“Alms from scornful hands, to hands in chains,
   Bitterer to taste than death.”

All the nations of the earth were appealed to and they gave generously; but the result was far from being proportionate to the need.  During the year 1846 the contributions fell short of two thousand pounds a week.  And it was not forgotten that after the great fire of London, when the citizens were in deep distress, the Irish contributed twenty thousand fat cattle for their relief, which at their present value would amount to a sum greater than England and Europe sent to the aid of Ireland in 1846.

To lie down and die, like cattle in a murrain, was base.  No people are bound to starve while their soil produces food cultivated by their own hands.  No other people in Europe would have submitted to such a fate.  But the leader whom they were accustomed to follow had involved himself in a tangle of false doctrines by his unhappy “Peace Resolutions,” and he exhorted them to endure all with patience and submission.  His son had the amazing assurance to add that if they starved with complete resignation the repeal of the union was near at hand.

On the relief committees, doctors, clergymen, and country gentlemen bore the burden of the work, but a multitude of the gentry stood apart as if the transaction did not concern them.  They were busy in transferring the harvest to England or clearing the population off their estates.  The English officials in Ireland accused them of jobbing in public works, or quartering their relations and dependents on the Relief Fund, as overseers, and, in some extreme cases, of obtaining grants for their own families of money designed for the suffering poor on their estates.  The benevolence of the minority could not counterbalance these odious offences, and deadly hatred was sown, which has since borne an abundant harvest.

The state of the country grew worse from day to day.  It is difficult now to realize the condition of the western population in the autumn of 1847; but a witness of unexceptionable impartiality has painted it in permanent colors.  A young Englishman representing the Society of Friends, who in that tragic time did work worthy of the Good Samaritan, reported what he saw in Mayo and Galway in language which for plain vigor rivals the narratives of Defoe.  This is what he saw in Westport: 

“The town of Westport was in itself a strange and fearful sight, like what we read of in beleaguered cities; its streets crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-stricken look; a mob of starved, almost naked women around the poorhouse clamoring for soup tickets; our inn, the headquarters of the road-engineer and pay-clerks, beset by a crowd begging for work.”