“Had _we set ourselves to consider_ by what display of His sovereignty the Lord could most thoroughly and very severely have distressed Ireland, whilst He in some degree afflicted also both England and Scotland, _in token of His indignation_ at the sin of their joint rulers in enacting that which, _whilst it insulted Him_, was justified on the plea that it would benefit Ireland, could we have conceived _a more effectual_ one than the blasting of the potato crop!” Now, grandmother, this, I know, is stuff after your own heart. Popery is at the root of the root! The Lord has been insulted; and His terrible vengeance is a blight upon potatoes! There can be no doubt that this is the fact--a fact so after the good old times! Nevertheless, for my part, I think it rather hard that Protestant potatoes--potatoes that, if they could talk, would cry, “No surrender!”--should suffer equally with potatoes of Roman Catholic principles. I know it’s very conceited in me to give an opinion against men like William Ferrie--men who always bawl and scribble (I’ve heard ’em in their pulpits, as well as read their stuff in print) as if they were nothing less than livery servants to Providence, and knew all the household secrets! And Willy Ferrie, depend on ’t, is flunky after this fashion. A rotten potato is a rotten potato--at least so I should have thought it afore I’d been taught better by ranting Willy; but now, I can see into the thing just as well as if Erasmus Wilson--the magician of the microscope--had lent me his glass, and his eyes and brains into the bargain. I can see into the decayed parts, for I won’t bother your dear head with hard words (though when a man’s got ’em for the first time, he likes to sport ’em), and can behold nothing but what you used to call “the murdering Papishes.” I’ve a ’tato before me, as rotten as the heart of any talking ’tato that ever spouted blarney in the face of starvation. Well, with the microscope, I can see the Old Woman in Scarlet, with her toe polished with holy kisses--cardinals and abbots, and friars and priests, in white and red and gold--and canopies, and dolls of the Virgin, and saints, and little boys swinging censers. I can see all this by the assistance of Willie Ferrie--all of it in one potato--as plainly as once I saw all sorts of sharks in a drop of New River water. I shall write this blessed night to Sir Andrew Agnew (by the way, dear grandmother, it was said that Sir Andrew was lately caught in a Sunday train--but it isn’t true: it’s now proved to be somebody I won’t mention to you, who sometimes, out of spite to the Baronet, goes about in his likeness)--I’ll write to Sir Andrew, and get him to give a Potato Lecture, after this fashion, at Exeter Hall. If with one potato he wouldn’t make the women cry, then there’s no weeping to be got out of an onion! Sir Andrew with one rotten potato, like David with a smooth pebble, would kill Goliath Peel as dead as Tamworth mutton.