The material condition of the Irish community has, also, improved since the late Queen ascended the throne. This, no doubt, is to be largely ascribed to the effects of the great Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense emigration that followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before that calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, the teeming multitudes crowded on her soil; an official report, made in 1838, proved that two millions and a half of the poor in Ireland were for months in the year on the brink of starvation; this huge mass of indigence, which forced up rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good husbandry, was almost incompatible with real social progress. The great and continuing exodus of the Irish race, which has gone on for more than half a century, has not been without untoward results; but it has relieved the country from a destructive incubus; and this has certainly wrought a beneficent change, though the population has declined from about eight millions in 1837 to about four and a half millions in 1895.[3] Ireland, indeed, is still, mainly, a poor country--in some districts she is exceedingly poor; but the disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant millions has enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained much better than of old, and has distinctly raised the standard of living among all the humbler classes. The wages of agricultural labour, seldom more than six or seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid in potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and even twelve shillings, usually paid in cash; and they have not fallen, though Irish agriculture is very far from prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of labour have also greatly increased; this is apparent in nearly all trades, and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the same time, the potato has long ceased to be the sole food of the poor; their dwellings, though still too often mean and bad, are infinitely better than they once were; their attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. I do not think, indeed, that O'Connell's description of the peasantry of Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied to even the worst parts of Ireland, the impoverished tracts on the seacoast of Connaught: 'They have no clothes to change, they have none but what they wear at the moment.... Their food consists of potatoes and water during the greater part of the year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt with their potatoes when they have nothing but water.'[4] There is evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland has, in some measure, increased, especially in the middle and lower middle classes. The landed gentry, indeed, owing partly to the effects of Free Trade, and partly to those of legislation I shall describe afterwards, have been impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined; and the