be the destitution of a country where the very pigs can not subsist! And yet in February of last year, there was found in the county of Sligo, “a hamlet of three cottages, with outhouses, containing three families (of three brothers) numbering in all, thirty-two persons,' where adults were, "lying on the ground in fever, unable to move," and children with their little limbs withered to bones and sinews, and their faces and stomachs bloated for want of food, were "gnawing the flesh from the bones of a pig which had died in an out-house."* So comfortable and contented had these families been, that a few months before they had refused to surrender a lease of twelve acres for £60.

Nor was this an extreme case. Painful as the recital is, we must mention a few others of a similar character, taken at random from the multitude reported upon the highest authority. This part of our subject we would gladly pass over in silence; but it is important that we should realize the extent and aggravation of the misery which we are seeking to alleviate.

Mr. J. Wilson Browne, an English gentleman of intelligence and philanthropy, visited the western districts of Ireland, at the period of greatest distress, in 1847, with a view to ascertain the actual wants and sufferings of the people, and the best mode of administering relief. He confined his observations to the Province of Connaught, the part which had been least visited," and particularly to the county of Mayo. Concerning facts which he narrates, he says:

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as

"In making these statements, my ob. ject is not to harrow the feelings of my readers by the most horrible cases it was possible to collect. I wish simply to place before them the true state of the

Correspondence, Board of Works Series, (part 2) p. 180. Quoted by Shrewsbury.

country, as seen by an unprejudiced wit ness. I neither sought nor inquired for solitary cases of destitution, nor went out of the way to find particular spots worse than others. I simply wish to describe the general state of the country, and for which were made on the spot. I walkthat purpose copy verbatim the notes ed over as much space as was convenient, through a street, along a lane, or by a mountain path, entering promiscuously whatever cabin appeared to contain a few people. Having questioned the latter, I got their answers authenticated by the minister, or some respectable inhabitant of the place, and thus obtained a more general view of the state of the country than isolated cases would afford. I may add that I invariably heard of far worse cases than those I witnessed, from parties constantly on the spot, who furnished me with names, and all particulars; but I forbear speaking of anything that did not come under my own observation. I went prepared to see misery, general and unprecedented, such as had scarcely been equalled in extent or in intensity; but although I did not see one-tenth part of the suffering going on continually around me, I was quite unprepared for what I met. Death seemed to pace the streets-in districts where I had before observed a fine healthy race of people, I encountered collections of skeletons, whose haggard looks spoke volumes of hopeless misery. Wretched countenances-emaciated forms-the dying and the dead-funerals and desolation caught the eye on every side-busy villages were turned into charnel houses. I was awe becoming cemeteries-cabins were being struck. To appreciate such misery we must behold it."-pp. 8, 9 and 11.

We give a few cases in the simple, graphic language of the narra tor, that our readers may be introduced to those scenes of wretched. ness with which this unhappy coun. try abounds. The first is from the town of Ballina,-population from 5,000 to 6,000.

"In a small street, called 'Cockle street,' I entered promiscuously a num ber of cabins, going from door to door and examining the state of each family. The result was, that I found on an aver age, eight or ten persons congregated together in every hut, without clothing, beyond a few miserable rags to cover them, and without furniture, bedding or food. To describe the condition of the worst, is impossible; but some idea may be formed by comparison when I state, that without the slightest exaggeration, the

most comfortably off, had a thin shakedown of straw in a corner, for the whole family to lie upon, with one or two tattered blankets, about the size of a common horse-cloth to cover them. Their cabins were much out of repair, from the inability of the tenants to thatch them, so that the interiors are exposed to every fall of rain which keeps the starving inmates cold as well as hungry. Finally, those who got a living received on the average, 10d. per diem. Indian meal, the cheapest food they could procure, was selling at 2s. 9d. per stone of 14 lbs., and bread was 11d. for 4 lbs., or nearly 3d. per lb. Therefore, each man could procure for his day's wages 33 lbs. of food. A man receiving 10d. a day, has generally a household of eight and frequently ten or more persons to support. Thus each person would get less than half a pound of bread per diem, and this under favorable circumstances. It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that I found the inhabitants of Cockle street little more than walking skeletons-their appearance was shocking in the extreme. seemed as if they could not live through the day, and yet they are most of them still dragging on a miserable existence. Some were standing near the doors, others seated on the ground, round a few sods of half-burning turf, looking melancholy and hopeless-some were stretched on a handful of straw, unable to move from exhaustion, others dying without aid; the children with pallid countenances, some crying to their helpless parents for food, others sunk in unconsciousness of their state, and the majority with swollen eyes and feet denoting the last stage of their disease."

