CHAPTER VI

FAMINE AND FEVER


It is now necessary to revert to that terrible page of Irish history,
the famine, which culminated in what is still known as 'the black
forty-seven.'

I have often been asked, 'How is it that Ireland could formerly support
a population of eight millions as compared with only five now?'

The answer is simple: Eight millions could still exist if the potato
crop were a certainty, and if the people were now content to exist as
they did then. But to the then existing population--living at best in a
light-hearted and hopeful, hand-to-mouth contentment--there was a
terrible awakening.

The mysterious blight, which had affected the potato in America in 1844,
had not been felt in Ireland, where the harvest for 1845 promised to be
singularly abundant. Suddenly, almost without warning, the later crop
shrivelled and wasted.

The poor had a terribly hard winter, and the farmers borrowed heavily to
have means to till a larger amount of land in 1846.

Once more the early prospects were admirable, and then in a single night
whole districts were blighted.

This is how Mr. Steuart Trench described the catastrophe:--