ly
intelligible; and that government, in conformity with the _universal_
sense of the nation, should, in such an extremity, throw open the ports
to all kinds of food, and thereby let in an unexampled amount of foreign
produce to supply the failure of that usually raised at home, is an
equally intelligible consequence. It may not be considered surprising,
that starving multitudes should issue in all directions from the scene
of wo in the Emerald Isle, to seek relief in the industry or charity of
Great Britain; and that all the great towns in the west of the island
should be overwhelmed with pauperism and typhus fever, in consequence of
their being the first to be reached by the destructive flood; although
it was hardly to be expected that a hundred and thirty-two thousand
applications for relief were to be made to the parochial authorities of
Liverpool in a _single week_; and that they returned thanks to Heaven
when the influx of Irish paupers was reduced to _two thousand a-week_!
But the remarkable thing, and the thing which the commercial classes
certainly did not expect, is this:--_The calamity has now reached
themselves_, although the hand of Providence has only stricken the
producing agricultural classes. Trade never was lower, monied distress
never more severe, markets of all sorts never were more rapidly
DECLINING, than during a period when IMPORTATIONS of all sorts have been
MOST RAPIDLY INCREASING. Nearly all the manufactories in Lancashire and
Lanarkshire are put on short time; the public funds and stocks of all
sorts are falling; the rate of bankers' advances in Scotland is raised
to _six per cent_;[7] seven per cent is charged in Liverpool and Glasgow
on railway advances, and permanent loans are taken on railway debentures
by the most experienced persons for three years at five per cent; the
Bank of England has raised its discounts; our exports are rapidly
declining; and all at a time, when the importation of all sorts of rude
produce is on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and the warehouses of
Liverpool and Glasgow are literally _bursting_ with the prodigious mass
of grain stored in them from all parts of the world!

Fortunately, statistical documents exist, derived from official sources,
which demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt the coexistence of
this _vast increase_ in the amount of subsistence imported, and _vast
diminution_ in the amount of manufactures raised or exported in all
parts of the