THE EXIGENCIES OF THE COUNTRY.

The state of Ireland during this year was a continuation of the want,
misery, criminality, and sedition which made up its history for so many
previous years. The causes already noticed so fully in previous chapters
operated in producing famine and its attendants, disease and
social discontent. Notwithstanding all the efforts of government by
parliamentary aid, and of the people of Great Britain by their generous
subscriptions, the poor in Ireland continued to die of starvation, and
where death did not immediately happen from that cause, it arose from
it mediately, through the instrumentality of famine, fever, cholera,
dysentery, or gradual decay. The efforts of the government were still,
to a great extent, rendered abortive by the frauds committed upon the
funds devoted to Irish relief, not only in Ireland, but in England; much
that was supposed to be applied for the relief of the Irish famishing
poor never reached Ireland, and much more that did arrive in that
country never found its way to the objects for whom it was intended. The
failure of the potatoe crop had so impoverished the people, that,
during the spring of 1849, the destitution in some parts of the country
equalled that which had been known even during the three previous years.
The queen, in her speech at the opening of the session, referred to
the failure of the potatoe crop, and recommended her parliament to
make further provision to relieve the destitution which prevailed.
In pursuance of this recommendation, parliament voted L50,000 for
the relief of distressed unions, a sum utterly disproportioned to the
necessities of the case. A bill was brought in for levying "a rate in
aid," as it was termed, the object of which waa to levy a rate upon
solvent parishes to aid insolvent parishes. This was both inequitable in
its conception and application, and was one of those make-shifts of the
government which, while it raised opposition, failed in accomplishing
the object contemplated. A vote of L100,000, in anticipation of "the
rate in aid," was proposed and carried, but this also waa inadequate to
the purpose for which it was designed. Some idea of the magnitude of the
miseries of Ireland at this juncture may be formed from the fact that
the poorlaw guardians of Kilrush expended L1000 per week in support
of the paupers of that union. Kilrush is a remote and not particularly
populous district, and was a specimen of the general expen