labour in return for wages as oppression. Yet many of these very men, on a coast singularly destitute of safe creeks, prosecute the winter cod and ling fishing in open row-boats, at a distance from the land that renders it invisible unless in clear weather, and in a sea open to the Atlantic and Northern Oceans, with no land beyond it nearer than Iceland or America. They cheerfully encounter the perils and hardships of such a life, and tug for hours at an oar, or sit drenched in their boat without complaint; but to labour with a pick or a spade is to them most distasteful. It was even found necessary to bring labourers from other districts to execute part of the work, because the inhabitants could not be induced to engage or to persevere in. it.'

Sir James Matheson, whose princely liberality was met by the most disheartening ingratitude, offered the most liberal aid to all who were willing to emigrate. He proposed to cancel all arrears of rent, forgive them all debts, purchase their cattle if they could find no other purchasers, provide them with a free passage to Canada, and even, if a sufficient number went, to send a pastor of their own persuasion with them at his expense. But few were found to take advantage of such offers. The like offer was made to the inhabitants of Harris, with the further boon of being settled in Canada on the property of the same noble family under whom they lived at home. Not one family would accept; nor were they disposed to seek employment nearer home.'

It is not easy,' says Sir John M'Neill, 'to determine how much of this indisposition is to be attributed to ignorance and want of previous intercourse with other places, and how much to the efforts which have been made to support them at home. They have certainly considered not only the relief from the Destitution Fund, but also the wages and gratuities furnished by the proprietor, too much in the light of assistance to which they had a right, and which would therefore be permanent.'

It is evident that a permanent improvement of a population such as this can only be brought about by a total change of their condition, as well as of their state of feeling, and by their means of subsistence and their numbers being brought into harmony. The first step, and indeed the grand pre-requisite towards this most desirable consummation, is the extensive and speedy removal to our colonies of all who cannot find full employment and a comfortable sustenance at home; and the second is by the gradual operation of education, and other concurring influences, to strengthen the character and to essentially improve the habits of the people. At the time when the Government and the Legislature were called upon to grapple with the calamity of famine and pestilence which had fallen upon Ireland, and, though in a less destructive form, also upon the Western Islands and Highlands of Scotland, the country was passing through a period of severe commercial distress, the result of the extravagant speculations of the year 1845. Employment had grown scarce, wages had fallen, the crops had failed throughout the greater part of Europe, and in consequence our trade with the continental countries had greatly diminished. Bankruptcies were increasing in number, and the working classes, pinched by poverty, had grown discontented and restless. In February, 1847, the price of wheat rose to 102s. a quarter, and it rose still higher in the following months. A heavy cloud hung over the land, and it became denser and darker as the year advanced. The monetary confusion became so great that the trade and enterprise of the country were for a time at a stand-still. Day after day tidings of gigantic failures poured in. It was stated that in Lancashire alone these amounted to nearly £16,000,000, and Birmingham, Glasgow, and other great towns were in the same deplorable condition. The reckless speculations in railway shares were answerable for not a little of the ruin which now fell on the commercial classes; but a variety of other causes contributed to that

result. Great bodies of shareholders in sound railways were obliged to sell out at a ruinous loss. The immense fall in the price of corn made many of the largest houses bankrupt. Several considerable banks stopped payment. A panic arose which reached a crisis when it was found that on the 21st October the reserve in the Bank of England had sunk to £1,600,025. Credit was suspended, and the whole trade of the country seemed about to be paralyzed. The pressure of the great London banking houses at length induced the Government in this emergency to authorize the Bank of England on the 25th October to issue notes beyond the amount prescribed by the Bank Charter of 1844, on the ground that the time had arrived when they ought to attempt by some extraordinary and temporary measure to restore confidence to the mercantile and manufacturing community.' The good effect of this step was immediately felt. Confidence was restored, gold began to pour in, the coffers of the bank were speedily replenished, and by the end of January, 1848, the rate of interest had fallen from eight to four per cent. It is much to the credit of the Government and the Legislature, and especially to the great body of the people of England and Scotland, that embarrassed as they were with these financial difficulties, and straitened in their own circumstances, not only were the immense sums of public money given without a murmur, but private subscriptions were made on an unprecedented scale of liberality to relieve the sufferings of their Irish fellow-subjects.

It is noteworthy that the last time the great Irish agitator, Daniel O'Connell, addressed the House of Commons (Sth February, 1847), was on the subject of the distress which at that time prevailed so widely in Ireland. His health had for some time been failing, and the sufferings of his countrymen had completely crushed his spirit. His voice was now sunk almost to a whisper, but the members from all sides of the House

gathered round the eloquent orator to listen to the last words delivered by him in the House of Commons, which formed an appropriate close to his career there.

