And yet when it’s plain that it’s the Maynooth Grant, and not the wet--certainly not the wet--that’s rotted the potato, we find big-wig doctors sent to Ireland (a further insult to Providence, grandmother) to inquire, as it is presumptuously said, into the cause of the disease. Why, I know what you or any other good old woman would have done; after you’d tasted the Maynooth Grant--and there’s no mistaking the flavour--in your early kidneys, you’d at once have stopped the rot;--and how would you have done it? Why, you’d have got the Queen to send a message to Parliament, to order a repeal of the Maynooth Grant. Of course you would. But no: sinful men are made foolhardy by success. Because, when they granted Catholic ’Mancipation, the fly spared our turnips, it was thought we could give money to Maynooth College, and yet save our ’tatoes! Ha! Dear grandmother, when you take your kidney baked, steamed, or mashed, think of us sinners, and say a short prayer for us. I’d forgotten to tell you that the potatoes in Belgium are as bad, or even worse, than ours. Besides the wet, I can’t precisely tell the cause of this; because there’s been no Maynooth Grant there, nearly all the wicked people being Catholics,--but then, I suppose, that’s it. Mr Flunky Ferrie declares that “the present judgment is connected with Popery.” There’s no doubt of it:-- “The blight being general over three kingdoms, points out _the rulers of the land_ as the persons whose sin has secured it; and the blight being in the potato crop, directs attention to their dealings with Ireland as the particular sins which have immediately called it down.” This is, doubtless, true enough, and no less true because the whole people must suffer for the dozen rulers. Now, had the blight fallen only upon Tamworth, or Strathfieldsaye, or all the ’tatoes of all the Ministers, the disease would doubtless have been hushed up. Yes,--it was necessary that every man should suffer in his potatoes; not only the sinful Protestant who consented to the Grant, but the lucky Catholics who accepted it. The judgment fell upon all tribes alike--the tribes of the Established Church and of the Church of Babylon. The Bishop of London’s ’tatoes are in as forlorn a way as the ’tatoes of the Irish Lion of Judah: that’s some comfort, grandmother.