State of the Country during the Winter of 1847—­State of Clare—­Capt.  Wynne’s Letter—­Patience of the suffering people—­Ennis without food.  The North—­Belfast:  great distress in it—­Letter to the Northern Whig.  Cork:  rush of country people to it—­Soup—­Society of Friends—­The sliding coffin—­Deaths in the streets—­One hundred bodies buried together!—­More than one death every hour in the Workhouse.  Limerick:  Experience of a Priest of St. John’s.  Dublin:  Dysentery more fatal than cholera—­Meetings—­“General Central Relief Committee for all Ireland”—­Committee of the Society of Friends—­The British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and Scotland.  The Government—­Famine not a money question—­so the Government pretended—­Activity of other countries in procuring food—­Attack on Divine Providence—­Wm. Bennett’s opinion.  Money wages not to be had from farmers.  Was it a money or food question?—­The navigation laws—­Freights doubled—­The Prime Minister’s exposition—­Free Trade in theory—­protection in practice—­The Treasury says it cannot find meal.  President Folk’s message to Congress—­America burthened with surplus corn—­could supply the world—­Was it a money question or a food question?  Living on field roots—­Churchyards enlarged—­Three coffins on a donkey cart.  Roscommon—­no coffins—­600 people in typhus fever in one Workhouse!—­Heroic virtue—­The Rosary.  Sligo—­Forty bodies waiting for inquests!—­Owen Mulrooney—­eating asses’ flesh.  Mayo—­Meeting of the County—­Mr. Garvey’s statement.  Mr. Tuke’s experiences—­Inquests given up—­W.G.’s letters on Mayo—­Effect of Famine on the relations of landlord and tenant—­Extermination of the smaller tenantry—­Evictions—­Opinion of an eyewitness—­A mother takes leave of her children—­Ass and horse flesh—­something more dreadful! (Note).  The weather—­its effects.  Count Strezelecki.  Mr. Egan’s account of Westport—­Anointing the people in the streets!  The Society of Friends—­Accounts given by their agents.  Patience of the people—­Newspaper accounts not exaggerated.  Donegal—­Dunfanaghy—­Glenties—­Resident proprietors good and charitable.  Skull—­From Cape Clear to Skull—­The Capers—­Graveyard of Skull—­Ballydehob—­The hinged coffin—­Famine hardens the heart.  Rev. Traill Hall—­Captain Caffin’s narrative—­Soup-kitchens—­Officials concealing the state of the people—­Provision for burying the dead—­The boat’s crew at a funeral.  State of Dingle.  Father Mathew’s evidence.  Bantry—­Inquests—­Catherine Sheehan—­Richard Finn—­Labours of the Priests—­Giving a dinner away—­Fearful number of deaths—­Verdict of “Wilful murder” against Lord John Russell—­The Workhouse at Bantry—­Estimated deaths—­The hinged coffin—­Shafto Adair’s idea of the Famine.

The year 1846 closed in gloom.  It left the Irish people sinking in thousands into their graves, under the influence of a famine as general as it was intense, and which trampled down every barrier set up to stay