in their behalf."[164] Government depôts were only to be established where it was probable that private enterprise would not offer a sufficient quantity of food for sale. On this principle, the north, east, and south were left to be supplied through the usual channels of commerce; the depôt system being confined to the west coast. What was meant precisely by the west coast does not seem to have been settled at the outset, but in answer to an enquiry from Sir R. Routh on the subject, the Treasury, on the 31st of October, defined it to be the country to the west of the Shannon, with the County Donegal to the north, and Kerry to the south, with a small corner of Cork, as far as Skibbereen, because that town was on the western coast.[165] We have seen the rapid increase of labourers on the Relief Works from October to December, yet famine was always far ahead of the Government. Their arrangements for the first famine year were made with reference to the closing of all operations at harvest time, in 1846, but there was no harvest that year _for the poor_; their crop had vanished before the destroyer, and they were actually worse off at the end of August, 1846, than they had been since the beginning of the Potato Blight. In that year, the potatoes never came to maturity at all, and any that were thought worth the labour of digging, were hurried to market, and sold for any price they fetched, before they would melt away in the owners' hands. One of the Commissariat officers asked a farmer's wife, who was selling potatoes of this kind, what was the price of them; "two pence a stone, sir," she replied, "is my price," but lowering her voice, she _naively_ added, "to tell you the truth, sir, they are not worth a penny." Even in September--it was on the 18th of that month--a resolution was passed by the Mallow Relief Committee, that from information laid before them, and from the verdicts of several coroner's inquests, held during the previous few days, disease of the most fatal character was spreading in the districts around them, in consequence of the badness of the food purchasable by the working classes. A little later, the Rev. Mr. Daly announced to the ratepayers at the Fermoy sessions, that at the moment he was addressing them, numbers of persons were living on cabbage leaves, whose countenances were so altered, and whose whole appearance was so changed by starvation and wretchedness, that he could hardly recognise them. Lord Mountcashel, the Chairman of the sessions, on the same occasion used these remarkable words: "The people are starving; they have no employment; they require to be attended to immediately, for, starvation will not accommodate itself to any man's convenience." Nothing truer. Many landlords throughout the country made similar observations; but to all such, the representatives of the Government replied, and not without a good show of reason, that whilst landlords talked in this manner, they themselves, with rare