denied that there had been "any laches whatever" on the part of the Government. They might have been right in the measures they had adopted or not; but they had certainly not allowed the matter to sleep. The statistics given by Sir Stafford Northcote, from the report of the Registrar-General on the agricultural condition of Ireland, were startling. It was estimated that there had been a falling off in the principal crops, from the yield of the previous year, to the value of about 10,000,000l. The value of the potato crop was more than 6,000,000l. below the average. Sir S. Northcote maintained that this return, received on the day before Parliament met, had been no surprise to the Government, because the inquiries, which they had commenced as early as the previous September, enabled them to form a very fair estimate of the state of the country. But the figures of such an enormous deficiency startled many who had previously been disposed to believe that the Irish distress had no serious foundation, except in the imaginations of Home Rulers and anti-rent agitators.

It appeared from the official papers, that the first action taken by the Irish Government, after inquiries made throughout the various unions, had been in the beginning of November. A circular had been issued to the boards of guardians, impressing upon them "the importance of being prepared for the possible contingencies of the season, and of making due provision, beforehand, of ample stores of bedding and clothing to meet any degree of pressure on the workhouse which was likely to occur." They were also directed to have the unoccupied workhouse wards put in readiness, and to see that the relieving officers were in a position to be able to discharge their duties "in view of the possible increased pressure of distress."

The propriety of setting on foot public works had also been mooted in November, but it had been decided that such a system of relief would be open to abuse. The danger against which the Government had to be on their guard was two-fold. They had to take care that what they gave should find its way into the hands of the really destitute, and they had to take care also, that by giving, they did not break down habits of self-reliance and sink the population whose living was precarious into an abject slough of pauperism. Mr. W. H. Smith, who spoke on the second night of the debate, gave the fullest explanation of the difficulties of the ministerial situation. They were even precluded, he said, from making known prematurely the full extent of the precautions which they were taking, lest the needy should be prevented from trying to help themselves. Their first idea was to call into the utmost activity all the machinery that could be made available, as a safeguard against actual want. With this view they instructed the Irish Commissioners of Public Works to issue a circular to landowners, boards of guardians, and other local authorities, reminding them of the powers given to them under various Acts, to borrow money for important works, and offering them excep

tional advantages. The first instalment of the repayment of the loans was to be postponed for two years, and the periods of repayment extended correspondingly. In order that the neediest class of the population might profit by the increased employment thus afforded, it was intimated that loans would not be granted on these terms for buildings, but only for drainage, planting, and other works calculated to give employment to unskilled labour.

The loans offered upon these terms had to be applied for by January 31, 1880. The applications were not numerous; they amounted altogether only to 113,000l. On January 10 the LordLieutenant wrote to the Government that the time seemed to have arrived for making the terms easier, and the Government at once assented. The rate of interest was reduced to one per cent., and the period of repayment extended to thirty-five years, exclusive of the two years for which no interest was to be charged. In effect, the inducement held out was that landowners should pay nothing for the first two years after the grant of each loan, and an annual sum, in discharge both of principal aud interest, of 3l. 88. 6d. per cent. for thirty-five years, commencing at the expiration of two years from the date of grant. It was, of course, provided that all such loans applied for under the earlier notice should be held subject to the new terms. In order that the works might be quickly put in operation, application had to be made not later than February 29, and, in order that the immediate distress might be benefited by them, the condition was imposed that all the money borrowed should be expended before July 31. Sir Stafford Northcote announced that by February 6, 335,000l. in all had been applied for under these conditions.

It was anticipated, however, that landowners and sanitary authorities would not be able to provide sufficient employment for unskilled labour to meet all the necessities of the case, and another expedient was devised. Boards of guardians were admonished to notify to the Lord-Lieutenant if it appeared to them that there was great distress and want of employment in their unions, and if there was no prospect of relief from any action of landowners or sanitary authorities. The inspectors of the Local Government Board were thereupon to make inspection-three additional temporary inspectors had been appointed-and if the representations of the boards of guardians were confirmed, the Lord-Lieutenant was authorised to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Baronial Sessions in which the distressed district lay. The Baronial Sessions were to be convened, and to "present," as the technical term is, for certain useful and profitable works, such as repairing roads, making cuttings and embankments, building bridges, tunnels, sewers, erecting fences and walls, widening and deepening wayside trenches. Loans were to be granted by the Local Government Board in response to these presentments, at the rate of one per cent., no interest to be charged for two years, and the money to be repaid in the course of fifteen years by annual instalments of

71. 48. 3d. per cent. The works undertaken might be carried out by the county surveyor, or might be contracted for, but the contractors were to be pledged to employ persons resident in the district, in priority to persons from other parts of the country.

Such were the provisions made by the Government, and as they had gone beyond the law in offering so low a rate of interest, they had to ask Parliament for an indemnity. They had to obtain an indemnity also for their proposal to advance the proposed loans upon the security of the Irish Church Surplus. The Relief of Distress Bill, introduced as soon as Parliament met, was framed to provide the necessary indemnities, and give the force of law to the provisional expedients of the Government. Besides the system of loans which we have described, it proposed also that the Local Government Board should be authorised to extend, where necessary, the powers of boards of guardians to grant outdoor relief in food and fuel.

