and one extract may be allowed to speak
for itself. After stating that her husband has much to distress him in
the state of the country, these words follow: 'God grant him success in
his labours to amend it--famine, fever, trade failing, and discontent
growing are evils which it requires all his resolution, sense of duty,
and love for the public to face. I pray that he may, and believe that he
will, one day be looked back to as the greatest benefactor of unhappy
Ireland.' When once the nature of the calamity became apparent, Lord
John never relaxed his efforts to grapple with the emergency, and,
though not a demonstrative man, there is proof enough that he felt
acutely for the people, and laboured, not always perhaps wisely, but at
least well, for the amelioration of their lot. He was assailed with a
good deal of personal abuse, and was credited with vacillation and
apathy, especially in Ireland, where his opponents, acting in the
capacity of jurymen at inquests on the victims of the famine, sometimes
went so far as to bring in a verdict of wilful murder against the Prime
Minister. It is easy enough after the event to point out better methods
than those devised at the imperious call of the moment by the Russell
Administration, but there are few fair-minded people in the present day
who would venture to assert that justice and mercy were not in the
ascendent during a crisis which taxed to the utmost the resources of
practical statesmanship.

[Sidenote: LORD CLARENDON IN IRELAND]

The new Parliament assembled in November, and a Committee of both Houses
was appointed to take into consideration the depressed condition of
trade, for symptoms of unmistakable distress were apparent in the great
centres of industry. Ireland, moreover, still blocked the way, and Lord
Clarendon, who had succeeded to the viceroyalty, alarmed at the
condition of affairs, pressed for extraordinary powers. The famine by
this time was only a memory, but it had left a large section of the
peasantry in a sullen and defiant mood. As a consequence stormy
restlessness and open revolt made themselves felt. Armed mobs, sometimes
five hundred and even a thousand strong, wandered about in lawless
fashion, pounced upon corn and made raids on cattle, and it seemed
indeed at times as if life as well as property was imperilled. Lord
Clarendon was determined to make the disaffected feel that the law could
not be set aside with impunity. He declared that the majo