generations to read of the nice management and kindly feelings of all parties; and "that among upward of two thousand local officers to whom advances were made under this act,there is not one to which, so far as Government is informed, any suspicion of embezzlement attaches." It further states that the fasts set apart in London were kept with great solemnity, and that never in that city was there a winter of so little gayety. But he has not told posterity, and probably he did not know, that the winters of 1847 and 1848 in Dublin were winters of great hilarity among the gentry. The latter season, particularly, seemed to be a kind of jubilee for "songs and dances." The Queen appointed fasts on both these winters, the people went to church, and said they had "all gone astray like lost sheep, and there was no soundness in them," and some who heard believed that this was all true; but it may be scrupled whether many priests "wept between the porch and the altar," or that many Jeremiahs' eyes ran down with water, "for the slain of the daughters of the people." That the people of England felt more deeply, and acted more consistently than did the people of Ireland, cannot be disputed. Ireland felt when her peace was disturbed and her ease was molested, and she cried loudly for help in this "God's famine," as she impiously called it; but ate her good dinners and drank her good wine, as long as she could find means to do so—famine or no famine; her landlords strained for the last penny of rent, and sent their tenants houseless into the storm when they could pay no longer.
