Clergy—­The Mansion House Committee—­Resolutions—­Analysis of five hundred letters on the Blight—­Partial cessation of the Rot caused by the Blight—­Report of Professors Lindley and Playfair—­Estimated loss—­Query Sheets sent out—­Corporation Address to the Queen—­Her Reply—­Address of the London Corporation asking for Free Trade—­The Potato Blight made a party question—­Dean Hoare’s Letter—­Failure of remedies.

The disease which cut off at least one-half of the potato crop of Ireland in 1845, and completely destroyed that of 1846, had made its appearance several years before, in other countries.  It is said to have existed for a long time in the western parts of America, before it appeared in Europe; but as it was at first confounded with dry rot and wet rot, the American may have been a different disease from ours.  What seems certain is, that the potato disease, as known to us, made its first appearance in Germany; and in the year 1842, travelling thence into Belgium, it manifested itself in a very destructive form in the neighbourhood of Liege.  It visited Canada in 1844, and in 1845 it appeared in almost every part of the United Kingdom, being observed first of all in the Isle of Wight, where it was most virulent on wheat lands which had been manured with guano.

In the first week of September, the potatoes in the London market were, to a very considerable extent, found to be unfit for human food.  To the eye they did not show any sign of disease, but when boiled and cut its presence was but too evident, by the black, or rather brownish-black mass they presented.  The potato fields began to be examined, and the provincial journals soon teemed with accounts of the destructive visitation, with speculations concerning its cause, and suggestions as to probable remedies.  The descriptions of the disease given by the English newspapers do not quite agree with the symptoms observed somewhat later in Ireland.  “Whatever may have been the cause,” says one account, “it is certain that, externally, the disease indicates itself by a fungus or moss producing decomposition of the farinaceous interior."[57] “The disease is very general in this locality,” says another, “beginning with a damp spot on some part of the potato."[58] A third observer writes:  “The commencement of the attack is generally dated here from Tuesday, the 19th ultimo.  A day of the heaviest rain almost ever known.  It first appears a bluish speck on the potato, and then spreads rapidly."[59]

Whether it was that, in England, in their anxiety about the tuber, people paid little or no attention to the stems or leaves of the potato; or, that the earlier symptoms differed from the later, matters but little, the disease was certainly the same throughout the United Kingdom.  In Ireland it was first observed on the leaves of the plant as brown spots of various shapes and sizes, pretty much as if a dilution of acid had fallen upon them like drops of rain.