188 On the Potato as National Diet, 



to succour the necessities and mitigate the sufferings of 

 its starving and plague-smitten inhabitants. 



But nothing could stay the march of famine and pesti- 

 lence : the means of relief afforded in 1845-0 seemed 

 rather to increase than allay distress. All sense of self- 

 reliance seemed to be lost ; and the gentry, converting the 

 world's benevolence to private emolument, were known to 

 have placed their tenants on the roll of relief to obtain 

 their rents : while, in 1846-7, the tenantry, before putting 

 in their crops, said they would wait till it should be seen 

 what Government v»'ould do — expecting that their labour 

 in tilling their own ground would have been taken as relief 

 work, and that their crops would have been literally planted 

 for them. The failure of the crop in 1846-7 was followed 

 by an entire change in the mode of relief, — the burden was 

 thrown upon local funds administered by local functionaries ; 

 and the British Government, declining to take the initiative 

 in any case, played the part of an able, willing, and muni- 

 ficent auxiliary to those who would help themselves. 



In 1847-8, the crop again failed ; but famine and 

 pestilence had now swept away the people by millions, and 

 the remainder were more easily dealt with. 



It is to be hoped that a visitation of Providence so signal ■ 

 and protracted may yet be rendered a blessing to Ireland, 

 by inculcating and graving deeply on the minds of its people 

 how great and urgent the necessity is that, in future, they 

 should seek their subsistence as a nation in some other 

 article of food besides the potato. 



The native country of the potato, Solanuni tuherostim, 

 is tolerably well ascertained to be the cold regions of the 

 Cordilleras, in South America, Darwin, in his " Naturalist's 

 Voyage," chap. 13, page 285, speaks of the potato being 

 indigenous, as a littoral plant, on the Chonos Archipelago — 

 " Having run up the coast, we anchored near the northern 