They

We can not follow the writer in the details of his visits to the cabins separately--the memoranda of which, with respect to names, dates and circumstances, are given with a minuteness which inspires confidence -but must leave the horrors which he every where witnessed to be inferred from two or three instances selected at random. In a cabin at Ballina, he found eight persons, a widow, her daughter, her son-in-law, and their five children, subsisting on four quarts of gruel per diem; the man lying on the ground dying of dysentery. This gruel or "soup" as it was called, was nothing but a thin "stirabout" containing one or two ounces of meal to a pint of water. In another cabin he found four

persons, the head of the family and the two children lying ill, and entirely dependent upon the earnings of the wife on the road, which procured about five ounces of bread for each per diem. At Westport, fifteen persons were found in one hovel, who had had but two quarts of meal among them for three days, who were without fire or covering, and several sick and dying. In Castlebar, the principal town in Mayo, he found in a cabin twelve feet by eight, ten persons without employment, four of them adults, subsisting on six quarts of watery soup per diem. Three of the children were dying, and there were but two blankets to cover the entire household. In another cabin, the wife was lying dead on a table where she had just breathed her last; the husband was sick and unable to work, with three children of his own and five of another family to be provided for. In the neighborhood of Galway, he found a family of seven persons who had been for a whole day without food, and who were eat. ing a morsel of sea-weed. At Greatman's Bay, a distracted moth. er buried her children alive, and then attempted to destroy herself. Corpses were deposited coffinless in holes hastily dug, where they fre quently became the prey of dogs and eagles. The corpse of a mother was found with the breasts partially eaten off by her own starving infant.

Similar facts are narrated by Father Mathew, by the multitudinous correspondents of the Board of Works, and also by our own countryman, Mr. Elihu Burritt, who was an eye-witness of the horrors of famine. Says the Irish "Apostle of Temperance," in a letter to Mr. Trevelyan, dated Aug. 7, 1846, "On the 29th of last month, I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant (the potato) bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3d inst., I beheld with sorrow one wide waste

of putrefying vegetation. In many places the people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodles."

The Dublin University Magazine for April, 1847, gives the following affecting view of the condition of the country.

"Four millions of people, the majority of whom were always upon the verge of utter destitution, have been suddenly deprived of the sole article of their ordinary food. Without any of the ordinary channels of commercial intercourse, by which such a loss could be supplied, the country has had no means of replacing the withdrawal of this perished subsistence, and the consequence has been, that in a country that is called civilized, under the protection of the mightiest monarchy upon earth, and almost within a day's communication of the greatest and richest empire in the world, thousands of our fellow creatures are each day dying of starvation, and the wasted corpses of many left unburied in their miserable hovels, to be devoured by the hungry swine, or to escape this profanation only to diffuse among the living the malaria of pestilence and death. . . . It is an incident of the neglect with which the people, when living, have been treated, that we have no note of them when dead. The occupation of Death has not been interfered with, even by registering the number he has carried off. . . . It is long since the coroners gave over in despair the task of holding inquests upon the bodies of those whom starvation had stricken down. . . . 'Death by starvation' has ceased to be an article of news."

