First News of the Famine

It was on the evening of December 7th, when about stepping into the train, at Kingstown, for Dublin, I heard a policeman relating to a bystander a case of famine at the south. The potato, I knew, was partly destroyed; but never thought that actual famine would be the result. The facts were so appalling, that had they not come from a policeman, who, it should be said, are in general men of veracity, my mind would have doubted; and when he added that "I got this information from a friend who was present in the court, and who wrote the circumstances to me," all queries were removed.