nds conspicuous among those who are
known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a Roman Catholic
Judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the
laws affecting England and Ireland in reference to each other, he
knew no law by which England was specially favoured, though he knew
various laws redounding to the benefit of Ireland. When the cry for
some relief to suffering Ireland came up, at the time of the Duchess
of Marlborough's Fund, it was alleged in proof of Ireland's poor
condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn
wages. I have known Ireland for more than forty years,--say from 1842
to 1882. In 1842 we paid five shillings a week for the entire work
of a man. As far as I can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine
shillings for the same. The question is not whether five shillings
was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal
increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as
is here declared.

I will refer to the banks, which can now be found established in any
little town, almost in any village, through the country. Fifty years
ago they were very much rarer. Banks do not spring up without money
to support them. The increase of wages,--and the banks also in an
indirect manner,--have come from that decrease in the population
which followed the potato famine of 1846. The famine and its results
were terrible while they lasted; but they left behind them an
amended state of things. When man has failed to rule the world
rightly, God will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and
pestilence--even poverty itself--with His own Right Arm. But the cure
was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of
prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and Home Rule
became the cry.

Ireland has lain as it were between two rich countries. England,
her near neighbour, abounds in coal and iron, and has by means of
these possessions become rich among the nations. America, very much
the more distant, has by her unexampled agricultural resources put
herself in the way to equal England. It is necessary,--necessary at
any rate for England's safety,--that Ireland should belong to her.
This is here stated as a fact, and I add my own opinion that it is
equally necessary for Ireland's welfare. But on this subject there
has arisen a feud which is now being fought out by all the weapons of
rebellion on one side, and on the o