brought to a close in August, 1846--The Labour-rate Act--Difficulty of getting good Officials--The Baronies--Issues to them--Loans--Grants--Total--Sudden and enormous Increase of Labourers on the Works under the Labour-rate Act--How distributed over the Provinces--Number of Officials superintending the Public Works--Correspondence--Number of Letters received at Central Office--Progress of the Famine--Number employed--Number seeking employment who could not get it--The Death-roll. To have met the Potato Famine with anything like complete success, would have been a Herculean task for any government. The total failure of the food of a nation was, as Mr. Monsell said, a fact new in history; such being the case, no machinery existed extensive enough to neutralize its effects, nor was there extant any plan upon which such machinery could be modelled. Great allowance must be therefore made for the shortcomings of the Government, in a crisis so new and so terrible; but after making the most liberal concessions on this head, it must be admitted that Lord John Russell and his colleagues were painfully unequal to the situation. They either could not or would not use all the appliances within their reach, to save the Irish people. Besides the mistakes they made as to the nature of the employment which ought to be given, a chief fault of their's was that they did not take time by the forelock--that they did not act with promptness and decision. Other nations, where famine was far less imminent, were in the markets, and had to a great extent made their purchases before our Government, causing food to be scarcer and dearer for us than it needed to be. Thus writes Commissary-General Routh to the Treasury on the 19th of September:--"I now revert to the most important of our considerations, the state of our depôts. We have no arrivals yet announced, either at Westport or Sligo, and the remains there must be nothing, or next to nothing. The bills of lading from Mr. Erichsen are all for small quantities, which will be distributed, and perhaps eaten, in twelve or twenty-four hours after their arrival. It would require a thousand tons to make an impression, and that only a temporary one. Our salvation of the depôt system is in the importation of a large supply. These small shipments are only drops in the ocean." The Treasury replies in this fashion, on the 22nd, to Sir R. Routh's strong appeal:--"With reference to the remarks in your letter of the 19th instant, as to the insufficiency of the supplies for your depôts, the fact is that we have already bought up and sent to Ireland all the Indian corn which is immediately available; and the London and Liverpool markets are at present so completely bare of this article, that we have been obliged to have recourse to the plan of purchasing supplies of Indian corn which had been already exported from London to neighbouring Continental ports."[139] And again, on the 29th of the same