Estimating the value of the potato crop of 1845 in Ireland at L18,000,000, not a high estimate, it was now certain that food to the value of L9,000,000 was already lost, yet no answer could be had from the Viceroy or the Premier but the stereotyped one, that the matter was receiving the most serious consideration of the Government.  And on they went enquiring when they should have been acting.  With the information given by Professors Lindley and Playfair in their hands, they appointed another Commission about this time, which sat in Dublin Castle and was presided over by Mr. Lucas, then Under-Secretary.  Its Secretary, Captain Kennedy, applied to the Mansion House Committee for information.  That body at once placed its whole correspondence at the disposal of the Commissioners; the Lord Mayor had an interview with Sir Thomas Freemantle, one of them, by whom he was assured that the Government was fully prepared to take such steps as might be found necessary for the protection of the people, when the emergency should arise.

Most people thought it had arisen already.

On the 8th of December, a full fortnight after this interview, a set of queries, similar to those issued months before by the Mansion House Committee, were printed and circulated by the new Commissioners, asking for information that had already come in from every part of the country —­even to superabundance.

On the 10th of December the Corporation of Dublin agreed to an address to the Queen, calling her Majesty’s attention to the potato blight, and the impending famine consequent upon it.  In their address they respectfully bring before her two facts then lately elicited, or rather confirmed, by the Devon Commission—­namely, that four millions of the labouring population of Ireland “are more wretched than any people in Europe—­their only food the potato, their only drink water.”  They add, that even these facts do not convey to her Majesty an adequate idea of the destitution by which the Irish people are threatened, or of the numbers who shall suffer by the failure of the potato crop; facts related of the inhabitants of a country which, of late years, may be justly styled the granary of England, exporting annually from the midst of a starving people food of the best kind in sufficient abundance for treble its own inhabitants.  They assure her Majesty that fully one-third of their only support for one year is destroyed by the potato blight, which involves a state of destitution for four months of a great majority of her Majesty’s Irish subjects.  They say, with respectful dignity, that they ask no alms; they only ask for public works of utility; they ask that the national treasury should be “poured out to give employment to the people at remunerative wages.”  Finally they pray her Majesty to summon Parliament for an early day.

The Corporation did not get an opportunity of presenting their address to the Queen until the 3rd of January following—­four-and-twenty days after it was agreed to.  This delay, no doubt chiefly arose from the resignation of the Peel ministry on the 5th of December; the failure of Lord John Russell to form a Government, and the consequent return of Sir Robert Peel to office on the 20th of the same month, after a fortnight’s interregnum.