of the "mother country;" as for the
poor "sister island," from which all those people were to emigrate, she
had no manufactures to open a market for. But the Rotunda people would
send away another class too. The last clause of the 12th resolution
reads thus: "that as there must be a large amount of population
dependent for subsistence, during the year, upon public or private
charity, provision should be made for assisting those to emigrate, with
their families, who cannot be supported in this country by the exercise
of independent labour." (!) This is no slip of the pen. Almost every
word of every resolution, the noble chairman said, was carefully
discussed. The suggestion, then, is, that those who are _unable to
work_, from age, weak health, or, who, having got chronic coughs,
asthma, or rheumatism, by working for 6d. or 8d. a day, "wet and dry,"
on the land that gave them birth, and are now unfit to work any longer;
or, in rosewater phrase, "who cannot be supported in this country by the
exercise of independent labour," are to be "shot," like so much rubbish,
upon the shores of the western hemisphere--provided the crazy barques
into which they are to be huddled do not go down with them bodily, in
the middle of the Atlantic. Surely, of all other people, such were unfit
for emigration, being unfit to earn their bread; but they were a
burthen, a real burthen on the soil here, and so that the clearance took
place, the manner of it and its results to the exiled were held to be of
small account indeed.

Parliament was opened by the Queen in person, on Tuesday, the 19th of
January. She read the speech from the throne, about two-thirds of which
related to Ireland exclusively. No wonder. The state of that country had
become the theme of public writers, politicians and philanthropists in
both hemispheres. England was on her trial before the civilized world.
Could not she, the richest nation of the earth, whose capitalists
searched the globe for undertakings in which to invest their vast and
ever accumulating wealth--could not she--or _would_ not she--save the
lives of those starving Irish, who were her subjects, and who, if not
loved by her like others of her subjects, were at least useful in giving
size and importance to the empire, and in fighting those battles which
helped her to keep her place among first-class nations; useful in
opening up, with the bayonet's point, those foreign markets so essential
to her iron and cotton