and fifty eight calculated upon a loss of less than one-third of the potato crop; one hundred and thirty-five upon the loss of a full third; one hundred and thirty-four, that one-half of the crop was destroyed, and forty apprehended a destruction of more than one-half.  With respect to the residue of the crops, there are two hundred and sixteen letters in which no opinion is given, whilst the writers of one hundred and one think that the remainder of the crop may be saved, and one hundred and eighteen are of a contrary opinion.  Thus, we have all classes and parties in the country—­Protestant and Presbyterian clergymen more numerous than Roman Catholic clergymen—­peers, deputy-lieutenants, magistrates, poor-law guardians—­all concurring in the main fact, that a vast portion of the food of millions of the people has been destroyed whilst all is uncertainty as to the remainder.”

With this information before them and a vast deal more besides, it is not to be wondered at that the Mansion House Committee passed the resolutions given above.  A strong protest, indeed, but it came from a body of men who had laboured with energy and diligence from the very first day the Committee was formed.  One of the earliest acts of that Committee was to prepare a set of queries, that, through them, they might put themselves in communication with persons of position and intelligence throughout the entire country.  The result was that they felt themselves compelled to pass a deliberate censure upon the apathy of the Government; and it will be found, in the course of this narrative, that the want of prompt vigorous action on the part of the Government, more especially at this early stage of the famine, had quite as much to do with that famine as the failure of the potato crop itself.

In November a cessation of the rot was observed in some districts, but in that month the assertion made in the first resolution of the Mansion House Committee, that more than one-third of the potato crop was lost, was not only vouched for by hundreds of most respectable and most trustworthy witnesses, as we have seen, but it was accepted as a truth by every party.  Moreover, the Government, whose culpable apathy and delay was denounced on all sides, except by its partizans, was in possession of information on the subject, which made the loss of the potato crop at least one-half instead of one-third. Professors Lindley and Playfair made a report to Sir Robert Peel, bearing date the 15th of November, from which he quoted the following startling passage in his speech on the address, on the 22nd of January, 1846:—­“We can come to no other conclusion,” they write, “than that one-half of the actual potato crop of Ireland is either destroyed, or remains in a state unfit for the food of man.  We, moreover, feel it our duty to apprize you that we fear this to be a low estimate."[64]