The state of Ireland is awful. I have written to Clarendon repeatedly, urging him to ask for great powers. He was reluctant, and wanted to try the force of the law as it is, and the Cabinet were not disposed to adopt strong coercive measures; but the public voice loudly demands coercion and repression, and Lord Lansdowne told me yesterday he was resolved to act in accordance with the general feeling. Parliament never met in more difficult and disturbed times: complete disorganisation, famine and ruin in Ireland, financial difficulty, general alarm and insecurity here, want of capital, want of employment. It requires all one's faith in the general soundness and inherent strength of 'the thing' (as Cobbett called it) to silence one's apprehensions. Then Colonial distress is impending, by which I am likely to be personally affected to the extent perhaps of half what I possess. I thank God that I regard this contingency with the utmost tranquillity or insensibility. I should not like it, but if the necessity arises I hope and believe I can make the necessary sacrifices and changes in my habits without repining outwardly or inwardly. I have not heard or known much lately that is worth recording, and I am in one of my fits of disinclination to write. [Footnote 25: [William Fox had entered life as a Unitarian Minister, and he continued to preach for several years at the Finsbury Chapel of that persuasion. But he subsequently quitted the pulpit, and was returned to Parliament for the borough of Oldham in 1847. He became an active member of the Radical Party, but his eloquence was less admired in the House of Commons than it had been in his chapel.]] [Sidenote: A LETTER FROM LORD CLARENDON.]