pression. Spring had now set in, and the numbers of our
independent and most industrious countrymen that flocked towards our
great seaports were reckoned by many thousands; and this had been the
case for many a season previously. That something was wrong, and that
something is wrong in the country must, alas! be evident from the
myriad's who, whilst they have the means in their hands, are anxious to
get out of it as fast as they can. And yet there is not a country in the
world, a population so affectionately attached to the soil--to the place
of their birth--as the Irish. In fact, the love of their native fields,
their green meadows, the dark mountains, and the glorious torrents that
gush from them, is a passion of which they have in foreign lands
been often known to die. It is called Home Sickness, and we are aware
ourselves of more than one or two cases in which individuals, in a
comparatively early stage of life, have pined away in secret after their
native hills, until the malady becoming known, unfortunately too late,
they sought once more the green fields and valleys among which they had
spent their youth, just in time to lay down their pale cheeks and rest
in their native clay for ever those hearts which absence and separation
from the very soil had broken.

Now, nothing can be a greater proof of the pressure, the neglect, the
hopelessness of independence or comfort, which the condition of the
people, and the circumstances which occasioned it, have produced, than
the fact that the strong and sacred attachment which we have described
is utterly incapable of attaching them as residents in a country so
indescribably dear to their best affections. People may ask, and do ask,
and will ask, why Ireland is in such a peculiarly distressed state--why
there is always upon its surface a floating mass of pauperism without
parallel in Europe, or perhaps in the world? To this we reply simply
because the duties of property have uniformly been neglected. And in
what, may it be asked, do the duties of property consist? To this we
reply again, in an earnest fixed resolution to promote, in the first
place, the best social and domestic interests of the people, to improve
their condition, to stock their minds with, useful and appropriate
knowledge, to see that they shall be taught what a sense of decent
comfort means, that they shall not rest satisfied with a wad of straw
for a bed, and a meal of potatoes for food, and that they shall