to the details of the horrid story: numbers perished of famine, and
pestilence went forth with devastating fury where hunger had stricken.
The "famine fever" carried away multitudes to an untimely grave. This
disease extended also to the Irish in England. Many in London died of
it, and great numbers in Manchester, but the affliction fell still more
heavily upon Liverpool. Several Roman Catholic clergymen in those towns
fell victims, nor did medical men escape. Efforts continued to be made
by the government, and by voluntary charity, to mitigate the calamities
which befel the country, but their variety and magnitude set at defiance
all the noble efforts that were made, and the exhaustless compassions of
the noble hearts that made them.

_Continuance of Crime and Outrage_.--The story of the two previous years
was the same of this: crime raged everywhere; the hand of the assassin
was constantly uplifted; and woe to the landlord who expelled a tenant
for whatsoever violation of contract, and to the zealous Protestant, lay
or clerical, who claimed a right to discuss his religious opinions, even
in self-defence, or to circulate thera, even in the most inoffensive
manner.

Much of the crime of Ireland was to be attributed to a secret society
which the government never made any adequate efforts to suppress, and
which was commonly called the "Ribbon Society." No means were taken by
the respectable Roman Catholics to break up this exclusively Romanist
confederacy, the chief object of which was the extermination of
Protestants, and it was in 1848 that, in this respect, little was to
be then expected from them. No public protest against the worst and the
wildest of the ultramontane proceedings of previous years had been made
by Roman Catholics, clerical or lay, English or Irish, or of any rank
in life; and the "liberal Roman Catholics," as they liked to be called,
could not be surprised if Protestants began to put no faith in their
liberal professions. Yet this section of the Roman Catholics had gained
much confidence and respect with liberal Protestants in both countries.
It was chiefly on their representations that the once formidable Orange
societies were suppressed, and although these societies changed their
constitution in compliance with the law, yet they never acquired public
confidence after: through the instrumentality of Mr. Hume's exposure
of the dangerous tendency of the confederacy, the law was put in
force against th