'I am afraid,' he said, 'that the House is not sufficiently aware of the extent of the misery; I do not think that its members are sufficiently impressed with the horrors of the situation of the people of Ireland. I do not think they understand the miseries, the accumulated miseries, under which the people are at present suffering. It has been estimated that 5000 adults and 10,000 children have already perished from famine, and that 25 per cent. of the whole population will perish unless the House will afford effective relief. They will perish of famine and disease unless the House does something speedy and efficacious—not doled out in small sums, not in private and individual subscriptions, but by some great act of national generosity, calculated on a broad and liberal scale. If this course is not pursued Parliament is responsible for the loss of 25 per cent. of the population of Ireland. I assure the House most solemnly that I am not exaggerating. I can establish all I have said by many and many painful proofs, and the necessary result must be typhus fever, which in fact has broken out and is desolating whole districts. It leaves alive only one in ten of those whom it attacks.'

With the hope that change of climate and relief from the distressing scenes which he witnessed at home, might restore his health and reinvigorate his constitution, O'Connell resolved to pay a visit to Rome. The Pontiff, Pius IX., who was at that time pursuing a course of popular measures soon to have a painful termination, was preparing, with the cordial approbation of his subjects, a triumphal reception for the man who had done so much for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, when the tidings reached him that the Liberator's illness had terminated somewhat suddenly at last, at Genoa, on the 15th of May, in the seventysecond year of his age. His heart was

embalmed and carried on to Rome; his body was conveyed back to Ireland, and interred with great pomp and ceremony in the cemetery of Glasnevin, near Dublin. In 1869 his remains were removed from the vault where they had lain twenty-two years, and placed in a new tomb erected in the same cemetery. No one will question the vast importance of the services which O'Connell rendered to his own countrymen, though the drawbacks were not inconsider

able. If the moral qualities of the Liberator' had been equal to his intellectual powers, his reputation as a patriot would have been held in as great respect among Englishmen and Scotsmen as it once was among his own countrymen. But the agitators who since his death have acquired a predominant influence in Ireland, have been of such a character as to make O'Connell regretted even by those who in his lifetime were most strongly opposed to his policy.

THE Parliament was dissolved in the month of July, 1847, and the writs for the new election were made returnable on the 21st of September. The adoption of Free Trade had removed the main question on which the two political parties had for some years contended, and there was no subject of any great importance to excite popular feeling. The recent split in the Conservative party had greatly impaired their strength, and the supporters of Sir Robert Peel were much more friendly to the Government than to the Protectionists, who looked to Lord Stanley, Lord George Bentinck, and Mr. Disraeli as their leaders. On the whole, the Government gained by the elections. The city of London returned three Liberals, with Lord John Russell at the head of the poll, and one Conservative, who gained his seat by only three votes. Westminster sent De Lacy Evans and Lushington, and the other metropolitan burghs returned Radicals rather than Whig candidates. Roebuck was ejected from Bath, which he had represented for fifteen years. Edinburgh, to the surprise and regret of many, showed its resentment at Mr. Macaulay's votes in favour of the Maynooth grant by placing him third on the poll. Mr. Villiers, the veteran leader of the Free Trade party in the House of Commons, was returned for South Lancashire, as well as for Wolverhampton, which he had repre

sented since 1835; and Mr. Cobden was elected both for the West Riding of Yorkshire and for Stockport. Mr. Gladstone's seat for Oxford was vigorously but unsuccessfully assailed by a Mr. Round, a champion of the No-Popery party. Sir John B. Hobhouse, however, was defeated at Nottingham by a combination of Protectionists and Chartists; and by an equally unnatural alliance of Orangemen and Repealers Mr. Reynolds was returned for Dublin along with Mr. Grogan.

The Ministry, however, had not gained much strength by the election, and their stability was dependent on the divisions among their opponents rather than on the cordiality of their supporters. They found it necessary to summon the new Parliament to meet on the 18th of November, in consequence both of the commercial distress prevailing throughout England and Scotland, and the distracted and dangerous state of affairs in Ireland. In that unhappy country no gratitude had been either expressed or felt for the munificent aid which England and Scotland had so readily given to the Irish people in the time of their distress. The increase of crime kept pace with the progress of the famine. The new Ministry, on their accession to office, proposed the temporary renewal of the Arms Bill; but in consequence of the dissatisfaction which this proposal caused among their