mbers; but in Ireland the
priest party were coaxed by the Whigs, and concessions made to them
unworthy the dignity of imperial administration. The whig government in
Ireland was utterly unprincipled and corrupt. At the close of the year a
great law case established that in a singular manner. The case is given
in law reports as Birch _versus_ Somerville, Bart. Birch was a Dublin
newspaper proprietor; Somerville, Bart., the Irish secretary. The action
was for L7,000 "for work and labour done." The work and labour was the
support of the whig government in _The World_ newspaper, in a mode and
for ends utterly disreputable. The Earl of Clarendon, Lordlieutenant of
Ireland, and Sir W. Somerville, personally prompted this Birch, whose
paper had an infamous reputation. These high officers of state disposed
of the public money, and it may be also their own, to bribe this Birch.
The Earl of Clarendon was examined, and admitted that Birch had been
in his pay for years to support law and order; and acknowledged that
independent of the money given to Birch in Ireland, he had also received
money in London for the same object. The moral effect of this trial was
so damaging to the government of Lord Clarendon, that it lost all
hold upon the support of the respectable classes in Ireland. Lord
Naas subsequently brought the subject under the notice of the House of
Commons, when its damaging effects upon the existence of the Russell
ministry was such as would probably have led to its downfall,
irrespective of all casual circumstances or internal feuds.

The census of Ireland, taken this year, revealed the following facts as
compared with 1841. In the metropolitan province of Leinster, in 1841,
the number of houses was 320,051; a diminution had taken place of
considerably more than 40,000 houses--the number being 277,552. The
reduction in the number of families was nearly the same, from 362,134
to 321,991. The population was lessened from 1,973,731 to 1,667,771.
The reduction in the other provinces was even greater in proportion;
so that, in all Ireland, the number of houses was decreased, within the
decade, from 1,384,360 to 1,115,007; and the population from 8,175,124
to 6,515,794; a decrease of more than twenty per cent.--the total
decrease being 1,659,330.

With a population of more than six millions and a half, a fertile
soil, and temperate climate, it was felt that Ireland ought to become
a powerful and prosperous country. Belgium, H