that, while they have gone to decay, the population of Great Britain have increased their well-being and their enjoyments much more than their numbers. We need not remind our readers of the dreadful sufferings of the Irish in the years 1847, 1848, and 1849; for the accounts we then published of them were too melancholy to be forgotten. As an illustration, we may observe that the Irish Poor-law Commissioners, in their fourth report, dated May 5, 1851, boast that the 'worst evils of the famine, such as the occurrence of _deaths by the wayside_, a high rate of mortality in the workhouses, and the prevalence of dangerous and contagious diseases in or out of the workhouse, have undergone a very material abatement.' There have been, then, numerous deaths by the wayside, alarming contagious diseases, and great mortality in the workhouses." The Poor-law Commissioners kept a most mysterious silence during the worst period of the famine; and, it was only when the horrors of that time were known to the whole civilized world that they reported the "abatement of the evils." Perhaps, they had become so accustomed to witnessing misery in Ireland that even the famine years did not startle them into making a humane appeal to the British government upon behalf of the sufferers. The Illustrated News, in the same article we have quoted above, says, quite sensibly, but with scarcely a due appreciation of the causes of Ireland's decay—