cottier, but to his pig and his fowl; when, therefore, work was plenty, and the labourer diligent, he could occasionally improve his fare by such additions of bread, bacon, or fish, as the village could afford; but when things were adverse, and these luxuries could not be procured, he always expected to fall back upon his store of potatoes, or to be able to buy them at three halfpence a stone.

On the other hand, wherever a vacuum is created, there is always a provision in nature to fill it up; where men are not obliged to work, they soon became indolent; potatoes support a family without much labour, and the poor man calculates accordingly. The privilege of growing the Irishman's root is eagerly sought for; he who has an acre feels that he can live out of it; and if any one even hint at a wish to dispossess him, he will not scruple to revenge himself by violence or murder.

This year, however, by an inscrutable providence, a single night has destroyed the food of the peasantry of Ireland. The disease of 1845 was this year followed by a blight which checked the growth of the plant, prevented the root from growing to its full size, and ended by causing the stalks to die away, as if after a hard frost in the month of November. The whole country was thus brought to the verge of famine; the blackened stalks and rotten roots presented one universal picture of destruction; many perches of ground scarcely yielded a single bushel; and the very pigs preferred turning up the neighbouring stubble to searching for food in ridges which had been planted with potatoes. To estimate the loss which the island has sustained, let us suppose that three millions of the people depend for their provision on the potato crop; let us then suppose that it will require a pound of Indian meal each day, at a penny a pound, to feed each: this calculation is greatly below the truth, both in quantity and price, as a pound is a small allowance, and Indian meal now sells at 1s. 7d. per stone. The result is, that the sum required to feed a population of three millions is £12,500 per day!

Again, we must remember that each head of a family has already paid for his year's provisions, by expending his seed and labour upon his ground, and that therefore, by enabling him now to feed himself and his children, we are only giving him a power of paying for his subsistence over again, as his first expenditure has been lost.

Here is a calamity which all must feel and deplore, and an emergency which it is the duty of every government to meet, as far as possible. There are two ways of doing so; either, as Sir Robert Peel did last year, by establishing stores of corn in various districts, and selling it at such a rate as to keep down the markets to a moderate price; or, by trusting to the demand to create

the supply, and leaving the price of food to find its own level between the buyer and seller. All Whigs profess to understand political economy; and Lord John Russell has declared his determination to adopt the latter plan. It is very easy to talk of the duty of a government to feed the people; but when the price comes to be estimated by millions, and the quantity required by thousands of tons, there are practical difficulties to be encountered, which newspaper writers never find it worth their while to consider. If the government could, by means of some hundred shiploads of Indian corn, render food as plentiful as it was last year, the natural extravagance and indolence of the peasantry would consume the supply in a month; the food would be eaten, and no more could be found. Dearness of provisions (like pain in the body) is a providential warning to take care of what we have already; we feel pain when exposed to the fire, and we preserve ourselves by shrinking from it; we find food dear, and we become careful of it in proportion. Again, as merchandize will flow to the dearest market, if maize be reduced to a fictitious price, the farmers will export their wheat and oats, instead of giving the people the benefit of the productions of the country. If a city be besieged, and provisions become scarce, the governor necessarily puts his men upon short allowance; this raises the price of food; but it also renders every man careful not to waste his share, and holds out a premium to the neighbouring country to bring in corn even at a risk and difficulty to themselves. If, on the other hand, the governor were to open his stores on the first pressure, food might be abundant for a short time, but the premium on the supply would be lost, useless animals would be allowed to consume, and the want would soon be felt more severely than ever. It appears to us that these are the principles on which her Majesty's advisers are acting. When one of the great merchants offered to supply the Treasury with any quantity of Indian corn at a penny per pound, Lord John Russell said he intended to leave the matter to private speculation. We may suppose, therefore, that nothing but absolute necessity will induce the government to interfere directly with the markets. But whichever method be considered most advisable for the introduction of provisions, both parties are agreed upon the necessity of finding employment. While the labourer had provisions at his door, it was no great matter whether he were employed or not; but now a single day's idleness reduces a whole family to want; and as scarcity of food produces scarcity of money, while there is greater occasion for constant work, there is less means of giving it. The Act before us was passed for this very purpose. It received the royal assent on the 28th of August last, and the failure

of the crop was only suspected on the 18th of July. This affords us one proof out of many of the blessings of the British constitution. The calamity was scarcely understood, there was no time for it to be felt, before the whole wisdom of the nation was called upon to deliberate on the best means of obviating the evil. The act certainly is incomplete; but this arises from the fact that it was passed at once, and before the extent of the failure could be known, or the remedies practically considered. The Act empowers the Lord Lieutenant, on the representation of the landowners of a barony, to call extraordinary presentment-sessions. These sessions have the power of presenting for public works, subject to the Lord Lieutenant's approval. The money for executing the works is to be advanced by the Government, and to be repaid by the barony in a period not exceeding twenty years. The interest of 3 per cent. is charged, and the money is raised like the Irish poor-rate, according to a valuation, partly from the occupying tenant, and partly from the landlord. The Act only contemplates work upon roads, cutting down hills, and repairing highways. In a season like the last year, this would have been quite sufficient; but it soon appeared, that if all were to be employed, the land would be heavily charged for unproductive works, and that a permanent burden would be entailed upon the country, in relieving it from a temporary calamity. Under these circumstances, the Lord Lieutenant took upon himself the responsibility of allowing the extraordinary sessions to present for productive works, namely, works of draining and improving land, promising to advance money to the proprietors on receiving a guarantee from them that the money should be made a charge on the land, and repaid by instalments in ten years, with the interest of 3 per cent. Both descriptions of works are to be executed by the Board of Works; the labourers are to be paid by the piece, once in the week, and in cash. Their wages are to be at a rate rather under the usual rate of wages in the country, as it would be a great evil to draw off labourers from ordinary work, as the land would be unnecessarily charged, and the produce of next year materially injured. Relief committees, consisting of the magistrates, beneficed clergy, and senior Roman Catholic priests, have the power of recommending labourers; and the Government have liberally assisted any local subscriptions which they have been able to raise. Our readers will recollect, however, that until the beginning of October the sessions had no power to present for reproductive works.

