from impostors who profess to be travelling, and are either dying of hunger, or suddenly left without money in a strange place. The usual story is, that if they could but reach some place, twenty or fifty miles off, they would have quite enough; but that just now they have no acquaintance and no money, and have pledged their last available portion of property for food. The number of such persons probably amounts to several hundreds, if not thousands, as they are continually seen, and seldom return to the same town for years. These miserable beings have now an excuse which they had not before, as the plea of starvation may possibly be true, which in ordinary seasons would be treated as a lie. Some of them, however, have now adopted another course; like the mendicant in Gil Blas, they have learned to beg with arms in their hands; some of them now carry pitchforks or clubs, and declare they are starving; that they must have money or food; and in this way several persons in remote country places have been terrified into compliance. Of course, if the trade of begging improves with the increase of public commiseration for the poor, idleness will be a sufficient inducement to many to adopt it.

In preaching lately upon the famine, a Roman Catholic curate said, that if a man were starving he might seize upon food, or steal a little, and it would be no sin, or at most a venial one. One of his congregation immediately took the hint, and that night entered the house of the Roman Catholic rector, and carried off all the bacon and meal he could find. We believe this is not a solitary instance, and that in remote districts robberies under the plea of hunger have become very common.

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Bad tenants also take advantage of the times, to refuse payment of rent in several districts tenants have written to their landlords, asking how they might pay without their neighbours knowing it, as they were afraid of being murdered if it were discovered. In several places also the tenants have paid their rent, saying at the same time that they had been sworn not to do so, by strangers who had forcibly entered their houses in the night. On one of the estates above alluded to, a tenant, whose half-year's rent amounted to £2: 15s., declared that he was broke, horse and foot, and totally unable to pay the ghost of a halfpenny." The agent thought he was not telling the truth, and said so plainly: after a great deal of discussion, the man offered to pay £1, which he said he had borrowed; and the agent, to end the dispute, said he would take £1: 15s, and he could afterwards receive £1 through the post. "Well, sir," said he, " as I know your honour will not go back from your word, if you'll give me change of a pound, I'll pay you the one pound fifteen," taking, at the same time, £3 in

notes from his pocket. This instance shows us how incredulous we must be when an Irish Roman Catholic tells us a story by which he expects to excite compassion, or to forward his own interests.

From these circumstances we see that the labourers and small farmers will not be the only sufferers by the present distress. Many landlords are poor, because they are heavily charged or are deeply in debt, yet they are called upon to give liberally, and this is a part of their duty. But if they are not only obliged to give now, but are also to make reductions of rent, and to pay high poor-rates; if their current incomes are to be withheld on the ground of poverty, and, above all, if their estates are to be charged for unproductive works for years to come, it really appears to us, that landed estates must lose their value, or, in other words, that the people will have acquired a power of seizing upon and appropriating the real property of Ireland to themselves. The poor were certainly never well fed; though the land was fertile, the produce was exported. In the language of Moses' spies, it might have been said by those who intended to bring up an evil report, that "it is a land which eateth up the inhabitants thereof;" but now, since the famine and the new presentment sessions, we must change the expression; as, if matters were allowed to proceed unchecked, there would be every prospect of the inhabitants eating up the land. The Irish landlords are now a weak body; it has become fashionable to run them down; many Englishmen suppose them to be mere drones, consuming the industry of others, and oppressing the producer. The radical newspapers are always ready to join in the cry, because landlords belong to the aristocracy; the leaders of the present democratic movement will of course look upon them as a weak point, and turn their attack against them; and how far a government, constituted like Lord John Russell's cabinet, will have power to protect them, we do not at present see. Much good, however, may result, as well as much evil, from the present national affliction; it may be the means, under God, of leading the people of Ireland to see who are their real friends. Public opinion may thus be taught to regain a more healthy tone regarding the Established Church and the landed interest. The clergy are usually among the most active members of the relief committees; the task of getting men employed, and cheapening provisions, has in a great measure devolved on them; and if the

1 Where the valuation is equal to the rent (as the law supposes) the landlord returns the tenant half his rate. Where the valuation is under the rent the landlord pays more: radical guardians therefore always try to lower the valuation. The clergy are rated at their whole income.

people could only be brought to feel that they must depend upon the clergy and the landlords as their best support in time of need (and we believe this to be the case to a great extent), we should hear less of the Established Church being "the monster grievance of Ireland." We could show instances where large and useful works have been set on foot by a country curate; and in the county of Cork, a clergyman of our acquaintance is now regularly feeding sixty children every day, by giving them a breakfast of Indian meal stirabout: the children bring their own spoons, and sit in groups of five, round large milk-pans filled with stirabout and milk. We can scarcely suppose that such acts of practical benevolence will be forgotten, or that in after life these children will be ready to listen to those who tell them that the clergy are their enemies, and that the Irish Church is " a monstrous sinecure" and "a nauseous incumbrance." For many years, unhappily, through the system which the priests have established of setting every man to watch his neighbour, the Roman Catholic population have been quite shut out from the religious influence of the Protestant clergy, except where the Irish Scriptures have given them access to a few thousands in remote districts. Doubtless, however, these new features in the character and habits of the country will open the way hundreds of zealous men only wait for an opportunity; and he who is able to feed the body may easily obtain some influence, and may ultimately be consulted on the concerns of the soul.

