IRELAND.
We have heard that Earl Ducie, the celebrated agricultural experiment- alist, and proprietor of the example farm at Totworth, Gloucestershire, has entered into a coalition with several active and intelligent men in London for the purpose of raising a joint-stock-company to purchase the Martin estate, of 200,000 acres, situate in Galway.—Leinster Express.
The Lords of the Treasury have informed the Magistrates of three baro- nies in Cork County, where the famine is terribly severe, that a postpone- ment of the time for the repayment of their labour-rate advances cannot be authorized.
The Irish papers abound with the evidences, in the South and West, of destitution, famine, and crime. Fri= Roscommon and from Mayo uncon- nected reports state that the people now consist of peasants, priests, and gentry; the small farmers have fallen to paupers, or emigrated, and, like those to whose level they have sunk, keep life together with such nutriment as herbs of. the field, with creases and nettles, and the shell-fish of the strand. In some districts, as at Tralee, the misery undergone has made the survivors too weak or too callous to care .for decently interring their dead. In Brosna Churchysrd, says a correspondent of the Standard, the corpses are scarcely covered, and the dogs are seen to drag them forth as prey. Parents conceal the death of their children, lest the poor-allowance should be diminished, and then by stealth convey their children's corpses to the sacred ground, and scrape out a grave so shallow that the remains are easily dragged forth by the dogs. In Limerick, the destitution has not gone further than the crime provoking stage. The accounts thence are those of legal seizures and rescues, with violence, robberies, and murders.
The accounts of the crops are favourable from all parts; and there is some trust that if the extreme want of the present season be passed, for the next eight or ten weeks, the country will reach " comparatively comfortable times."
Reports. begin to prevail that the potato blight has appeared on the young plents; "but as yet," says one writer, "those indications of disease are confined, in all cases, to the stalks, and do not affect the tubers." "New potatoes are on sale, in small quantities, M.Dablin and in some country towns, and they are perfectly free from disease. However, there is no calculating, one way or other. Those unfavourable appearances on the stalk have occurred, last year and the year before, in fields which afterwards produced sound and abun- dant crepe; and it is worthy of remark, that the general and disastrous failure in 1846 mute suddenly in a singlebight, apparently without premonitory symp- toms, and the ;destruction of the crop was almost universal. Experience has proved that stalk may be apparently affected, without ultimate injury to.the
root. lieweileless, some alarm begins to prevail." ss. emem, of the voluntary emigration in stillsmattek(Atietiee; and astemishmentis expressed at the largiSamount-of money still received from Irish settlers in the United States list theicKratiatives in Ireland to enable the:latter to emigrate. A-writer in Dublin saes— "According to the estimate of the late Mr. Jeltob Harvey, of New. York, the sums thus transmitted, within a single period of -twelve months, ambunted in the aggregate to 200,0001.; and there can be little doubt that the remittances are now on a still greater scale. By every-American-mails. a considerable number of bills of exchange for small sums, varying from 51. to 2011 but seldom higher than 101, are received in Dublin, and transmitted to 'the various country pest-offices. In general, those billsare drawn by New York, Philadelphia, or New Orleans firms, on banics•in this-country; and re large -proportion of them are made payable by the Provincial-Bank of Ireland and its branehers" The kilkenng Journal contains a letter from Dr. Cane, who took a lead- ing part in the Young Ireland movement last year expressing alarm at the increase of secret societies in Ireland.
The We of -the Tate Mrs Q'Conitellas libroy took place in Dublin on three or four days of last week.- The priema given were almost invariably mean; even books containing his autograph and notes brotight stuns " not beyond the intrinsic value of each lot apart from all associations connected with them:" The Freeman's Journal says—" Were the sale to have been transmitted to one of the great Noathern provincial towns, a much larger sum would have been realized."
•
Previous page