Such was the condition of Ireland in 1847. But it is obvious that misery so general and so appalling could not have resulted from the failure of a single crop, if the people had not been previously reduced to a state

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of privation bordering on famine. Mrs. Nicholson's sprightly volume. gives us a view of Irish life in the two or three years preceding the famine, when "the distress" was beginning to be felt. The authoress went to Ireland upon a romantic but a philanthropic mission. Having be come interested in the Irish as a suffering people, through her charitable intercourse with them in the garrets and cellars of New York, she went at her own expense, “ to see the poor peasant by way-side and in bog, in the field and by his peat fire, and to read to him the sto ry of Calvary." She traveled alone and principally on foot, visiting not only the poor of the cities, but the rural population of several counties, and often lodging in their humble cabins and partaking of their humble fare. The latter, however, was no privation to her; for being an ardent disciple of Graham, and having kept a boarding-house in New York upon his dietetical system, what greater luxury could she have asked than the ubiquitous potato served up in true Irish style? We believe that the only instance in which she refused it, was when she had seen the mistress of the cabin wash the delectable lumpers' with her feet, and in the pot in which they were to be boiled. She commonly made her way to the hearts of the peasantry by sitting down to their mess of potatoes and salt, even without the accompaniment of "ay and bread;" and luckily for her, the rot had not then become general. Her familiar intercourse with the common people enabled her to gather up many facts touching their condition, which escape the notice of those who furnish us with "Pencilings by the Way" and sketches of "Killarney Lakes”—“ from the tops of coaches and from smoking dinner tables." To those who wish to be introduced to Irish life in all its mirthful and its sad realities, we recommend the narrative of this fe

food was thus cut off at a stroke. The evil lies much deeper than the potato-rot, or than the famine of which it was the occasional cause. There were antecedent causes in the structure and habits of society, and in the tenure of property, which were fully developed in that unavoidable and fatal calamity. If the interest in the state of Ireland which that calamity has awakened in Parliament and throughout England, shall lead to the removal of some of the prime causes of her degradation, the famine will prove to have been a national blessing.

It is hastily inferred from the general poverty of the Irish peasantry, and from the fact that the potato has formed their principal food, that the soil of Ireland is incapable of sustaining her population. Even Archbishop Whateley seems to incline to this opinion. We have already said that Ireland" with its existing means of production," is incapable of supporting its present population. But the productiveness of the soil is capable of being very much increased, and there are vast natural resources as yet undeveloped. The soil of Ireland, leaving out of view of course the bogs and mountains, which, as at present unimproved, constitute about one-fourth of the whole, the cultivable soil of Ire land is in general superior to that of England, and equal to that of any part of Europe. It consists chiefly of a "loam, resting on a substratum of limestone," which though commonly shallow, is very fertile, and which in some counties is deep, fine and friable. As a grazing country, Ireland has no superior in Europe. The climate is generally temperate and equable, though excessively humid. This latter circumstance perhaps renders the soil more suitable for grazing than for agricultural purposes, a peculiarity noticed in the most ancient descriptions of the country. Yet it is a curious fact that Ireland exports grain in large

and increasing quantities to Great Britain. In 1800 the quantity of wheat and wheat flour, barley, oats and oatmeal, rye, peas and beans exported, was only 3,238 quarters; in 1818 it was 1,204,733 quarters, and in 1838 it had reached 3,474,302 quarters, or 27,794,416 bushels, of which one-sixth was wheat. This has been about the average since, and even last year the exportation exceeded two millions of quarters. The exports of Ireland, consisting chiefly of corn and flour, butter, pigs, eggs, cattle, &c., have fre quently exceeded in value her imports, which are chiefly coal, salt, cotton and woollen manufactures, tea, coffee, tobacco, &c. This cer tainly does not look like incapacity for domestic prosperity. A country with the balance of trade so often in her favor, and that on account of domestic productions, can not be ir retrievably ruined by any calamity, however wide-spread or disastrous. True, this balance may not all re turn to Ireland in specie; it may be converted to the uses of absentee' Irish proprietors, residing on the eastern side of the channel; but the fact itself is instructive.

But we have more specific testimony to the abundant physical resources of Ireland. In the address of the "Royal Agricultural Improvement Society," for 1846, it is sta ted, that "there is not an estate in Ireland, scarcely a farm, in which, by judicious drainage, the natural powers of the soil may not be brought out, and luxuriant crops reward the labor upon land previously. regarded as barren. In every dis trict may be seen tracts in which labor might be expended with advantage; and in all these districts are to be found masses of people in want of food, or of wages to pur chase food. It is for the landed proprietors of Ireland to place the wants of the land and the wants of the people in suitable connec tion; to support the one, by em