e supervision was impossible. The mistake of many of the
officials, although not of all, was, that they regarded such exceptional
things as an index to the general state of the country, built theories
upon them, and sent those theories up to their superiors, which helped
to make them close-handed and suspicious. Those officials did not, and,
in many cases, could not sound the depths of misery into which the
country had sunk; the people were dying of sheer starvation around them,
whilst they were writing reports accusing them of exaggeration and
idleness. What the Rev. Jeremiah Sheahan of Clenlure, in the County
Cork, said of his parishioners was equally true in hundreds of other
cases: "The most peaceable have died of want in their cabins. More than
twelve have done so in the last six days."[155]

One of the proofs brought forward that the Irish people were not so
badly off as they pretended--in fact that in many instances they were
concealing their wealth, was, _the increase of deposits in the Savings
Banks_. At a superficial glance there would appear to be much truth in
this conclusion; but we must remember that the millions whom the potato
blight left foodless, never, in the best of times, had anything to put
in Savings' Banks. They planted their acre or half acre of potatoes,
paid for it by their labour; they had thus raised a bare sufficiency of
food; and so their year's operations began and ended. An official of the
Irish Poor Law Board, Mr. Twistleton, gave a more elaborate and detailed
answer to the Savings' Banks argument. Writing to the Home Secretary,
Sir George Grey, under date of the 26th of December, he calls his
attention to leaders in the _Times_ and _Morning Chronicle_ on the
subject. One of those articles is remarkable, he says, since it "seemed
to treat the increase in the deposits as a proof of _successful
swindling on the part of the Irish people_, during the present year." So
far from this being true, an increase, in Mr. Twistleton's opinion,
might show "severe distress," inasmuch as when times begin to grow hard,
deposits would increase for the following reasons:

1. People in employment, who were thoughtless before and did not
deposit, would begin to be depositors in bad times.

2. People in employment, who were depositors before, would increase
their deposits.

3. Thrifty people, who would at other times have gone into little
speculations, would now be afraid to do so, and they would become