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The Author of this volume has, for a considerable time, been of opinion,that the leading facts of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 ought to be puttogether without unnecessary delay. Several reasons occurred to him whysuch a work should be done: the magnitude of the Famine itself; thepeculiarity of its immediate cause; its influence on the destiny of theIrish Race. That there should be no unnecessary delay in performing thetask was sufficiently proved, he thought, by the fact, that testimony ofthe most valuable kind, namely, contemporary testimony, was silently butrapidly passing away with the generation that had witnessed the Scourge.
Having made up his mind to undertake such a work, the Author's firstpreparation for it was, to send query sheets to such persons as weresupposed to be in possession of information on the subject. And he hashere to express his gratitude and thanks to his numerous correspondents,for the kindness and promptness with which his queries were answered.He cannot recall even one case in which this was not done. But there isa dark side to the picture too. In looking over the query sheets now, itis sad to find how many of those whose signatures they bear have alreadypassed from amongst us.
Other materials of great importance lay scattered over the PublicJournals of the period; were buried and stowed away in ParliamentaryBlue Books, and Parliamentary debates;—were to be sought for inpamphlets, in periodicals, and more especially in the Reports of thevarious Societies and Associations, which were appointed for dispensingthe alms given with such free hand, to aid in saving the lives of thefamishing people. Those Records will be found quoted and referred to inthe course of the work.
Amongst them, it is but just to acknowledge, how much the Author owes tothe Report of the Census Commissioners for 1851; to the "Transactions"of the Society of Friends; and to the Irish Crisis, by Sir CharlesE. Trevelyan, Bart.; which originally appeared as an article in theEdinburgh Review for January, 1848, but was reprinted in a smallvolume of two hundred pages. Although far from agreeing with many of SirCharles's conclusions (he was Secretary to the Treasury during theFamine), still the Author cheerfully acknowledges, that the statisticalinformation in the Irish Crisis is very valuable to a student ofthe history of the Famine period.
It was to be expected, that the alarm about the Potato Blight and theFamine would be first raised through the public Press. This was done byletters from various localities, and by Special Reporters andCommissioners, who travelled through the country to examine the state ofthe people, as well as that of the potato crop. There was a Commissionerfrom the London Times in Ireland at this period. His letterswritten to that Journal were afterwards collected, and they made anoctavo volume of nearly eight hundred pages.
The English people, and many in Ireland, long adhered to the opinion,that there was much exaggeration in the Irish Newspapers regarding b