t of Ireland, and in the western Highlands of
Scotland, has been destroyed. Between the failure in the potato crop,
and the deficiency in that of oats, at least L15,000,000 worth of the
wonted agricultural produce has disappeared in the British Islands. And
the appearances which we now see around us are solely and entirely to be
ascribed to that deficiency. No one need be told what these appearances
are, or how deeply they have trenched upon the usual sources of
prosperity in the empire: they have been told again and again, in
parliament, at public meetings, and in the press, _usque ad nauseam_.
Government has acted, if not judiciously, at least in the right spirit;
its errors have been those of information, not of intention. The monster
meetings, the flagrant ingratitude, the broken promises of the Irish
Catholics, have been forgotten. England, as a nation, has acted nobly;
she has overlooked her wrongs: she saw only her fellow-subjects in
distress. L10,000,000 sterling have been voted by parliament in a single
year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from
the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart
with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all
these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an
unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in
consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at
least L30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to
come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And
what is very remarkable, and may be considered, as a distinctive sign of
the times, specially worthy of universal attention, the suffering has
now spread to those classes which are _furthest removed_ from the blight
of nature, and fastened upon those interests which, according to the
generally received opinion, should have been _benefited rather than
injured_ by the calamity which has occurred.

That some millions of cultivators in the southwest of Ireland, and some
hundred thousand in the west Highlands of Scotland, should be involved,
literally speaking, in the horrors of famine, in consequence of the
universal failure of the crop which constituted at once their sole
object of labour and only means of subsistence, may easily be
understood. That this alarming failure should raise prices of every sort
of food to the scarcity-level in every part of the empire, is equal