March 17th 1846: Ireland is to be coerced. In a four page supplement on the Irish Coercion Bill, however, the Nation notes the increase of infanticide in Victorian England. A leading article asserts that the 10,000 armed policemen maintained here under the pretence of keeping the peace are in reality part of an army of occupation.
But Henry Grattan jnr refers to the outrages against property committed in various parts of the country recently.
T.M. Ray, secretary of the Repeal Association, concludes his St Patrick's Day message: "Firmness, temperance, perseverance, peace and union, and, Ireland will again be a nation.
A relief committee estimates there are nearly 1,000 individuals in a state of abject poverty in Kilkee, Co Clare.
They "are what would be understood in England as starved, and what is understood in Ireland as half starved. Their cheeks are hollow and transparent, the mouth enlarged, the nose pinched in, the eyes glassy or else of a watery clearness. They scarcely utter any complaints; they do not beg of anyone walking around the village, but follow him silently in a crowd."
The Board of Works is employ 50 men at 10 pence a day. Yet such is the compassion of the poor that they have asked through their" pastor, Michael Comyn, that instead of 50 at 10 pence, 100 should be employed at five pence. "The people say their greatest anxiety is to be able to buy a little meal for the children; they will continue to eat the diseased potatoes themselves as long as any remain, but they cannot bear to hear the cries of the starving children."
March 20th: Patrick Hayden, secretary of the Carrickbeg relief committee in west Waterford, informs the Relief, Commission that three people have died of starvation.
March 21st: The Marquis of Clanricarde draws attention to "the hoarding of Indian corn meal by speculators.
March 23rd: Lord Londonderry makes a statement about the Ballinglass evictions: "76 families, comprising 300 individuals, had not only been turned out their houses but had even been mercilessly driven from the ditches to which they had be taken themselves for shelter and where they were attempting to get up a covering of some kind by means of sticks and mud... these unfortunate people had their rents actually ready."
Mrs Smith writes in her Wicklow diary: "... the famine is coming, has begun on the plains and must reach the hills, and though those immediately belonging to our small knot of good landlords may feel little of it, all around are already in misery, the poor broom man among them, who while walking up from the gate with me, his load upon his back, told me he had no work, no food, and was reduced to one meal a day, himself and his wife and five children."