ader of the opposition,
seems to have been nothing more than this, that Peel still regarded
grain as a necessary exception to the principle of free trade, and Lord
John Russell was not clear that the time had come when it could be
treated otherwise than as an exception.

An event, however, over which no parties and no leaders had any control,
suddenly intervened to hasten the action and spur the convictions of the
leaders on both sides, and especially of the Prime Minister. This was
the great famine which broke out in Ireland in the autumn of 1845. The
vast majority of the Irish people had long depended for their food on
the potato alone. The summer of 1845 had been a long season of wet and
cold and sunlessness. In the autumn the news went abroad that the whole
potato crop of Ireland was in danger of destruction, if not already
actually destroyed. Before attention had well been awakened to the
crisis, it was officially announced that more than one-third of the
entire potato crop had been swept away by the disease, and that it had
not ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, was spreading more and
more every day.

The general impression of those who could form an opinion was that the
whole of the crop must perish. The Anti-Corn-Law League cried out for
the opening of the ports and the admission of grain and food from all
places. Sir Robert Peel was decidedly in favor of such a course. The
Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley opposed the idea, and the
proposition was given up. Only three members of the Cabinet supported
Sir Robert Peel's proposals--Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney
Herbert. All the others objected, some because they opposed the
principle of the measure, and were convinced that if the ports were once
opened they would never be closed again, which indeed was probably
Peel's own conviction; and others on the ground that no sufficient proof
had yet been given that such a measure was necessary. Lord John Russell,
almost immediately after, wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his
constituents, the electors of the city of London, in which he declared
that something must immediately be done, that it was "no longer worth
while to contend for a fixed duty," and that an end must be put to the
whole system of protection, as "the blight of commerce, the bane of
agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes, the cause of
penury, fever, and crime among the people." This letter produced a
decisive effe