Rev. John O’ Rourke, The history of the great Irish famine of 1847, with notices of earlier Irish famines, Dublin, J. Duffy & Co., 1902, p. 100

He put the potato blight in the foreground ; for, with the instinct of the caddice worm, he felt that this was the piece of bulrush by which he could best float his Free Trade policy, his Government and himself.