The Lord Primate has called upon his clergy to hold a solemn assembly for prayer to God to avert the evils impending over the land; he has published an exhortation to be read on the Sunday before, and the day was at first fixed for the 30th of October; at the request, however, of the Lord Lieutenant, the day was put off till the 20th of November, and by his desire the other bishops have followed the example. For the two last months the same prayer used in England has been ordered to be read in all the churches in Ireland. We hope these acts of national humiliation will lead many to personal humiliation also, and that while men are thus led to reflect upon the judgments of God which are now abroad in the earth, many may be taught to examine into their own share in the sinfulness of the nation, and so be brought to unfeigned repentance. We have said little on the subject of national sins, as our object has been to deal with the remedies for the evil, rather than its cause; but it is a most remarkable feature in the present calamity, that, of all classes in Ireland, the small landholder, the fixity-of-tenure man, has suffered most severely. Now these are the persons who have been most guilty of the awful national sin of murder so common in Ireland. We say "national sin," because the

whole neighbourhood is too often ready to screen the guilty man; and thus, when, as in the case of Lord Norbury, a murder is committed, and the murderer passes through a crowd unimpeded, every individual in that crowd becomes an accessory, by approving the deed and concealing the perpetrator. We quote another anecdote, to show how this subject is viewed even by the people themselves, in some parts of the land. Shortly after the murder of Mr. Bell Booth, who was shot at Crossdoney in the county of Cavan, as he was returning from church at two o'clock in the day, a meeting was held to consider what measures should be adopted in consequence of the partial failure of the potato-crop of 1845. An influential nobleman occupied the chair, many country gentlemen and many of the clergy and Roman Catholic priests were among the speakers. Much had been said as to the causes of the failure of the crop, and several plans had been suggested for the employment of the poor. During a pause between two speakers, a man in a frieze coat at the lower end of the room, who seemed to be unknown to the gentry on the platform, began to speak in a slow and measured tone, not loud, but strong enough to be heard all over the room; he spoke to this effect: "There has this year been a new rain in the county of Cavan. It was not dew, it was not snow-it was blood: blood has fallen upon the earth, and blood never cries from the ground unavenged. Blood has been the seed sown in the land, and now you have the crop." Our informant tells us there was a pause in the room for several minutes : the words of the poor man seemed to fall with greater power than all that had been said; and the audience all seemed to feel that the land was guilty, and that the just judgments of God had overtaken it.

These small landholders, who are most guilty, have suffered most severely; the large farmer has certainly lost a valuable crop, but he gets an extremely high price for his wheat and oats. The labourer who holds no land certainly pays higher for his provisions, but wages are rather higher, and work is made much more abundant: the real sufferer then is the poor man who held two or three acres: his potatoes were his food, and the rest of his produce paid his rent; he has therefore lost his year's dependance at a blow. The very fact of the comparative ease by which such a man could live, made him the more determined to keep his land; he will now be forced to work, the land has ceased to provide him with cheap food, and therefore he will not value it as he did before. We may hope that the Irish peasant will now no longer cling to his land with the same tenacity; and that as God, in his mysterious providence, has destroyed one chief cause of agrarian outrages, they will

become less frequent in proportion. The peasant will from henceforth be obliged to labour constantly, either in rendering the soil of his own ground sufficiently productive to support his family, or in earning regular wages. He will thus, partially at least, be taught the value of industry, and, we hope, be enabled to raise himself above his present degraded condition. Should the potato crop be irrecoverably lost, and should Ireland prove unable to support her population without the assistance of Indian meal from America, it is most probable that emigration will be encouraged on a large scale, as the government may find it easier to carry Irishmen to the Indian corn than Indian corn to the Irishmen.

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Though we have thus pointed out some of the evils and abuses now existing, yet considering what Ireland is, and what elements are at work there, there is a surprising unanimity of purpose among all ranks thousands of right-minded men are agreed that the people must be employed and fed and it is only natural to suppose that wicked and interested agitators will endeavour to turn a public calamity to their own purposes. The bold and straightforward course adopted by the Lord Lieutenant, has received the approval of the conservative gentry, and the thanks of the relief committees; and if all parties would but follow his example, much evil might be counteracted and much good might follow. In conclusion, we would add a word of advice to relief-committees, whether in Ireland or England. It is probable that England, being rich, will be called upon to contribute her voluntary assistance to Ireland, which is poor; and the committee for the relief of the west of Ireland, which was established during the local famine of 1831, has been reorganized in Dublin. Such charitable institutions should make it their object to reduce provisions to last year's prices; this would be much better than increasing wages, or giving away food. If wages be increased it will be hard to diminish them when the pressure has ceased; and if food be given away indiscriminately, it will be undervalued and wasted. Those who have really no money to pay the half-price (as provisions are selling at nearly double the rate of last year) must look to their neighbours or relations for assistance, and those who are receiving wages every week can certainly afford to pay a part of the value. We think also, where relief is attempted on a large scale, the committee should send money to the places to be relieved, and if possible purchase provisions on the spot where they are to be sold. Giving tickets of a certain value, which dealers will take as part payment, is also a useful method. The carriage of provisions will be found doubly expensive to those who are not regular traders, and are ignorant of local facilities; and above all, if the committees com