dified.
Hence the studied avoidance of the word Famine in almost every official
document of the time. Captain Caffin's letter was written to a friend
and marked "private;" but having got into the newspapers, it must, of
course, be taken notice of by the Government. Mr. Trevelyan lost no
time, but at once wrote, enclosing it to Sir John Burgoyne. To use his
own words on the occasion, the receipt, from the Commander of the
Scourge, of "the awful letter, describing the result of his personal
observations in the immediate neighbourhood of Skull," led him (Mr.
Trevelyan) to make two proposals on the part of the Treasury. And
indeed, it must be said, well meant and practical they were. The first
was, to send two half-pay medical officers to Skull, to try and do
something for the sick, many of whom were dying for want of the
commonest care; and also to combine with that arrangement, the means of
securing the decent interment of the dead. The second proposal was to
provide carts, for the conveyance of soup to the sick in their houses in
and around Skull; a most necessary provision, inasmuch as the starving
people were, in numerous cases, unable to walk from their dwellings to
the soup kitchen; besides which, in many houses the whole family were
struck down by a combination of fever, starvation and dysentery. Sir
John Burgoyne, as might be expected, picked holes in both proposals. In
the carriage of soup to the sick Sir John sees difficulty on account of
the scarcity of horses, which are, he says, diminishing fast. And he
adds, that several, if not all of the judges, who were then proceeding
on circuit, were obliged to take the same horses from Dublin throughout,
as they would have no chance of changing them as usual. Then with regard
to the decent burial of the dead, Sir John thought there were legal
difficulties in the way, and that legislation was necessary before it
could be done. He failed to produce any objection against the
appointment of the medical officers. In a fortnight after, a Treasury
Minute was issued to the effect that Relief Committees should be
required to employ proper persons to bury, with as much attention to the
feelings of the survivors as circumstances would admit, the dead bodies
which could not be buried by any other means. How urgently such an order
was called for appears from the fact, that at that time in the
neighbourhood of Skull, none but strangers, hired by the clergy, could
be found to take any