ys, ordered precautions to
be taken; she has summoned Parliament for an early day, and looks with
confidence to the advice she shall receive from the united council of
the realm.

The Corporation of London addressed her Majesty on the same occasion,
deploring the sufferings and privations of a large portion of her
subjects in England, Ireland, and Scotland, which they attributed to
"erroneous legislation, which, by excluding the importation of food, and
restricting commerce, shuts out from the nation the bounty of
Providence." They, therefore prayed that the ports of the kingdom might
be opened for the free importation of food. While the Corporation of
London did not, we may presume, exclude the peculiar distress of Ireland
from their sympathies, their real object in going to Windsor was to make
an anti-Corn Law demonstration. So much was this the case, that the
deputation consisted of the enormous number of two hundred gentlemen.
The Queen's reply to them was hopeful. She said she would "gladly
sanction any measure which the legislature might suggest as conducive to
the alleviation of this temporary distress, and to the permanent welfare
of all classes of her people."

It is a noticeable fact, and one to be deplored, that even the potato
blight was made a party question in Ireland. If we except the Protestant
and dissenting clergy, and a few philanthropic laymen, the upper
classes, especially the Conservatives, remained aloof from the public
meetings held to call attention to it, and its threatened consequences.
The Mansion House Committee, which did so much good, was composed almost
exclusively of Catholics and Liberals; and the same is substantially
true of the meetings held throughout the country--in short, the
Conservatives regarded, or pretended to regard, those meetings as a new
phase of the Repeal agitation. Then, as the distress must chiefly occur
amongst the poor Catholics, who were repealers, it was, they assumed,
the business of repealers and agitators to look to them and relieve
them. The Premier himself was not free from these feelings. In the
memorandum which he read to the Cabinet on the 1st of November, amongst
many other things, he says: "There will be no hope of contributions from
England for the mitigation of this calamity. Monster meetings, the
ungrateful return for past kindness, the subscriptions in Ireland to
Repeal rent and O'Connell tribute, will have disinclined the charitable
here to make a