Continental ports."[139] And again, on the 29th of the same
month, Mr. Trevelyan thus explains the difficulties the Treasury
laboured under in endeavouring to purchase the supplies for which the
Commissary-General had been so emphatically calling:--"It is little
known what a formidable competition we are suffering from our
Continental neighbours. Very large orders are believed to have been sent
out to the United States, not only by the merchants, but by the
Governments of France and Belgium, and in the Mediterranean markets they
have secured more than their share; all which will appear perfectly
credible, when it is remembered that they are buying our new English
wheat in our own market."[140]

Here at home, the fatal error of awaiting events, instead of
anticipating them, and by forethought endeavouring to control and guide
them, was equally pernicious. The most considerable persons in the
kingdom--peers, members of Parliament, deputy lieutenants, magistrates
without number--pronounced the potato crop of 1846 to be hopelessly gone
early in August. But although several members of the Government
expressed their belief in this, and spoke about it with great alarm,
they seem not to have given it full credence, until it was too late to
take anticipatory measures; in short, they regarded it, like everything
Irish, as greatly exaggerated. The most influential portion of the
English newspaper press supported and encouraged this view, making, at
the same time, fierce attacks on Irish landlords for not meeting the
calamity as they ought, and as they were bound in duty and conscience
to do. Equally bitter and insolent was their tone towards the Irish
people, accusing them of many inherent vices--denouncing their
ignorance, their laziness, their want of self-reliance. Whatever of
truth or falsehood may have been in those charges, it was not the time
to put them forward. Famine was at the door of the Irish nation, and its
progress was not to be stayed by invectives against our failings, or by
moral lectures upon the improvement of our habits. Food, food was the
single and essential requisite; let us have it at once, or we die;
lecture us afterwards as much as you please. But there was something to
be said on the other side about our habits and failings; and a liberal
English journalist, taking up the subject, turned their own artillery
upon his countrymen, telling them that those vices, of which they
accused the Irish people, were