thence sent over to Holyhead, and
dispatched to London and Liverpool forthwith. Let Irish Mails for
Galway, Dublin, &c., and Scotch Mails for Glasgow be made up on our
side, and let us see, by three or four fair trials, what saving of time
could be effected by landing the Mails at Galway, and then we shall be
in a position to determine the extent and character of the permanent
changes which are required. That a saving of fully twelve hours for
England and thirty for Ireland may be secured by making Galway the
European terminus of the Atlantic Mail Route, I am very confident, while
in the calculations of those who feel a local and personal interest in
the change the saving is far greater. But this is quite enough to
justify the inconsiderable expense which the experiment I urge would
involve.

Galway was formerly a place of far greater commerce and consequence than
it now is. It long enjoyed an extensive and profitable direct trade with
Spain, which, since the Union of Ireland with England, is entirely
transferred to London, so that not a shadow of it remains. At a later
day, it exported considerable Grain, Bacon, &c., to England, but the
general decline of Irish Industry, and the low prices of food since Free
Trade, have nearly destroyed this trade also, and there are now, except
fishing-boats, scarcely half a dozen vessels in the harbor, and of these
the two principal are a Russian from the Black Sea _selling_ Corn, to a
district whose resources are Agricultural or nothing, and a
smart-looking Yankee clipper taking in a load of emigrants and luggage
for New-York--the export of her population being about the only branch
of Ireland's commerce which yet survives the general ruin. Galway had
once 60,000 inhabitants; she may now have at most 30,000; but there is
no American seaport with 5,000 which does not far surpass her annual
aggregate of trade and industry. What should we think in America of a
seaport of at least 35,000 inhabitants, the capital of a large, populous
county, located at the head of a noble, spacious bay, looking off on the
broad Atlantic some twenty miles distant, with cities of twenty, fifty,
and a hundred thousand inhabitants within a few hours' reach on either
side of her, yet not owning a single steamboat of any shape or nature,
and not even visited by one daily, weekly, monthly, or at any stated
period? Truly, the desolation of Ireland must be witnessed or it cannot
be realized.

I judge that of n