"The famine, consequent on the failure of the potato crop in 1846, considered independently of disease, presents a still more remarkable collection of facts, the proper view of which appears to me to be this. The potato is an article of diet throughout the whole of this country, particularly useful to the working classes, and its importance to them seems to be fully illustrated by the pretty frequent occurrence of scurvy in many places, where it had been unknown for more than a century, since the beginning of the winter 1846-7,--that is, since the use of the potato has been necessarily nearly abandoned. "But it is only in certain districts that the people have been absolutely dependent on the potato, and been reduced to absolute destitution by its failure; and the reason obviously is, that the potato, although much less desirable, as the chief article of diet, than many others, is that by which the greatest number of persons may be fed from a given quantity of land in this climate. When we find a population, therefore, living chiefly on potatoes, and reduced to absolute destitution, unable to purchase other food, when the potato crop fails,--we have at once disclosed to us the undeniable fact, that that population is redundant. It is greater than can be maintained in that district, otherwise than on the poorest diet by which life can be supported, and greater than the labour usually done in that district demands. Now I formerly stated, that such a redundant population, living, as a foreign author expresses it, 'en parasite,' on the working people of the country, exists most remarkably in Scotland, in districts where no poor-law is enforced; and I have now only to show how amply that statement is confirmed by the facts which the present famine in some parts of Scotland has brought to light." Whatever be its merits, the argument for a comprehensive Poor Law is placed on its true basis in the following passages:--