and attacking houses by night there were none; instead of 63 for cattle stealing there was but 1; and instead of 20 for highway robbery only a solitary case.

The improvement of Ireland may be largely ascribed to the steady progress of practical and industrial education, combined with religious instruction.

"There is,' says Mr. Locke, 'a certain scholastic training adapted to foster genius and intellectual enthusiasm. In these, as a nation, we have never been deficient; eloquence and poetry illumine the darkest pages of the past, and are abundantly represented in this generation as well by known authorship, as in our serial literature and those copious streams of vigorous composition, flowing from Irish pens through every section of the press of the United Kingdom. But in affirming educational progress, it is not intended to dwell upon its purely intellectual aspects, so often linked in our disastrous annals with vague theories, and aimless or unworthy lives, but rather upon its practical and social results.'-p. 6.

The turn for a useful, practical, and artistic education among all classes in Ireland received a strong impulse from the Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853-originated by one of the best of Irishmen, at his own risk, and, we regret to add, at a great personal loss.

The cost of the building was

Salaries and all current expenses

Total cost

£ S. d. 59,871 2 1 28,342 9 8

£88,213 11

9

The receipts amounted to £53,232 13s. 6d. ; the building and machinery, when sold, produced £16,000-leaving Mr. Dargan a loser to the extent of £18,980 18s. 3d. The nation, however, has amply reaped the benefit of his noble example and munificent patriotism.

'Literary and scientific institutions, schools of design, of manufactures, music, chemistry, and other arts, are multiplying in the towns in equal ratio with the agricultural and rudimentary schools of the rural districts; and the method of instruction in all illustrates, with more or less significance, the important fact, that all arts are founded upon certain scientific truths, by appliance of which mechanical powers are devised, and elemental products moulded into articles of utility, luxury, or beauty. At the same time, it is gratifying to observe that the leisure of the artisan classes of cities is not so much wasted as it used to be in intemperance, or in gross and frivolous pursuits, but in a great part devoted to intellectual amusements savouring of a certain elevation of sentiment and moral feeling.'-p. 7.

The national system of education is doing its work well, in spite of opposition and misrepresentation. It appears, from the Twentieth Report of the Commissioners, that, at the close of 1853,

the number of schools in operation was 5023, attended by 556,478 children-showing, as compared with 1852, an increase in the number of schools of 148, and in the attendance of 11,874. There are 42 more schools in progress of erection, which will add 4000 to the number of pupils in the national schools. This admirable system is being gradually extended to paupers and criminals, and it has, besides, departments specially adapted to the agricultural and artisan classes. According to the last published Report, there were in connexion, on the 31st December, 1853

Industrial Schools

Evening ditto

Agricultural ditto, including 31 Model Schools

Workhouse ditto, including 50 Agricultural, not enumerated
in the preceding

Gaol ditto

Total

There are Government schools of design in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick, Waterford, and Cork. These schools are not only highly important in cultivating the national taste, but they are also valuable in an economic point of view. For instance, Belfast has paid away to French and Belgian designers considerably over £50,000 for ornamental linen headings. In a moral point of view, too, the disciplined industry and ingenuity, even of little children, especially when combined with education (as is generally the case throughout Ireland), exercise a powerful reclaiming influence on the adult members of their families, and through these on the character of the whole population.' We are, therefore, sorry to see from the public journals that the schools of Belfast and Limerick have just been closed, owing to the niggardliness of the Government, who want these schools to be self-sustaining. Now, if any of them had a chance of assuming this character it would be that of London, where the demand for this kind of institution might be supposed to be incomparably greater than in any provincial town. Yet, of £17,000 or £18,000 voted by Parliament for schools of design, London keeps for itself no less than £10,000, leaving the balance to be distributed throughout the provinces.

The agricultural returns of 1853, compared with the previous year, show a large increase of green crops, particularly turnips. Peat land, which can be reclaimed at a cost of £4 10s. an acre, is so well adapted to the growth of green crops, that it will the first year pay the cost of reclamation, and will, by means of the portable manures, such as guano, give excellent crops of the same kind for many years in succession, though they are

naturally unfitted for grain. This is a fact of great importance, as the rearing and feeding of cattle is a pursuit but little affected by the weather, or by the variations of the market. There is also a great increase in the culture of flax, which can be disposed of to any extent to the home manufacturers. The potato, to which the Irish farmer still fondly clings, has nearly recovered ; and the last crop was, we believe, the best since the famine. Fortunately, the Irish harvest was most abundant last year, and of excellent quality. Taking in the whole of the United Kingdom, the surplus value of the last harvest over that of 1853 may be estimated at from sixty to seventy millions sterling.

Progress, we are assured, is manifest on every side, chiefly in the rise of agricultural wages, improved modes of farming, the gradual furnishing of estates by new and solvent proprietors with convenient farmsteads, the want of which has hitherto proved so detrimental to the farming interest. By the Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland we learn that, under the Land Improvement Acts, 153,000 acres have been thoroughly drained at an average cost of £4 10s.--the whole being done by task work, subject to a system of inspection which answers the purpose of agricultural education in the districts where the land is reclaimed.

