bed for all_! How dreadful the truth--for it is true to the
letter. But we are not told the cause; on the contrary, subsequent
commentary ascribes the fact, in no gentle terms, to the "slothful,
filthy habits of the people." Yet, when such realities exist, it is not
wonderful that they who so patiently bear, should be set down as the
producers of their own misery--still they are not only not so, but they
have no power to release themselves from the thraldom which sinks them
day by day deeper in degradation.

Once more I return to the truck system of the potato. If 4,000,000 of
the people of Ireland have sustained life, and barely, on that root
alone--many and many a day without even salt--how well may it be
understood that they have not means to buy proper clothing. In fact,
their only hope for this, is on "_the woman_," as they express, whose
sole dependance has been on eggs from her few hens--knitting stockings,
in some localities, in others, spinning. But the numerous calls for
family necessities swallow up these little means; and it may with truth
be said, that except a single blanket, or a coarse rug, there is rarely
to be found any thing in their cabins as covering for the night. The
clothes of all are clubbed together to do the office of the blanket and
the counterpane. Then, think of the cabins they live in. In one county
alone, Mayo, there are 31,084 composed of one apartment only, without
glass windows, and without chimneys; and the door so frail and badly
made, that every blast finds its way through it. The floors are _mud_,
the beds straw or ferns strewed sometimes on stones raised above the
ground. The father and mother sleep in the centre, the children at each
side, and the pig and horse, or goat, as may be, at one end. How
dreadful it is to contemplate that such should be a fact existing in a
Christian country--and worse, that this most fearful reality, which
arises from the people's helpless misery, should be made a charge of
"filthy habit" in place of being urged as the ground-work for the
perfect change of a system which could allow so crying an evil. It is a
truth, that men, _women_ and children, pigs and cattle, lie in one
bed!--but what causes it? Their hopeless, helpless, poverty. They have
not a sufficiency of clothes to cover them at night in winter; _and if
they did not bring in the pig and cattle to create warmth in their
cabins, they must perish of cold_. This is the cause, and the only
cause