world, those which had to a greater or less extent placed the consumer by the side of the producer, to wit--this country, France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia--and the mode of accomplishing this was that of offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which Ireland had been ruined. The farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil by sending its products to England to be consumed; and the corn-laws were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish themselves by entering into competition with the starving Irishman, who was thus at once deprived of the market of England, as by the Act of Union he had been deprived of his own. The cup of wretchedness was before well nigh full, but it was now filled. The price of food fell, and the labourer was ruined, for the whole product of his land would scarcely pay his rent. The landlord was ruined, for he could collect no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid of which property could be summarily disposed of at public sale, and the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it. The landholder of Jamaica, exhausted by the system, had had his property taken from him at a price fixed by Parliament, and the proceeds applied to the discharge of debts incurred to his English agents, and now the same Parliament provided for the transfer of Irish property with a view to the payment of the same class of debts. The impoverished landholder now experienced the same fate that had befallen his poor tenant, and from that date to this, famine and pestilence, levellings and evictions, have been the order of the day. Their effect has everywhere been to drive the poor people from the land, and its consequences are seen in the fact that the population numbered, in 1850, _one million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand less than it did in_ 1840; while the starving population of the towns had largely increased. The county of Cork had diminished 222,000, while Dublin had grown in numbers 22,000. Galway had lost 125,000, while the city had gained 7422. Connaught had lost 414,000, while Limerick and Belfast had gained 30,000. The number of inhabited houses had fallen from 1,328,000 to 1,047,000, or more than twenty per cent. Announcing these startling facts, the London _Times_ stated that "_for a whole generation man had been a drug in Ireland, and population a nuisance_." The "inexhaustible Irish supply had," as it continued, "kept down the price of English labour," but this cheapness of labour had "contributed vastly to the improvement and power" of England, and largely to "the enjoyment of those who had money to spend." Now, however, a change appeared to be at hand, and it was to be feared that the prosperity of England, based as it had been on cheap Irish labour,