It was about this time that the Premier appointed Drs. Lindley and Playfair to come to Ireland for the purpose of investigating the causes of the blight, and if possible to apply remedies.  He summoned the latter to Drayton Manor before leaving, and both were struck by the very short time in which the blight rendered the potato worthless for food.  Sir Robert says to Sir James Graham on the 18th of October:  “We have examined here various potatoes that have been affected; and witnessing the rapidity of decay, and the necessity of immediate action, I have not hesitated to interrupt Playfair’s present occupation, and to direct his attention to this still more pressing matter."[75] Two days later Sir James sends his chief a desponding letter in reply, and, with much good sense, says he is not sanguine about any chemical process, within the reach of the peasantry, arresting the decay in tubers already affected; besides the rainfall continues so great that, independently of disease, he feels the potatoes must rot in the ground from the wet, unless on very dry lands.  He then mentions a matter of the utmost consequence which had not been alluded to before.  “There are many points,” he says, on which a scientific inquiry may be most useful, “particularly the vital one with respect to the seed for next year."[76]

In his letter of the 13th of October, given above, the Premier opened his mind to his friend, the Home Secretary, that he was a convert to the repeal of the Corn Laws, but even to him he put forward the potato blight in Ireland as the cause.  Some days afterwards, in a very carefully worded letter to Lord Heytesbury, he introduces the same business.  “The accounts from Ireland of the potato crop, confirmed as they are by your high authority,” says Sir Robert, “are very alarming, and it is the duty of the Government to seek a remedy for the ’great evil.’” Of course it was, and he had made up his mind to apply one which he knew was distasteful to most of his colleagues; but time was pressing, and he must bring it forward, so making a clean breast of it, he states his remedy in a bold clear sentence to the Protectionist Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.  “The remedy,” he writes, “is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food—­that is the total and absolute repeal for ever of all duties on all articles of subsistence."[77] Sir Robert Peel seldom penned so clear a sentence, but its very clearness had an object, for he seems to desire to shut out discussion on any of the other remedies which were put forward in Ireland.  He then goes on to join the temporary relief of Irish distress with the permanent arrangement of the Corn Law question.  “You might,” he says, “remit nominally for one year; but who will re-establish the Corn Laws once abrogated, though from a casual and temporary pressure?  I have good ground therefore for stating that the application of a temporary remedy to a temporary evil does in this particular case involve considerations of the utmost and most lasting importance.”