ll the
institutions which civilize and elevate the people were disappearing,
one after another. The churches were half empty; the temperance
reading-rooms were shut up; the Mechanics' Institute no longer got
support; only the jails and the poorhouses were crowded. A new
generation, born in disease and reared in destitution, pitiless and
imbecile, threatened to drag down the nation to hopeless slavery. Trade
was paralyzed; no one bought anything which was not indispensable at the
hour. The loss of the farmers in potatoes was estimated at more than
twenty millions sterling; and with the potatoes the pigs, which fed on
them, disappeared. The seed, procured at a high price in spring, again
failed; time, money, and labor were lost, and another year of famine was
certain. All who depended on the farmer had sunk with him; shopkeepers
were beggared; tradesmen were starving; the priests living on voluntary
offerings were sometimes in fearful distress when the people had no
longer anything to offer.

The poor-rate was quite inadequate to support the burden thrown upon it
by the suspension of public works, but there was another claim upon it
which could not wait. When the elections were over and the Government
majority secure, the Treasury called on the poor-law guardians to levy
immediately a special rate for the repayment of a million and a quarter
lent by the State in a previous year. They were warned that, if they
refused, their boards would be dissolved and the rates levied by the
authority of the Commissioners. The guardians in many districts declared
that an additional rate could not be collected. All that could be got
would be too little to support the distressed class. But the Treasury
would listen to no excuse, and a dozen boards were dissolved and paid
guardians put in their place. The Treasury had lent seven millions
sterling in 1846; five millions of it had been spent in making roads
which were not needed nor desired, and one million was diverted from the
wages fund to purchase land for this experiment. The aid which the
stronger country proposed to give to the weaker, from the Treasury to
which both contributed, was the remission of one-third of this debt. A
blunder in foreign policy, the escapade of an ambitious minister in
India or Africa, has cost the British taxpayer more in a month than he
spent to save millions of fellow-subjects beyond the Irish Sea.

When the increased mortality was pressed on the attention