John Russell gave notice the other night of the measures he meant to go on with, and those he meant to abandon; nobody expected anything more, so no great complaints were made. The Government is safe enough, but they fall more and more into discredit. There has been a blunder about the sugar duties, which makes Ministers look ridiculous, and it is in fact the constant repetition of small things which damages their credit, and makes them so miserably weak. The funds have been rapidly rising and trade improving little by little, but this Irish affair has checked the rise and produced alarm. Then the potatoes are failing in England, and we have every chance of low prices of agricultural produce without abundance, and if this should happen we shall have an unquiet winter. So far as I can form an opinion from what I heard in my tour, the state of the country is not satisfactory. Chartism seems to increase, and the masses, the operatives in villages, are restless, ill-disposed, and want they know not what. It is a great evil that while education is sufficiently diffused to enable most people to read, they get either from inclination or convenience nothing but the most mischievous publications, which only serve to poison their minds, to render them discontented, and teach them to look to all sorts of wild schemes as calculated to better their position. The best part of the press (the 'Times,' for instance) seldom finds its way to the cottages and reading-rooms of the lower classes, who are fed by the cheap Radicalism of the 'Weekly Dispatch,' and other journals, unknown almost to the higher classes of society, which are darkly working to undermine the productions of our social and political system. The lessons of experience which might be so well taught by the events now passing in France and elsewhere, are not presented to the minds of the people in a manner suggestive of wholesome inferences, but on the contrary they are only used as stimulants and for purposes of misrepresentation and perversion. [Sidenote: STRONG MEASURES IN IRELAND.] _July 22nd._--Last night Lord John Russell gave notice of a Bill to enable the Lord Lieutenant to apprehend any suspected persons, and Lord Lansdowne did the same in the House of Lords. Lord Lansdowne made a very animated speech, but it was impossible not to think that all he said and was going to do might as well have been said and done long ago. Brougham said as much; Stanley spoke very well; and the announcement was hailed with universal satisfaction. It would have been still better in my opinion if they had suspended the Habeas Corpus at once.