The appalling horrors with which the Irish famine of last season set in, seemed to exceed any similar scene of national affliction that had been witnessed in modern times. It appeared as if the worst tragedies that had been enacted in sieges and shipwrecks were to be realised in the midst of comparative abundance, and within reach of friendly aid. It was right, however, that the clamant demands for relief, uttered by her starving millions, should not stifle the smaller voice of suffering that issued from our Scottish shores. Nor was this the case: the Christian philanthropy of Britain did justice to the cause of patience and fortitude. The fountains of private beneficence were opened, and Scotland was better protected from the miseries of this visitation by individual exertion, than Ireland with all the aid and apparatus of government interference. Making every abatement for the natural exaggeration incident to such a calamity, no doubt can be entertained as to the general condition of our Highlands and Islands in the early part of the past year. Great distress was almost every where prevalent, and every day that passed was tending to increase it. A large portion of the food of the people had failed, and the remnant of the preceding year's corn crop was their only means of subsistence. That resource could not long be relied on; and the great problem was, in what manner the destitute thousands of our countrymen were to be fed till the returning harvest should visit them with its scanty and precarious bounty. Too many of them were habitually on the verge of starvation, and the crumbling away of the slender support on which alone they stood, brought them at once to the low abyss of wretchedness in which they would have been left if public generosity had not interposed. The task of those who undertook to distribute the large relief fund subscribed was attended with great difficulty, and involved a solemn responsibility of the highest kind. They appear to us, on a review of their arrangements, to have proceeded with judgment and good feeling; anxious, on the one hand, to alleviate want, and on the other, to avert those moral mischiefs that follow in the wake of gratuitous or indiscriminate liberality. Their object necessarily was, to do as much good and as little harm as the emergency would permit.