The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-11-25 00:00:00

MODE OF PRESERVING POTATOES

The commissioners, appointed by government to en-
quire into the potatoe crop in Ireland, and to devise a
mode of its preservation from the ravages of the disease,
with which it is affected, have laid down a number of cu-
rative processes which they recommend to be adopted by
the farmers or peasantry. A great portion of these, how-
ever, pre-suppose the possession by them of means and
conveniences far beyond their reach ; and the remainder,
like all the crude prescriptions of speculative florists, upon
subjects widely removed from those which usually occupy
their philosophic cogitations, have been proved by practi-
cal experience to be positively hurtful. Amongst these are
the use of packing stuff in storing potatoes, which has in•
creased the rot wherever it has been applied ; pitting
without ventilation, the use of bog water, peati soil, &c.
The only efficaceous preservative has been found to be a
plan suggested, at a meeting held at Enniskillen, by Dr.
Halken, which has succeeded in every instance where it
has been properly tried, and may already be said to have
placed in safety the crop of the county Cavan, where
it has been adopted. The plan consists in constructing
the pits, with air chimneys at the tup, and flues through
them by which a complete ventilation is effected, and the
temperature of the potatoes stored in them brought to that
of the atmosphere. These pits require, however, to be
strictly watched, and on the appearance of any partial dis-
ease, the potatoes must be re-sorted to prevent its spread
and re-pitted. It is also recommended that, previous to
being thus stored, the potatoes should have a small slice
taken off each, it having been discovered that wherever,
in taking up, any have been cut by the spade, such pota-
toes have invariably kept sound.
Another plan, applicable to storage within doors, has
been discovered by Dr. Babington, and proved efficaci-
ous. It consists in placing alternate layers of turf and
potatoes, laid in such a manner as to conduct the air in
flues through the entire pile which may be raised to any
convenient height. This plan has the advantage of being
accessible to the house or shopkeeper, as well as the
farmer.

41.
O'CONNELL AS A LANDLORD

The public cannot have failed to have observed the
feeling of mingled uneasiness and rage with which the
" Commissioner" of the Times has been pursued in his
useful labours in Ireland by O'Connell and the Repeal
party. No language has been thought foul enough—no
falsehood gross enough—to he used in the effort to de-
fame his character and to injure his testimony as to the
condition of that ill-used country. The following pas-
sage from this gentleman's letter, from Kerry, will per-
haps account for the agitator and his allies wishing him
at the bottom of the Red Sea. They foresaw that he
might come to Derrynane in the course of his travels,
and, with his usual impartiality, describe the condition of
Daniel O'Connell's own happy and prosperous tenantry
" I never could divine the reason of the hubbub of the
O'Connell's—of their screeching and cackling and
hissing,' when the neglectful conduct to his tenantry of
the Marquis of Conyngham was exposed. Why should
men, who are eternally prating about absentee landlords
and neglectful landlords, and who are ever using the des-
titution and discontent of the poor tenants as a means of
abuse of English legislation, fall foul of me for exposing
a marked instance of neglect, whilst, at the same time
1 pointed out the benefits which had accrued to tenants
from the attention and encouragement bestowed on them
by Lord George Hill, a neighbouring 1 mdlord ? But my
eyes are open now. The murder is out.' It was another
instance what that clever fellow of Tralee calls waggery.'
There was an apprehension that the turn to have their
decent feathers plucked off might come round to the oc-
cupiers of Derrynane, and hence the cackling and screech-
ing and hissing of the flock of O'Connella, and Brodericka,
and Brownes. At and in the neighbourhood of C ahirci-
veen and Derrynane Mr. Daniel O'Connell possesses an
income from land of £3OOO a-year. A small portion of
this is his own fee-simple property ; another small por-
tion he rents on lease renewable for ever, and about two-
thirds of the property he holds on ten minable leases,
under the Dublin College, Mr. Hartop, Mr. Bland, and
Lord Cork. He is, in fact, for two-thirds of his pro-
perty a middleman, living on a profit rent derived from
small tenants : and we will sea presently how he manages
them. The bulk of this property is hold on a lease for
his own life. With his private affairs, however, I have
nothing to do, nor will I meddle with them, though
I had queer stories enough related to me. I have
no business with anything but the manner in which, by
his treatment of his sub-tenants, be benefits or injures
his countrymen and the country. A gentleman named
Butler, residing at Waterville, mentions a lease of land,
let by his father, to the father of Mr. Daniel O'Connell.
When old Mr. O'Connell died there were not 12 tenants
upon it, and in 1841, when the land came out of lease
(15 years afterwards), there were 54 tenants upon it.
(Ib. 895.) His general character as a landlord or mid-
dleman is, that any tenant who applies to him may have
leave to erect a cabin where he pleases. He permits sub-
division to any extent. This wins a certain degree of
popularity ; but the land under lease by him is, in conse-
quence, in the most frightful state of over-population.
The competition for land is, therefore, intense, and they
will offer almost any rent for the most miserable fragment
of land. In this condition they are left in a total state of
neglect. They have no agricultural schools ; no encou-
ragement ; none to lead or to guide them ; and the poor
creatures are left to subdivide their land and to multiply,
and to blunder on, until, in the words of Mr. Keane Ma-
bony, their principal feature is distress.' (Ib. 898.)
" I entered several of the cottages at a place called
Derrynane Beg, within a mile from Derrynane. The
distress of the people was horrible. There is not a pane
of glass in the parish, nor a window of any kind in half
the cottages. Some have got a hole in the wall for light,
with a board to stop it up. In not one in a dozen is there
a chair to sit upon, or anything whatever in the cottages
beyond an iron pot and a rude bedstead with some straw
on it ; and not always that. In many of them the smoke
is coming out of the doorway, for they have no chimneys.
In one that I entered the door was taken off the hinges
and made a table of, by placing it on two turf-baskets.
Unaided, and unguided, the poor creatures are in the
lowest degree of squalid poverty I have yet seen, and this
within sight of Derrynane-house. As one of the tenants
told me, ' they were eating one another's heads off, and
if they did not get some assistance they would starve and
the gaols would be full.' Wretched as are the tenants on
the Marquis of Conyngham's property in Donegal, their
conditibn is fully equalled by the condition of the tenantry
of Derrynane. The hissing and the screeching ' is thus
fully accounted for. In future, however, it will be re-
membered that amongst the most neglectful landlords
who are a curse to Ireland, Daniel O'Connell ranks first