After expressing these views and making these suggestions they prepared a formal address to the Lord Lieutenant to impress upon him the urgent necessity that existed for employing the labour of the country in the raising of food.  The duties which devolve on those in power this year, they tell him, are very different from those of last year.  Last year, when it was found that a great portion of the food of the people had perished, the evident duty of the Government and the country was to provide a sufficient supply, until the harvest would come in.  This was done by securing additional wages for the people, with which to buy food; wages paid for the public works then undertaken being the readiest means to meet a transient emergency; but the Committee are convinced, they assure his Excellency, that the calamity of the current year is not transient but permanent.  Not one of them, they say, entertains the expectation that the next year’s potato crop will put an end to the difficulties of the country, by supplying sufficient food for the population:  “the question is not now of the distribution but of the production of food.  We have not to relieve a temporary distress, but to make provision for the food of a people.”  To buy food in foreign markets with money paid for unproductive labour at home, they of course, designate as it deserved.  The true and permanent remedy is only to be found in the employment of additional capital and labour on the land.  “To anticipate the available resources of the country,” they urge, “and to compel or induce the outlay of them on public works not productive of food, or of any commodity which could be exchanged for food, must fearfully aggravate the dangers of our position.”  Finally, they tell the Lord Lieutenant frankly, that they feel it to be their duty to deprecate the continuance of a system which tends to discourage the exertions of landlord and farmer, and to misapply the labour of the people—­closing their admirably reasoned address by repeating the principle with which they had set out:  “That the labour for which the land is compelled to pay should be applied in developing the productive powers of the land.”

O’Connell, as was to be expected, took the greatest interest in the perilous state of his countrymen at this critical period; and he expressed his views in public on several occasions.  His great anxiety was for united action.  In a letter written from Darrynane, dated 17th of September, and addressed to the Secretary of the National Repeal Association, he says, the system of public works is, in its nature, sufficiently comprehensive, if carried actively and energetically into effect, to afford employment to the great bulk of the adult population; but he feels convinced, that to be satisfactory it requires the most active co-operation of landowners and farmers.  The great difficulty, he thinks, is not in want of employment, but in the want of food, and to leave to commercial speculators the supply of food for the