eeling of devotion for the approaching calamity.

During such periods, and under such circumstances, these men--including
those of both classes--and the famished people, in general, live and
act under antagonistic principles. Hunger, they say, will break through
stone walls, and when we reflect, that in addition to this irresistible
stimulus, we may add a spirit of strong prejudice and resentment
against these heartless persons, it is not surprising that the starving
multitudes should, in the ravening madness of famine, follow up its
outrageous impulses, and forget those legal restraints, or moral
principles, that protect property under ordinary or different
circumstances. It was just at this precise period, therefore, that the
people, impelled by hunger and general misery, began to burst out into
that excited stupefaction which is, we believe, peculiar to famine
riots. And what rendered them still more exasperated than they probably
would have been, was the long lines of provision carts which met or
intermingled with the funerals on the public thoroughfares, while on
their way to the neighboring harbors, for exportation. Such, indeed,
was the extraordinary fact! Day after day, vessels laden with Irish
provisions, drawn from a population perishing with actual hunger, as
well as with the pestilence which it occasioned, were passing out of our
ports, while, singular as it may seem, other vessels came in freighted
with our own provisions, sent back through the charity of England to our
relief.

It is not our business, any more than it is our inclination, to dwell
here upon the state of those sumptuary enactments, which reflected such
honor upon the legislative wisdom, that permitted our country to arrive
at the lamentable condition we have attempted to describe. We merely
mention the facts, and leave to those who possess position and ability,
the task of giving to this extraordinary state of things a more
effectual attention. Without the least disposition, however, to defend
or justify any violation of the laws, we may be permitted to observe,
that the very witnessing of such facts as these, by destitute and
starving multitudes, was in itself such a temptation to break in upon
the provisions thus transmitted, as it was scarcely within the strength
of men, furious with famine, to resist. Be this as it may, however, it
is our duty as a faithful historian to state, that at the present period
of our narrative, the famine riot