IRISH WANT AND ENGLISH ALMS.
A WRITER says that Mr. Roebuck gives true expression to Eng- lish feeling when he rates the Irish landlords and refuses more money. But we doubt the fact. The Member for Sheffield is no type of John Bull ; John is not so keenly or audaciously critical. England has borrowed eight millions specially for Ireland ; has advanced hundreds of thousands for land-improvements ; has given and still gives thousands weekly to "distressed unions." England knows that the money was wasted, perverted, almost embezzled—that persons:lived upon her alms who did not need help. England gave the money although she was reviled to her face while she gave it: England would have gone on making the sacrifice like any doomed people in a fairy tale, compelled to keep up a supply of edible virgins for some insatiable dragon. It was not the waste, the malversation, nor the ingratitude, that broke English patience : the last feather to break that sturdy back was the learning that all this is unnecessary. We need not fill up "the Serbonian bog of Irish destitution" with our hard-earned store of sovereigns, nor make roads to nowhere, nor build work- houses for people to lie down and die in; and it is that conviction which makes the Englishman suddenly tighten his flowing purse- strings. It is not because Lord John has asked so much, but be- cause he has done so little good with it, that the Englishman looks to the figures; because the Irish landlord will not set about the work of saving what he might from the ruin ; because the Irishman prefers to lie down and die, that he may coerce English charity. Convince John Bull that the money is really needed, and that it will be used to beneficial purpose, and he will give again, as freely as ever. Let the new Commission be well ap- pointed, and he will not stint it in funds. It is not the necessi- ties of Ireland to which England has begun to deny money, but to her gratuitous helplessnesses.
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