Under these circumstances arose those most anomalous assem

A barony is a subdivision of a county, answering to a hundred.

blies which have been well styled Extraordinary presentment Sessions. Let us imagine a few magistrates (from one to five or six), and a number of farmers, not exceeding twelve, chosen by lot from among the largest cess-payers of the barony, called together into a court-house, with the building crowded to suffocation, and a mob of many thousands in the streets. Let us remember that these people have been trained to a species of covert rebellion, or continued opposition to the law and institutions of the Saxon; that they are told that these sessions have the power of providing for them, and giving them large wages for little work; that perhaps half the crowd are really suffering from the failure of the crop, and the other half worked up to violence by imaginary grievances let us recollect that some magistrates are unpopular, because they are strict in the exercise of their duty; and that others have been appointed as a reward for agitation, or in other words, because they have co-operated with the people in the violation of the law that some country gentlemen are easily frightened, and that others, even with good intentions, are weak enough to give up a principle for the sake of popular applause let us not forget, that the associated cess-payers live among the people, and are liable to have their haggards burned on the most trifling pretence. We can easily see that unproductive works will be most popular, as the less useful they are, the less hurry there will be to have them completed, and therefore the less labour will be imposed on the men. These circumstances may give us some idea of the difficulties attendant on the extraordinary presentment sessions; and they afford us another proof, if another were required, that Ireland is quite unfit to govern herself. The rate-payers also in many places imagined, that if they could only present largely enough, the government would never be able to enforce the repayment of the money; so that every thing tended to lead the magistrates and cess-payers to present as largely as possible, and run the chance for the consequences.

Ireland has, besides, two remarkable features: it is the country where jobs flourish as in a most congenial soil; every indolent man thinks that if the public will do his private business or pay him double price for doing it himself, he has gained a most desirable advantage. The old grand jury system was altered, because it was found that a few roads, leading to the residences of the grand jurors, were well mended, to the neglect of the interests of the rest of the county. Again, the Irish have a wonderful love of contrivance; it is a sort of national talent, and they are proud of displaying it. The peasant sticks an old hat into his window where a pane of glass has been broken, or claps a headless bee-hive upon

the hole in the top of his cabin, and then gives himself credit for having contrived an admirable substitute for a glass window or an earthen chimney. A stranger on his arrival in Dublin, with a great number of parcels, places them in a heap upon an outside car, and looks at them in despair, having no means of keeping them together, and being obliged to reach a distant public conveyance in a quarter of an hour. But no such idea of despondency ever enters the fertile brain of the car-driver; he looks but once at the parcels, and in less time than the Englishman can say, "Now then, I say, how am I to get on?" he seizes a ragged boy by the waistband of what remains of his breeches, and throws him upon the step of the car; the boy intuitively understands what is required, he stands on the step, holding on by the driving-seat with one hand, keeping the parcels together with the other, and, by various changes of attitude, interposing his body against any stray band-box or carpet-bag which manifests an intention of leaving the conveyance for the street. The driver dashes away, and the Englishman arrives at his destination, thoroughly despising the Hirish, but at the same time smiling at the ingenuity which substitutes a living boy for an inanimate rope. This principle, of putting every thing to a use for which it was not naturally intended, pervades the legal as well as the ordinary proceedings of Ireland. What a noble opportunity then for the exercise of ingenuity and the practice of jobbing, must have been afforded by these presentment-sessions, where money must be levied for the support of the poor, where the greatest difficulty was to find work to be done, and where the popular voice was raised to cry out for a large public assessment.

As our object is to give our readers an idea how things go on in Ireland, we shall sketch a few scenes at presentment sessions, some from the newspapers, and some from the testimony of friends who have been eye-witnesses of the scenes described, as facts taken upon the spot afford the best means of judging of the real state of the country and the feelings of the people.

In the year 1845, when public works on a small scale were undertaken, in consequence of the loss of a part of the potato-crop, two farmers residing in a county not far from Dublin, appeared at the sessions for presenting for public works. Like many of our own countrymen, they had found that the hardest duty in the moral law is the love of our neighbour; as he who is constantly in our vicinity is most likely to interfere with our interest; and they had been for several years 66 no relations nor friends at all, but the hoight of enemies." They had frequently summoned each other to the petty sessions, and generally brought a long catalogue of