Cruel assaults upon women--usually the wives of the ruffians themselves--are, I perceive, becoming a species of popular custom in England. Every "Times" I see has its catalogue of these atrocities; and I don't perceive that five shilling fines nor even three weeks at the treadmill diminishes the number. One of the railroad companies announces that it will not hold itself responsible for casualties, nor indemnify the sufferers. Don't you think that we might borrow a hint from them, and insert some cause of the same kind into the marriage ceremony, and that the woman should know all her "liabilities" without any hope of appeal? Ah! Tom Purcell, all our naval reviews, and industrial exhibitions, and boastful "leading" articles about our national greatness come with a very ill grace in the same broad sheet with these degrading police histories. Must savage ferocity accompany us as we grow in wealth and power? If so, then I 'd rather see us a third-rate power to-morrow than rule the world at the cost of such disgrace! Ireland, I see, jogs on just as usual, wrangling away. They can't even agree whether the potatoes have got the rot or not. Some of the papers, too, are taking up the English cry of triumph over the downfall of our old squirearchy; but it does not sound well from _them_. To be sure, some of the new proprietors would seem not only to have taken our estates, but tasted the Blarney-stone besides; and one, a great man too, has been making a fine speech with his "respected friend, the Reverend Mr. O'Shea," on his right hand, and vowing that he 'll never turn out anybody that pays the rent, nor dispossess a good tenant! The stupid infatuation of these English makes me sick, Tom. Why, with all their self-sufficiency, can't they see that we understand our own people better than they do? We know the causes of bad seasons and short harvests better; we know the soil better, and the climate better, and if we haven't been good landlords, it is simply because we couldn't afford it. Now, they are rich, and can afford it; and if they have bought up Irish estates to get the rents out of them, I 'd like to know what's to be the great benefit of the change. "Pay up the arrears," says I; but if my Lord Somebody from England says the same, I think there 's no use in selling _me_ out, and taking _him_ in my place. And this brings me to asking when I'm to get another remittance? I _am_ thinking seriously of retrenchment; but first, Tom, one must have something to retrench upon. You must possess a salary before you can stand "stoppages." Of course we mean "to come home again." I have n't heard that the Government have selected me for a snug berth in the Colonies; so be assured that you'll see us all back in Dodsborough before--