Some astonishment was expressed that the Irish Members, instead of urging the House to proceed with all possible speed to the consideration of this Relief Bill, spent three nights over an amendment to the Address. Their excuse was that the relief operations were already in progress, and that meantime it was necessary that the Government and the country should be awakened to a livelier sense of the depth of the impending distress and the acuteness which it had already reached. Mr. O'Donnell went so far as to declare that the measures taken and proposed by the Government were 66 worthless," and "an insult to humanity," but few other members, though they used impassioned language, went so far as this. The Home Rule members, however, did maintain that the distress was much more serious than the Government seemed to suppose, and that the measures of relief proposed were inadequate and ought to have been put in operation long before. We have already stated the reasons given by the Government for proceeding with caution. Mr. Shaw and his followers would not accept those reasons. The easy conditions of loans agreed to in January ought, Mr. Shaw maintained, to have been offered at once, and he denounced "the shilly-shallying of the Government, the eternal letter-writing, the eternal going backward and forward." If they had held out the inducement of loans at one per cent. in November, there would, he said, by this time have been a sufficient amount of employment in the South and West of Ireland to meet all the necessities of the case. He held that the Boards of Guardians ought to have been instructed at once to relax the regulations against outdoor relief. It was not enough to empower the Local Government Board to authorise the guardians to relax the restrictions; the guardians should have been instructed to relax the restrictions. Being personally landowners and occupiers, they might have been trusted not to burden the rates too heavily. Mr. Shaw referred to a case where the guardians had applied to the Local Government Board for permission to give outdoor relief, and

this permission had been refused. Many Irish members spoke in the same sense, but though there was variety in their instances and their declamation, the burden of their speeches was the same. The. Lord Mayor of Dublin made one of the most temperate and most impressive speeches delivered in the course of the debate. His position as Chairman of the Dublin Mansion House Relief Fund gave him special opportunities of knowing the state of the country, and he warned the Government that famine was not merely imminent, it was already upon the people. No death from starvation had yet occurred, but the people in many districts were in such a state of destitution, that unless immediate relief was given, they must perish. Did the Government, he asked, mean to stand by and allow them to perish? Nearly every member who spoke had some instance to give of the extreme poverty and need to which the people in various districts had been reduced.

Mixed up with the appeals for protection against starvation were many remarks about the landlords and the advantages they would receive from the method of relief adopted by the Government, which furnished Mr. D. R. Plunket with an occasion for a warm attack on the conduct of the Home Rule party. "To the Irish agitators," he said, "the present distress seemed a good occasion to call up the grievances of the past, to rake up buried sorrows, to exasperate the people, and to make them as little as possible ready or patient to endure their sufferings." He recounted an instance within his own knowledge where a landlord had visited a village, made kindly inquiry from the people when they expected the pinch of distress to come, been told that they could hold out till the end of February, some of them till next summer, and assured them that everything would be done that could be done to assist them when the hour of need came. "As I saw," Mr. Plunket proceeded, "my honourable friend leaving the village I have described, followed by tottering men and women, who held up their children in their arms to him, and blessed and prayed for him, I contrasted him in my mind with the loud-mouthed swaggering agitator preceded by a brass band and followed by a Fenian mob, who told the Americans they were not to send home their money in charity to this country, because the governing classes would dispense it-who said they were not to send home this money to the ladies of Ireland because it would not be applied in charity-who thanked God in the beginning of this distress that the rain was coming down in torrents, soaking the turf, rotting the potatoes, and poisoning the food of the people, and thus making the people the more ready tools for him to advance his own movement, and incite them to a bloody resistance."

Mr. Plunket was loudly cheered by his own side, and hotly interrupted by Mr. Parnell's friends. The effect of the prolonged debate, aided by the figures which Sir Stafford Northcote had quoted at its commencement, undoubtedly was to produce an increased impression of the seriousness of the emergency. Much

irritation was felt and expressed at the protracted opposition offered to the Address, but there was a fervour in the speeches of those who had been actual witnesses of the state of the populations in the most destitute districts that could not be explained away as the mere "blind hysterics of the Celt." Mr. Shaw's amendment was rejected by 216 votes against 66.

The leaders of the Opposition declined to join in the proposed vote of censure on the Government, on the simple ground that there was no evidence as yet that their measures had proved inadequate. The Government admitted, Lord Hartington said, that they had taken upon themselves a great responsibility, both by what they had done and what they had omitted to do. They had acknowledged their responsibility, and it was the duty of the House to make them feel that responsibility, and to call them to account for it. The duty of the House of Commons was to watch affairs, and to give its opinion when all the facts were before it. There were no means in the papers or in the speeches of the Government of knowing how far the expectations of the Government had been fulfilled.

The Address was at last allowed to pass, after an ineffectual attempt by Mr. O'Donnell, supported by sixteen votes, to add to it a violent denunciation of the Government for their neglect of Ireland, and the Relief Bill was read a second time on Thursday, February 12. The second reading was opposed by Mr. Synan, with an amendment protesting against the application of the Irish Church surplus in loans to landlords and sanitary authorities. The money, he contended, ought to be advanced out of Imperial resources, and the Church surplus should be reserved for the purpose of making a great experiment in the establishment of a peasant proprietary. Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Lowther replied on behalf of the Government, that there was no breach of the Irish Church Act in the application which they proposed to make of the surplus, but, on the contrary, in strict compliance with the provision that the surplus should be used "for the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering." The loans being really for relief works, and not primarily for public improvements, they could not have made advances out of the general fund at the disposal of the Board of Works, without creating an embarrassing precedent. They had to bear in mind that there existed a fund which belonged peculiarly to Ireland, and which it was their duty to administer for the special benefit of Ireland. Outside Parliament, the Irish members were subjected to a good deal of ridicule, for thus trying to throw Ireland on Imperial resources, after the language which they had been using about the hardship of a union with England. Their desire that Ireland should be ruled by Irish ideas was contrasted with their desire that Ireland in her distress should be relieved with English money. Mr. Synan's amendment was withdrawn before the second reading, to be brought forward again on the motion for