The owners preferred living in England or on the Continent, having let their lands on long leases, or in perpetuity to ‘middlemen,’ who sublet them for as high rents as they could get.  Their tenants again sublet, so that it frequently happened that two, three, or four landlords intervened between the proprietor and the occupying tenant, each deriving an interest from the land.  The head landlord, therefore, though ever so well disposed, had no power whatever to help the occupying tenants generally, and of those who had the power very few felt disposed.  There were extensive districts without a single resident proprietor.

For a few weeks after the blight of the potato crop in 1846 the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs and any little effects they had.  But pigs, fowl, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger.  The better class of farmers lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss their servants, and this numerous class became the first victims of starvation; for when they were turned off, they were refused admission by their relations, who had not the means of feeding them.  Tailors, shoemakers, and other artisans who worked for the lower orders, lost their employment, and became destitute also.  While the means of support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it involved the whole population in its crushing grasp.  It was painfully interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts of the country where its ravages were least felt.  The small farmer had only his corn, designed for rent and seed:  he was obliged to take it to the mill to ward off starvation.  The children of the poor, placed on short allowance, were suffering fearfully from hunger.  Mothers, heart-broken and worn down to skeletons, were seen on certain days proceeding in groups to some distant depot, where Indian meal was to be had at reduced prices, but still double that of the ordinary market.  As they returned to their children, with their little bags on their heads, a faint joy lit up their famine-stricken features.

When the visitors entered a village their first question was:  ’How many deaths?’ ‘The hunger is upon us,’ was everywhere the cry; and involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease.  In fact, as they passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they lived; and Mr. W.G.  Forster, in his report, said:  ’I have no doubt whatever, that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; and that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour.  But the springs of this charity must be rapidly dried up.  Like a scourge of locusts, the hunger daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it.  One class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin.’[1]