"To the Irish, such desolation is nothing new. They have long been accustomed to this kind of skinning. Their history, ever since it was written, teems with accounts of land forcibly taken from one set of owners and given to another; of clearings and plantings exactly similar in principle to that which is now going on; of driving men from Leinster to Munster, from Munster to Connaught, and from Connaught into the sea. Without going back to ancient proscriptions and confiscations—all the land having been, between the reign of Henry II. and William III. confiscated, it is affirmed, three times over—we must mention that the clearing so conspicuous in 1848 has now been going on for several years. The total number of holdings in 1841, of above one acre, and not exceeding five acres each, was 310,375; and, in 1847, they had been diminished to 125,926. In that single class of holdings, therefore, 184,449, between 1841 and 1847 inclusive, had been done away with, and 24,147 were extinguished in 1848. Within that period, the number of farms of five acres and upward, particularly of farms of thirty acres and upward, was increased 210,229, the latter class having increased by 108,474. Little or no fresh land was broken up; and they, therefore, could only have been formed by amassing in these larger farms numerous small holdings. Before the year 1847, therefore, before 1846, when the potato rot worked so much mischief, even before 1845, the process of clearing the land, of putting down homesteads and consolidating farms, had been carried to a great extent; before any provision had been made by a poor-law for the evicted families, before the turned-out labourers and little farmers had even the workhouse for a refuge, multitudes had been continually driven from their homes to a great extent, as in 1848. The very process, therefore, on which government now relies for the present relief and the future improvement of Ireland, was begun and was carried to a great extent several years before the extremity of distress fell upon it in 1846. We are far from saying that the potato rot was caused by the clearing system; but, by disheartening the people, by depriving them of security, by contributing to their recklessness, by paralyzing their exertions, by promoting outrages, that system undoubtedly aggravated all the evils of that extraordinary visitation."—_Illustrated News_, October 13, 1849.