by denying the existence of wide-spreading potato-rot in the island. With the cries of the dying ringing in their ears, Irish journalists disputed with each other as to whether there actually was any famine in the land. But the facts could not long be concealed, either from the people or from the Queen. At the end of September, 1845, it had to be generally admitted that the staple food of Ireland had suddenly disappeared, and that even in England only the northern counties had escaped from the potato-disease. To such an extent did the rest of England suffer, that Professor Lindley declared there was hardly a sound potato to be found in Covent Garden Market.[30] As Lord Beaconsfield has observed, “This mysterious but universal sickness of a single root changed the history of the world.”[31] The Corporations of London and Dublin, on the 3rd of January, 1846, memorialised the Queen on the subject. Their deputations, who waited on her at Windsor, received from her a gracious and sympathetic reply to their statements, which she heard with manifest interest. The Anti-Corn-Law League felt that it would be good policy to turn the prevailing distress to account, and it immediately renewed, with redoubled vigour, its agitation against the duties that kept up the price of bread. Its leaders organised a series of meetings all over England and Scotland, and although the Chartists rather held aloof from them, the Free Trade speakers at last fairly touched the heart of the nation. Extraordinary scenes of enthusiasm took place at these meetings. In the last week of 1845, at a meeting in Manchester, it was suggested to raise a quarter of a million pounds sterling to help the agitation that must strengthen Peel’s hands,[32] and Mr. John Morley has described how men jumped up from their seats and cried out, one after the other, “A thousand pounds for me!” “A thousand pounds for us!” and so on, till in less than two hours £60,000 were subscribed on the spot.[33] Of course, all this fervour provoked a movement on the other side. The Protectionists organised a counter agitation, but it was very badly managed. The speakers selected were persons, of high rank and ample fortune. But they lacked sympathy and sense, and this defect was fatal to their cause. Their favourite argument was that there was no famine at all to fear, and they revelled in demonstrating to people who had nothing to eat, that their continued prosperity depended on the maintenance of a Corn Law which made bread dear. The Duke of Norfolk covered the Protectionist agitation with odium and ridicule, by suggesting that if haply here and there a labouring man felt hungry, he might derive great benefit by taking at night, just before bed-time, a pinch of curry-powder as a comforting stomachic. The satirists of the Radical party made affluent use of this egregious imbecility, and the _Examiner_[34] promptly printed a poem headed “Comfort and Curry,” in which the Duke and Duchess were cruelly quizzed.