their peaceable agitation, to sneer at their poor effort in arms, to nickname, and misrepresent, and libel the brave-hearted gentleman who led that unlucky endeavour; and above all to felicitate herself on the reduction that had taken place in the Irish population.  That—­from her point of view—­was the glorious part of the whole affair.  The Irish were “gone with a vengeance!”—­not all of them, but a goodly proportion, and others were going off every day.  Emigrant ships clustered in the chief ports, and many sought their living freights in those capacious harbours along the Atlantic coast which nature seemed to have shaped for the accommodation of a great commerce, but where the visit of any craft larger than a fishing smack was a rare event.  The flaming placards of the various shipping-lines were posted in every town in Ireland,—­on the chapel-gates, and the shutters of closed shops, and the doors of tenantless houses; and there appeared to be in progress a regular breaking up of the Irish nation.  This, to the English mind, was positively delightful.  For here was the Irish question being settled at last, by the simple process of the transference of the Irish people to the bottom of the deep sea, or else to the continent of America—­nearly the same thing as far as England was concerned, for in neither place—­as it seemed to her—­could they ever more trouble her peace, or have any claim on those fruits of the Irish soil which were needed for the stomachs of Englishmen.  There they could no longer pester her with petitions for Tenant Right, or demands for a Repeal of the Union.  English farmers, and drovers, and labourers, loyal to the English government, and yielding no sort of allegiance to the Pope, would cross the Channel and take possession of the deserted island, which would thenceforth be England’s in such a sense as it never was before.  O magnificent consummation!  O most brilliant prospect, in the eyes of English statesmen!  They saw their way clear, they understood their game; it was to lighten in no degree the pressure which they maintained upon the lives of the Irish people, to do nothing that could tend to render existence tolerable to them in Ireland, or check the rush of emigration.  Acting in conformity with this shallow and false estimate of the situation, they allowed to drift away unused the time which wise statesmen would have employed in the effectuation of conciliatory and tranquilising measures, and applied themselves simply to the crushing out from the Irish mind of every hope of improved legislation, and the defeat of every effort to obtain it.  Thus when the people—­waking up from the stupefaction that followed on the most tragic period of the famine—­began to breathe the breath of political life again, and, perceiving the danger that menaced the existence of the peasant classes, set on foot an agitation to procure a reform of the land-laws, the government resolutely opposed the project; defeated the bills which the friends of the tenantry