The unprecedented improvement in agriculture may be ascribed in a great measure to the influence of the Encumbered Estates Court, the main agent of the social revolution which has been wrought in Ireland. The land was so encumbered, so fettered by entails and settlements, and rendered so unmarketable by restrictions and defective titles, that a large portion of it was doomed to barrenness; capital was precluded from investment in the soil, and the nominal proprietors were insolvent. This was the grand difficulty of the country-its fons malorum. For this state of things the Encumbered Estates Act has proved an effective remedy, and the principle on which it rests requires only to be extended to establish a system of free trade in land, which is quite as good for Great Britain as for Ireland. Since the filing of the first petition in this Court, October 21, 1849, to October 21, 1854, an interval of five years, the commissioners have conveyed land to 5613 purchasers, who paid into the Court the enormous sum of £13,509,303 3s. 5d. It was generally supposed that what Ireland wanted was capital. But the working of this Court has proved that what was required was not money, but the opportunity of safely investing it in land. Accordingly, no sooner were the legal impediments taken out of the way than it was poured forth in abundance, for of the

thirteen millions and a half invested in land under this Act, Irish purchasers paid £11,260,262 10s. 11d., while British purchasers paid only £2,249,040 12s. 6d., or about one-fifth. Of the estates sold, 219 had been in Chancery over three years, 364 over five years, 167 over ten years, 17 over thirtyfive years, and 9 over fifty years. No less than 1152 estates were rescued by the commissioners from a ruinous system of litigation during the short interval of five years, by a simple and inexpensive process, each purchaser receiving a parliamentary title, and being perfectly free to deal with the property according to his own judgment. The whole expense of the Court is only £15,000 per annum, and it might easily be made self-supporting. A conveyance may be made of a fee-simple estate, say of £500 per annum, within a fortnight from purchase, at a cost of from £8 to £10, including all expenses except stamp duty.

Ireland has shared largely in the commercial progress of the British empire during the last two years. The war has only slightly interfered with it. Even the deficiency of the distinctive products of Russia has been of service to Irish industry, inasmuch as the chief of them, such as flax, are peculiarly suited to the Irish soil; and the seed which has been allowed to run to waste will hereafter be saved. Belfast, though situated on a corner of the island in the north-east, is the great centre of Irish manufactures and commerce; it extends the means and appliances of its numerous industries throughout every district of the country accessible by coast, railway, or canal. The progress which the shipping of that port has made during the last ten years is unprecedented. In 1843, the shipping registered was 49,402 tons; in 1853 it was 83,128, showing an increase of sixty-eight per cent. The tonnage which entered in the former year was 363,048; but in 1853 it was 768,108, equal to an increase of 112 per cent. The 'Belfast Mercantile Journal' has recently shown that while the tonnage of Liverpool, from 1800 to 1853 increased ninefold, that of Belfast increased fourteenfold in the same period. Since 1817, the exports of Belfast increased 925 per cent., whereas those of Liverpool increased only 558 per cent. The exports of the Irish port (including those shipped intermediately by way of Liverpool, Glasgow, and London), in 1853, amounted in value to the prodigious total of eight millions and a half.

As an indication of the activity of its manufacturing industry, it may be mentioned that Belfast imports coal at the rate of 1000 tons per day. The manufactures of the town, which is the metropolis of Irish trade and commerce, consist chiefly of

linen, cotton, and muslin, to the first of which is to be chiefly ascribed the progress of flax cultivation in Ireland. From Government returns and other sources of information, it appears that even beyond the bounds of Ulster, flax cultivation has increased 500 per cent. since 1848. Flax markets have been established in different parts of the country. There are 956 Scutch mills in Ireland, of which 54 are worked by steam power. During the year 1853 there was in the flax spinning mills an increase of 42,500 spindles, giving a total of 580,684 spindles working in 88 factories. The number of power-looms, according to the Linen Trade Circular,' had been increased from 58 to 218; and preparations were making for 1105 in addition, giving a total of 1323.

'The total Irish export of linens and threads in 1852 was 67,482 packages, so that there is an increase on the year of 4169 packages. 'Summing up roughly the entire value of the Irish export and import trade in these articles, we find the following to be about the estimate for 1853:

The cotton trade is also carried on extensively in Belfast and the neighbourhood. It now employs 111,264 spindles, being an increase upon last year of about 15,000; about two-thirds of the whole are occupied in spinning the finer qualities.

Belfast is also the chief seat of the sewed muslin business, with branches in every part of Ireland. This important manufacture has been established only five years, and it already employs 460,000 females, who work in their own houses, and exhibit, by their personal neatness, and the improved domestic arrangements of their families, the salutary effects of this sort of employment, which strengthens, instead of weakening, the home affections. In payment of this work £1,500,000 is circulated annually in the cottages of Ireland; and it is a fact worth notice, that wages compose fully ninety-two per cent. of the total value of the finished product.