abundant and cheap enough if the people had money to buy it. "There was
no want of food of another description for the support of human life; on
the contrary, the crops of grain had been far from deficient, and the
prices of corn and oatmeal were very moderate. The calamities of 1822
may, therefore, be said to have proceeded less from the want of food
itself, than from the want of adequate means of purchasing it; or, in
other words, from the want of profitable employment."[36] Poor
Skibbereen, that got such a melancholy notoriety in the later and far
more terrible Famine of '47, was reported, in May, 1822, to be in a
state of distress "horrible beyond description." Potatoes were not
merely dear, they were inferior, not having ripened for want of
sufficient heat; and, furthermore, they soured in the pits. The use of
such unwholesome food soon brought typhus fever and dysentery upon the
scene, which slaughtered their thousands. In parts of the West the
living were unable to bury the dead, more especially in Achill, where,
in many cases, the famine-stricken people were found dead on the
roadside. A Committee appointed by the House of Commons to investigate
this calamity reported, amongst other things, that the Famine was spread
over districts representing half the superficies of the country, and
containing a population of 2,907,000 souls.

There are no statistics to give an accurate knowledge of the numbers
that died of want in this Famine, and of the dysentery and fever which
followed. If the Census of 1821 can be relied on, which I much doubt,
the famine and pestilence of the succeeding year did not in the least
check the growth of the population, as it increased in the ten years
from 1821 to 1831, fifteen per cent.; an increase above the average,
even in the absence of any disturbing cause.

This famine was met by Government grants; by the contributions from the