On the 18th of October, “The Royal Agricultural Improvement Society of Ireland” held a special meeting relative to the disease in the potatoes.  They had, some short time before, appointed a sub-committee on the subject, Professor (now Sir Robert) Kane being its Chairman.  He stated to the meeting that the sub-committee had sat the two previous days, but were not as yet prepared with anything definite on the subject.  They, however, communicated some advice to farmers, under eight heads, founded on experiments.  This advice, whether useful or not, was, for the most part, not within the power of small farmers to put in practice; but the sub-committee made one observation that should have aroused all the energies of those who had the lives of the people in their hands.  They said that, “on mature consideration of the evidence now before them, it was advisable that the Council should direct the attention of the Irish Government to the now undoubted fact, that a great portion of the potato crop in this country was seriously affected by the disease in question.”  A cautious, well-weighed sentence, which, coming from such a responsible quarter, was full of portentous meaning for the future.  The Dublin Corporation took up the question of the Potato Blight with much and praiseworthy earnestness.  They appointed a committee to enquire and report on the subject.  A meeting of this committee was held in the City Assembly House on the 28th of October; the Lord Mayor, John L. Arabin, presided, who, from the accounts which had reached him, gave a gloomy picture of the progress of the disease.  The late Mr. William Forde, then Town Clerk, in a letter to the committee, said he had recently inspected the produce of eight or ten acres dug and housed in an apparently sound state three weeks before, and that now it was difficult to find a sound potato amongst them.  That all might not, however, be gloom, he added that he never saw so much corn safe and thatched in the haggards as he had seen this year.

It was at this meeting O’Connell first brought forward his plan for dealing with the impending famine, a plan which met with no favour from those in power, there not having been a single suggestion put forward in it which was taken up by them.  The crisis, he said, was one of terrible importance; the lives of the people were at stake; the calamity was all but universal; something must be done, and done immediately, to meet it.  Private subscriptions would not be sufficient; they might meet a local, but not a national calamity like the present.  By a merciful dispensation of Providence there was one of the best oat crops that we ever have had in the country, but that crop was passing out of Ireland day by day.  Then, quoting from the Mark Lane Express, he said, sixteen thousand quarters of oats were imported from Ireland to London alone in one week.  His proposal was, that a deputation should be appointed to wait on the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Heytesbury) to urge certain measures