More than once, too, we have been threatened at home by manifestations of the insurrectionary spirit. In so densely populated a country as this, it is impossible that commercial distress and slackness can exist for any length of time, without trying sorely the patience and the fortitude of the working classes. Such distress undoubtedly did prevail, towards the close of last year, in a most alarming degree; and throughout the whole spring there was a vast want of employment in the manufacturing districts. The completion of some of the great lines of railway, and in others the partial abandonment or suspension of the works, caused by the extreme tightness of the money market, also threw a great deal of unemployed labour on the public; and this evil was increased by the heterogeneous character of the masses. Irish immigration has increased to such an extent, that not only in all the towns of Britain, but almost in every village, especially on the western coast, there exists a Hibernian colony; unreclaimed by civilisation—uneducated as the brutes that perish—knowing nothing of religion, save as an idolatrous form, and professing rebellion as a principle. This class have always formed a nucleus for disaffection, and, but for the extreme reluctance of the native labourers to fraternise with those children of Esau, the results might ere now have been more serious than we altogether care to contemplate. As it was, the British demagogue was always sure of finding a ready partisan, confederate, and coadjutor in the western Celt; and we need hardly say that the Chartist leaders availed themselves to the full of that sympathy. We shall presently see how far this state of matters received the attention of the men in power. In this critical position we were entitled to expect that the government would have shown itself fully adequate to the crisis—that the causes of distress, which lie at the root of turbulence and disaffection, would be probed with a firm and prudent hand—that every possible relief and assistance would be given to the home market—and that, above all, nothing should be done which might tend, in the remotest degree, to endanger the integrity of the empire. The welfare of Great Britain is a terrible trust in times like these, and the responsibility of those who have professed themselves ready to govern, and who, in fact, have rather claimed the government than received it, is proportionally great. Let us then take a candid and impartial review of the proceedings which have characterised this session of Parliament, extending over a period more fertile in insurrection than any which the world has known. Let us examine how Lord John Russell and his colleagues have acquitted themselves in the discharge of their important functions. We shall be sparing neither of praise nor blame: glad, indeed, if we can find an opportunity of being lavish of the former, or, in case of neglect, of stumbling upon an honest excuse.