called upon the
proprietors of the soil to discharge the duties of their position, and
to take counsel as to the best mode of doing it. In his after
correspondence with Lord Heytesbury the Premier _never alluded to this
suggestion in any way!_ Of course it fell to the ground.

On the 19th of October, Mr. Buller, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural
Society of Ireland, wrote to Sir Robert Peel that he was after making
the tour of several of the counties of the Province of Connaught, and
the result was, that he found the potato crop affected in localities
where people thought the blight had not reached. Mr. Buller's was a
private letter to the Premier in anticipation of a more formal report
from the Society, because, as he says, he "did not wish a moment to
elapse" before informing him of the extent of the fearful malady, in
order that no time should be lost, in adopting the necessary measures of
precaution and relief for Ireland. He concludes by announcing, that a
panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembers
since the cholera; which panic, he thinks, will go on increasing as the
extent of the failure becomes better known.

Subordinates like Lord Heytesbury and Sir James Graham, writing to their
chief can only hint their views. Both did so more than once with regard
to the immediate action to be taken in securing food for the Irish
people, to replace the potatoes destroyed by the blight. In one of the
Viceroy's letters to the Premier, he quotes some precedents of what had
been done in former years by proclamation in Ireland, especially
referring to proclamations issued by Lord