Scotland is now rapidly assuming the place which Ireland has hitherto occupied. A deluge of Irish labourers is already flowing over to us, and forcing down wages all over the country. I believe that, if this fatal experiment should be allowed to go on for another year, the cry from Scotland, and especially from her remoter districts, will become overpowering and appalling. We have seen the recent revelations made by the public press with regard to the state of the poor in this country. Everybody, I believe, has read in the graphic letters in the _Morning Chronicle_ upon that subject, tales of the most appalling distress, flowing from excessive competition in every branch of industry. But that competition must necessarily be increased by that crowding into the towns from the country, which I know is now taking place in Scotland, of labourers who would emigrate if they had the means of doing so. I observe that it has been proposed, in a pamphlet recently published by an eccentric writer, that the surplus population of our towns should be marched out in industrial regiments, and sent to till the bogs and reclaim the hill sides. Such schemes are utterly visionary; and they are founded upon a shallow and perverted view of the social grievances against which we emphatically protest. Why, it is the want of occupation in the country just now which is doing the whole of the mischief, and which is creating that mass of pauperism which we all deplore. (Hear, hear.) It would seem, indeed, as if the present Ministers and the Free-traders would wish to realise no better picture of Great Britain than this-- "Wasted fields and crowded cities, Swarming streets and desert downs; All the light of life concentred In the focus of the towns."