In January, 1847, a Protestant gentleman, now a colonial judge, well known for his ability and integrity, gave, through the columns of a Dublin newspaper, an account of the state of Mayo as he saw it. He found great dissatisfaction--in fact indignation, existing with regard to the unaccountable delay of the public works, which had been presented for in that county; and this not merely amongst the starving people, but amongst the most respectable and intelligent persons with whom he conversed. He--a man not likely to take a narrow or prejudiced view of any subject--was of opinion that those complaints were not groundless. The officials, he says, instead of extending the works in Mayo, and feeding the people, "are employed in diverting public attention by prating of subscriptions, paltering about Queen's letters and English poor-boxes, and frittering away the strength of public opinion and the efficiency of all public action, by engaging private charity in a task that can be met only by the Herculean efforts of a whole nation, knit into a single power, and bound into concentrated exertion by all the constraining forces that the constitution of political society affords."[224] And then the starving people are blamed for finding fault, and for being suspicious. What else, he asks, can they be? How can a man dying of starvation have patience? The chief places he visited were Balla, Claremorris, Ballyhaunis, and Hollymount. The scenes he witnessed were, he says, scarcely if at all less harrowing than those which had been reported from the locality of Skibbereen. This writer, a Protestant, conversed, amongst others, with the priests of the districts which he visited, and of them he says: "The Catholic clergy are the only persons who can form a tolerably correct estimate of the numbers of persons who are now dying of starvation. The Catholic clergy know all the people of their respective parishes--_no one else does_; the Catholic priest knows them as the shepherd does his sheep; he knows them individually; he knows not only every lineament of every individual face, but he knows, too, every ailment of body--every care of mind--every necessity of circumstance from which he is suffering. The Catholic clergy of the West attend every death-bed: the poor there are all Catholics. The Catholic clergy know, then, to what it is that the extraordinary mortality now prevalent is owing--_and they set it down as the immediate consequence of want and starvation_."[225] One of the priests of whom W.G. asked information told him his whole time, and that of his assistant, was unceasingly occupied in administering the last comforts of religion to the victims of starvation. It would, he said, be an endless task, and he feared a useless one, to record his sad experiences.