Dr. Donovan had made a post mortem examination.  He found the stomach and upper part of the intestines totally devoid of food.  There was water in the stomach, but nothing else.  Want, the doctor said, was the remote—­exposure to the cold the immediate—­cause of death.  The jury found that the deceased, Jeremiah Hegarty, met his death in consequence of the want of sufficient sustenance for many days previous to his decease; and that this want of sustenance was occasioned by his not having been paid his wages on the Public Works, where he was employed for eight days previous to the time of his death.

Instead of providing employment for the tenants on their estates, which the Premier, and his commentator, the Times, looked upon as a mere ordinary duty, many Irish landlords began to evict for non-payment of rent.  The parish priest of Swinford concludes a letter, detailing the sufferings of his people, thus:  “One word as to the landlords.  There are several owners of land in this parish (Kilconduff), but not one of them resident.  We made an effort to create by subscription a fund for the purpose of keeping a supply of provisions in Swinford, to be sold to the poor in small quantities.  The non-resident landlords were applied to, but not one of them responded to the call.  They are not, however, idle.  Their bailiffs are on the alert, distraining for rent, and the pounds are full."[186] In the County Sligo, thirty families were evicted together by one landlord; they must have been one hundred and fifty individuals in all.  They were somewhat in arrear.  But in other cases the corn was distrained in the beginning of October for rent falling due the previous May.  This, in the second year of the Famine, meant eviction, purely for the sake of clearing the soil of its human incumbrances.

A portion of the English press, but a very small one, sympathised with those miserable beings who were cast out of their dwellings to perish by the roadside.  The Morning Chronicle, in one of its leaders, thus dealt with the subject:  “We shall here state at once our opinion, in plain terms, respecting this clearing system, by which a population, which has for generations lived and multiplied on the land, is, on the plea of legal rights, suddenly turned adrift, without a provision, to find a living where there is no living to be found.  It is a thing which no pretence of private right or public utility ought to induce society to tolerate for a moment.  No legitimate construction of any right of ownership in land, which it is for the interest of society to permit, will warrant it.  We hold, at the same time, that to prevent the growth of a redundant population on an estate is not only not blameable, but it is one of the chief duties of a landowner, having the power over his tenants which the Irish system gives.  As it is his duty, so it is, on any extended computation, his pecuniary interest.  He is to be commended for preventing over population, but to be detested for tolerating first, and then exterminating it.”