The following paragraph went the round of the newspapers at the close of December:—­“A FACT JOB LORD JOHN RUSSELL.—­Mr. Bianconi, ex-Mayor of Clonmel, had shipped to him on the 14th of December, at New York, a small lot of best Indian corn, at twenty-three shillings per quarter of 480 lbs.; and the same post which brought the invoice brought a letter stating the price at Liverpool was seventy-two shillings.  What will Lord John Russell say to this?

[125] Board of Works’ Series, vol.  L., p. 97.

[126] Mr. Monsell’s Letter to Lord Devon.

[127] The case of Ireland, etc., contained in two letters to the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, Chief Secretary of Ireland, by the Rev. William Prior Moore, A.M., Cavan, p. 6.  Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1991.

[128] Ib. p. 7.

[129] Ib.

[130] The Case of Ireland, etc., p. 11.

[131] Ib. p. 11, 12.  The capitals and italics in the above quotations are Mr. Moore’s.

[132] Memorandum to Commissary-General Hewetson.  Commissariat Series, p. 452.

[133] “A great deal of delay on the part of the Board of Works in the respect of drainage was occasioned by that body involving themselves in legal intricacies which were not necessary under the Act.” O’Connell’s Speech at the Baronial Sessions of Caherciveen.

[134] Correspondence on some of the general effects of the failure of the potato crop and its consequent relief measures.  By J.P.  Kennedy, formerly an officer of the corps of Royal Engineers, and late Secretary of the Land and Relief Commissions.  Dublin:  Alex.  Thom, 1847.  Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1993.

[135] Ibid. The italics are Mr. Kennedy’s.

[136] Now Lord Emly.

[137] “The works under the 9th and 10th Vict., cap. 107, (the Labour-rate Act,) were to be sanctioned for sake of this relief, and not for sake of the works themselves.”—­Mr. Trevelyan’s Letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, Board of Works’ Series of Blue Books, vol.  L., p. 97.

[138] See Proclamation, in Appendix, Note D.  “The intended meeting in Dublin will be now abandoned, as the promoters of it must be satisfied with Lord Bessborough’s Proclamation.”—­Mr. Pierce Mahony to the Earl of Clarendon, 6th October, Commissariat Series of Blue Books, vol.  I., p. 123.

Mr. Pierce Mahony was a very well-known Dublin solicitor; a man of position, and evidently in the confidence of Lord Clarendon.  He writes from the Stephen’s-Green Club, the recognised representative body of the Whigs in Ireland.  How anxious the Government must have been that a chief effect of their proclamation would be to prevent the intended demonstration in Dublin is patent from the hurry with which Mr. Mahony transmits the intelligence to the President of the Board of Trade.

CHAPTER VII.