and left helpless orphans to evoke the aid and sympathy of pitying Canadians everywhere.  Canada was in no sense responsible for this unfortunate state of things.  The imperial government had allowed this Irish immigration to go on without making any effort whatever to prevent the evils that followed it from Ireland to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes.  It was a heavy burden which Canada should never have been called upon to bear at a time when money was scarce and trade was paralyzed by the action of the imperial parliament itself.  Lord Elgin was fully alive to the weighty responsibility which the situation entailed upon the British government, and at the same time did full justice to the exertions of the Canadian people to cope with this sad crisis.  The legislature voted a sum of money to relieve the distress among the immigrants, but it was soon found entirely inadequate to meet the emergency.

Lord Elgin did not fail to point out to the colonial secretary “the severe strain” that this sad state of things made, not only upon charity, but upon the very loyalty of the people to a government which had shown such culpable negligence since the outbreak of the famine and the exodus from the plague-stricken island.  He expressed the emphatic opinion that “all things considered, a great deal of forbearance and good feeling had been shown by the colonists under this trial.”  He gave full expression to the general feeling of the country that “Great Britain must make good to the province the expenses entailed on it by this visitation.”  He did full justice to the men and women who showed an extraordinary spirit of self-sacrifice, a positive heroism, during this national crisis.  “Nothing,” he wrote, “can exceed the devotion of the nuns and Roman Catholic priests, and the conduct of the clergy and of many of the laity of other denominations has been most exemplary.  Many lives have been sacrificed in attendance on the sick, and administering to their temporal and spiritual need....  This day the Mayor of Montreal, Mr. Mills, died, a very estimable man, who did much for the immigrants, and to whose firmness and philanthropy we chiefly owe it, that the immigrant sheds here were not tossed into the river by the people of the town during the summer.  He has fallen a victim to his zeal on behalf of the poor plague-stricken strangers, having died of ship fever caught at the sheds.”  Among other prominent victims were Dr. Power, Roman Catholic Bishop of Toronto, Vicar-General Hudon of the same church, Mr. Roy, cure of Charlesbourg, and Mr. Chaderton, a Protestant clergyman.  Thirteen Roman Catholic priests, if not more, died from their devotion to the unhappy people thus suddenly thrown upon their Christian charity.  When the season of navigation was nearly closed, a ship arrived with a large number of people from the Irish estates of one of Her Majesty’s ministers, Lord Palmerston.  The natural result of this incident was to increase the feeling of indignation