ent along our wonder was not that the
people died, but that they lived; and I have no doubt whatever that in
any other country the mortality would have been far greater; that many
lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to
want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely,
touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his
starving neighbor."

The fishermen of the Cladagh, who were induced to send the Whig
Attorney-General to Parliament a few months before, had to pledge the
implements of their calling for a little daily bread. "Even the very
nets and tackle of these poor fishermen, I heard, were pawned, and,
unless they be assisted to redeem them, they will be unable to take
advantage of the herring shoals, even when they approach their coast. In
order to ascertain the truth of this statement, I went into two or three
of the largest pawnshops, the owners of which fully confirmed it and
said they had in pledge at least a thousand pounds' worth of such
property and saw no likelihood of its being redeemed."

In a rural district which he revisited after an interval, he paints a
scene which can scarcely be matched in the annals of a mediaeval plague:
"One poor woman whose cabin I visited said, 'There will be nothing for
us but to lie down and die.' I tried to give her hope of English aid,
but alas! her prophecy has been too true. Out of a population of two
hundred forty I found thirteen already dead from want. The survivors
were like walking skeletons; the men gaunt and haggard, stamped with the
livid mark of hunger; the children crying with pain; the women in some
of the cabins too weak to stand. When there before I had seen cows at
almost every cabin, and there were besides many sheep and pigs owned in
the village. But now all the sheep were gone, all the cows, all the
poultry killed, only one pig left; the very dogs which had barked at me
before had disappeared; no potatoes; no oats."

The young man pointed the moral, which these horrible spectacles
suggested, with laudable courage: "I would not now discuss the causes of
this condition, nor attempt to apportion blame to its authors; but of
this one fact there can be no question: that the result of our social
system is that vast numbers of our fellow-countrymen--of the peasantry
of one of the richest nations the world ever knew--have not leave to
live. Surely such a social result as this is not only a nat