blic auction if
the property of an unknown person.

The winter of 1849 smote Ireland with fresh accumulations of suffering.
Gaunt famine stalked abroad; pestilence lurked in the hovels of the
country, and the cellars and garrets of the great towns; cholera ravaged
as fiercely in some places as if no other destroyer visited the unhappy
realm; crime lurked by the wayside, and sedition and bigotry muttered
their curses everywhere. It seemed as if a wide-wasting ruin covered
all.

The queen's visit to Ireland made this year memorable in her history.
An account of this will appear in the narrative of the court in another
page.

POLITICAL STATE OF ENGLAND.

Notwithstanding the humiliation of the Chartists in 1848, they still
continued blatant. Some rioting occurred, and but for the conviction
that the people at large would support the government in strong
measures, the tendency to disturbance would have been still more
decidedly manifested. The anti-freetraders were still a large and
powerful party, and, led by Mr. Disraeli, formed an imposing array both
in and out of parliament. The freetraders were also active and resolute,
giving to the government a very general support. The agitations in
the country assumed no new phases, and almost all political questions
assumed a politico-economical aspect from the temper in which men
discussed them, and the prevailing tone of the time. The alteration
--virtually the repeal--of the navigation laws caused much excitement
in the sea ports, as the agitation of the subject did the previous year;
but the government and the freetrade party mustered all their strength,
and succeeded with the measure. The government was not popular, but was
accepted as a political necessity. Lord John Russell had great weight in
parliament, "in the city," and with the old whig party everywhere; but
the more advanced liberals had lost confidence in him, and some of
his colleagues were unpopular. Foreign politics engaged much of the
attention of the nation, and the tide of reaction which began to roll
back over the continent, sweeping away so many newly acquired liberties,
was a cause of abundant regret, and even alarm to the English people.

COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS.

The year did not begin or end very prosperously in business and monetary
matters. The successive blights of the potatoe crop, the advances to
Ireland, the ruinous bankruptcies of 1848, the enormous railway
calls, the many failures up