But besides this great stream of charity, there were a thousand other channels which it is impossible to trace, and of the aggregate result of which no estimate can be formed. There were separate committees which raised and sent over large sums of money. There were ladies’ associations without end to collect small weekly subscriptions and make up clothes to send to Ireland. The opera, the fancy bazaar, the fashionable ball rendered tribute; and, above all, there were the private efforts of numberless individuals, each acting for himself and choosing his own almoners, of which no record exists except on High. Upon application being made to the managers of the Provincial Bank of Ireland to permit English charitable remittances to pass without the usual charge, it turned out that they had been in the habit of doing so for a considerable time, and that the amount sent through that one channel, in the six months ending on the 4th March, 1847, exceeded 20,000ℓ. In the contemplation of this great calamity, the people of the United States of America forgot their separate nationality, and remembered only that they were sprung from the same origin as ourselves. The sympathy there was earnest and universal, and the manifestations of it most generous and munificent. The contributions from this land of plenty consisted principally of Indian corn and other kinds of provisions, and the cargoes were, for the most part, consigned to the Society of Friends, whose quiet, patient, practical exertions, commanded universal confidence. The freight and charges on the supplies of food and clothing sent to Ireland by charitable societies and individuals, as well from the United States and Canada on the one side, as from England on the other, were paid by the Government, to an amount exceeding 50,000ℓ.[48]; all customs dues were remitted, and the meal and other articles were to a great extent taken charge of by the officers of the Commissariat, and held by them at the disposal of the parties to whom they had been consigned for distribution; by which means the necessary harmony was preserved between the operations of the Government and those of the private associations, and the bounty of the subscribers reached the destitute persons for whom it was intended, with as small a deduction as possible for incidental expenses. Thus, when the British Association was desirous of giving the cultivators on the Western Coast of Ireland an opportunity of purchasing seed at a low market price at the close of the sowing season of 1847, five large steamers were collected by the Government, which were loaded in a remarkably short space of time, with oats and other seed provided by the Association, and were sent forth, each to its appointed section of the Western Coast; so that every harbour accessible to a steamer, from Kinsale to Londonderry, was looked into, and what remained unsold was left in the Government depôts for subsequent sale or gratuitous distribution. On the other hand, the