Lord John met Parliament as Prime Minister on the 16th of July; on which occasion he gave a brief outline of the Government business for the remainder of the session.  He said they would take up, and endeavour to pass some of the measures of the late Administration.  As to Irish bills, he postponed the most important one, the Tenants’ Compensation Bill, which, he said, was complicated, and was therefore reserved for further consideration.  Referring to the waste lands, the reclamation of which he had, a short time before, put so prominently forward, he said he would make preparation for the introduction of a general measure on the subject.  Thus were disposed of in a very brief speech, and in a very cool manner, the eleven measures which O’Connell required to be passed before the rising of the Session, and on the passing of which he had grounded any support he intended to give the Whig Government.

Whilst people were absorbed with the change of Ministry, and the wretched conflict in Conciliation Hall, the fatal blight began to show itself in the potato fields of the country.  Its earliest recorded appearance was in Cork, on the 3rd of June.  Accounts of its rapid increase soon filled the public journals, and the gloomiest forebodings of the total loss of the crop of 1846, immediately took hold of the public mind.  Here are a few specimens of the manner in which the dreadful calamity was announced:  “Where no disease was apparent a few days ago all are now black.”  “Details are needless—­the calamity is everywhere.”  “The failure this year is universal; for miles a person may proceed in any direction, without perceiving an exception to the awful destruction.”  The South and West suffered more in 1845 than the North; but this year the destroyer swept over Ulster the same as the other provinces.  “We have had an opportunity,” says a writer, “of observing the state of the potato crop from one end of the county Antrim to another, and saw only one uniform gloomy evidence of destruction.  The potatoes everywhere exhibit the appearance of a lost crop.”  The same account was given of Tyrone, Monaghan, Londonderry, and, in fact, of the entire province.  On the 18th of August, the fearful announcement was made, that there was not one sound potato to be found in the whole county of Meath!  Again:  “The failure of the potato crop in Galway is universal; in Roscommon there is not a hundred weight of good potatoes within ten miles round the town.”  “In Cavan, Westmeath, Galway, and Kerry, the fields emit intolerable effuvia.”  “The failure this year is universal in Skibbereen."[108]

In a letter published amongst the Parliamentary papers, Father Mathew writes:  “On the 27th of last month [July] I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest.  Returning on the 3rd instant [August] I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrefying vegetation.  In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless."[109]