wo in the interior, namely, Longford and Banagher, and four
on the coast, Limerick, Galway, Westport, and Sligo.

Like the heads of the Board of Works, the Commissariat officials thought
they would have had some time to arrange their various duties, appoint
their subordinates, fit up their offices, such as had any, in a snug and
convenient manner, and print and circulate query sheets without number;
and all this in spite of their own observations and reports--in spite of
this overwhelming fact, which, if they adverted to it at all, does not
seem to have impressed them--namely, that they were in the middle of a
great famine, and not at the beginning of it; that they were entering on
the second year of it with exhausted resources, while the blight which
caused it was far more general and destructive than it had been the year
before; in short, that it was universal, sweeping, immediate, terrible.

The Government depots already in existence, as well as those to be
established, were only to be in aid of the regular corn and meal trade;
and no supplies were to be sold from them, until it was proved to the
satisfaction of the Assistant Commissary-General of the district that
the necessity for so doing was urgent, and that no other means of
obtaining food existed. This rule was, in some instances, kept so
stringently, that people died of starvation within easy distance of
those depots, with money in their hands to buy the food that would not
be sold to them. The Treasury, rather than Commissary-General Routh or
his subordinates, was to blame for this; their strong determination,
many times expressed, being, that food accumulated by Government should
be husbanded for the spring and summer months of 1847, when they
expected the greatest pressure would exist. This was prudence, but
prudence founded on ignorance of the real state of things in the
closing months of 1846. The dearth of food which they were looking
forward to in the coming spring and summer arose fully FIVE MONTHS
before the time fixed by the Government; but they were so slow, or so
reluctant to realize its truth, that great numbers of people were
starved to death before Christmas, because the Government locked up the
meal in their depots, in order to keep the same people alive with it in
May and June! "It is most important," says a Treasury Minute--these were
the days of Treasury Minutes--"it is most important that it should be
remembered, that the supplies provided