ABSTRACT
In his letter in the 23 January 1846 issue o f the Manchester Examiner Alexander Somerville despaired at the downward spiral in which Ireland seemed to be caught during that terrible winter.
People are dying of want, and o f diseases induced by want. Those alive are, day by day, becoming too feeble to work. They have just been able to do enough to break up half the roads in Ireland in the process o f giving public work for public relief.... The feeble beings are not able to continue [road building] if it were desirable they should. It is not desirable.... The pay they now receive is not enough to get them food, at present prices, to keep up their work ing strength.... The landlords, most o f them only nominally land owners, are not receiving rent.... The estates are mortgaged to their full value. Never, in the known history o f mankind, was there a country and its people so dislocated as Ireland is now; so inextri cably ravelled, and its people in such imminent hazard o f perishing utterly (Somerville, 31).
