[Sidenote: 1847. Ninth report of proceedings in Ireland.] The ninth Report (for 1846-7) is like the others dated on the 1st of May. It describes very fully the effects consequent on the potato disease of the previous autumn, so far as these effects bore upon the working of the Poor Law. The connexion between the two, although in one sense intimate, is in other respects limited; for where the land has ceased to be productive, the necessary means of relief cannot be obtained from it, and a poor-law will no longer be operative, or at least not operative to an extent adequate to meet such an emergency as then existed in Ireland. A poor-law, rightly devised and judiciously administered, will generally be found equal to the relief of destitution in the ordinary progress of events; but a state of famine, or a total failure of the means of subsistence is extraordinary, and the wide-spread destitution thence arising is beyond the powers of a poor-law effectually to relieve, although it may doubtless be applied to some extent in mitigation. Under the circumstances at that time unhappily existing in Ireland, other aid was necessary beyond what could be derived from any modification of the Poor Law; and the nature of those circumstances, and the means pursued in dealing with them, will be explained in the following pages. [Sidenote: The potato disease in 1846.] The potato disease made its appearance in 1846 much earlier than in the preceding year, and it was also much more general and destructive. Captain Mann in his narrative of events in the county of Clare at this period, says that the symptoms of the disease were first noticed in the latter part of July; but that the change which took place in one week in August was such as he shall never forget—“On the first occasion (he says) I had passed over thirty-two miles thickly studded with potato-fields in full bloom. The next time the face of the whole country was changed—the stalk remained a bright green, but the leaves were all scorched black. It was the work of a night. Distress and fear was pictured in every countenance, and there was a general rush to dig and sell, or consume the crop by feeding pigs and cattle, fearing in a short time they would prove unfit for any use.” And in a letter printed in the Parliamentary Papers, Father Mathew[134] states—“On the 27th of July I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3rd of August, I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putrifying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.” ----- [134] Commonly known in Ireland as “the Apostle of Temperance,” a worthy and benevolent man. -----