There could be no objection whatever to such a course.  It was, so far as it went, the right course, because it would have called upon the proprietors of the soil to discharge the duties of their position, and to take counsel as to the best mode of doing it.  In his after correspondence with Lord Heytesbury the Premier never alluded to this suggestion in any way! Of course it fell to the ground.

On the 19th of October, Mr. Buller, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, wrote to Sir Robert Peel that he was after making the tour of several of the counties of the Province of Connaught, and the result was, that he found the potato crop affected in localities where people thought the blight had not reached.  Mr. Buller’s was a private letter to the Premier in anticipation of a more formal report from the Society, because, as he says, he “did not wish a moment to elapse” before informing him of the extent of the fearful malady, in order that no time should be lost, in adopting the necessary measures of precaution and relief for Ireland.  He concludes by announcing, that a panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembers since the cholera; which panic, he thinks, will go on increasing as the extent of the failure becomes better known.

Subordinates like Lord Heytesbury and Sir James Graham, writing to their chief can only hint their views.  Both did so more than once with regard to the immediate action to be taken in securing food for the Irish people, to replace the potatoes destroyed by the blight.  In one of the Viceroy’s letters to the Premier, he quotes some precedents of what had been done in former years by proclamation in Ireland, especially referring to proclamations issued by Lord Cornwallis in 1800-1.  He also refers to some Acts of Parliament, no longer, however, in force.  Sir James Graham writing some days later to the Premier, says:  “The precedents for proceeding by proclamation from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and not by Order in Council, are directly in point;” adding of course that such proclamations should be followed by an Act of Indemnity.  Surely, anybody can see, that for a Government to meet an extraordinary evil by an extraordinary remedy, would not only be sanctioned by an Act of Indemnity, but would be certain to receive the warm approval of Parliament.

Sir Robert Peel wanted neither county meetings nor proclamations; so, writing to Sir James Graham on the 22nd of October, he says,—­all but misstating Lord Heytesbury’s views on proclamations:—­“Lord Heytesbury, from his occasional remarks on proclamations, seems to labour under an impression that there is a constitutional right to issue them.  Now there is absolutely none.  There is no more abstract right to prohibit the export of a potato than to command any other violation of law.  Governments have assumed, and will assume, in extreme cases, unconstitutional power, and will trust to the good sense of the people,