nd
persons on the parish rates; eighty-three thousand able-bodied men,
actually confined within the walls of the workhouse, and more than four
hundred thousand able-bodied men receiving out-door relief. What changed
all this and restored England in a very brief space to a condition
of affluence hardly before known in her annals? Not certainly the
alterations in the tariff which were made by Sir Robert Peel at the
commencement of his government, prudent and salutary as they were. No
one would pretend that the abolition of the slight duty (five-sixteenths
of a penny) on the raw material of the cotton manufacturer, or the free
introduction of some twenty-seven thousand head of foreign cattle,
or even the admission of foreign timber at reduced duties, could have
effected this. Unquestionably it was the railway enterprise which
then began to prevail that was the cause of this national renovation.
Suddenly, and for several years, an additional sum of thirteen millions
of pounds sterling a year was spent in the wages of our native industry;
two hundred thousand able-bodied labourers received each upon an average
twenty-two shillings a week, stimulating the revenue both in excise and
customs by their enormous consumption of malt and spirits, tobacco and
tea. This was the main cause of the contrast between the England of '41
and the England of '45.

Was there any reason why a proportionate application of the same remedy
to Ireland should not proportionately produce a similar result? Was
there anything wild or unauthorized in the suggestion? On the contrary:
ten years before (1836), the subject had engaged the attention of her
Majesty's government, and a royal commission had been issued to inquire
into the expediency of establishing railway communication in Ireland.
The commissioners, men of great eminence, recommended that a system
of railways should be established in Ireland, and by the pecuniary
assistance of government. They rested their recommendation mainly on the
abundant evidence existing of the vast benefits which easy communication
had accomplished in Ireland, and of the complete success which had
attended every Parliamentary grant for improving roads in that country.

The weakness of the government, arising from the balanced state of
parties, rendered it impossible at that time for them to prosecute the
measures recommended by the royal commissioners, though they made an
ineffectual attempt in that direction. Could it