marks of approbation by the House of Commons.  But, the turning point of the famine crisis over, one of the most valuable measures ever proposed for the benefit of Ireland was shamefully abandoned.  One is inclined to suspect that the Government never really intended to carry the measure,—­it was too good—­too much to the advantage of the people—­too great a boon to this country.  Mr. Labouchere, as Irish Secretary, had charge of it; he never seemed in any hurry to bring it forward, and after a notice or two, followed by postponements, it ceased to be heard of.  Some excuse for the Government may, perhaps, be found in the fact that the Tories would, in all probability, have opposed it, and Lord John was only Minister on sufferance; he could be displaced at any moment Sir Robert Peel pleased, who expressed himself against the reclamation scheme in his speech during the debate on the Premier’s “group of measures” for Ireland, but with this exception, Sir Robert gave his full support to those proposals.  He said it was better for Ireland to have self-reliance than be looking to Dublin Castle; and he advised Irish proprietors to act independently of the Castle.  “With respect to the proposition for the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland,” said Sir Robert, “I shall only so far allude to that proposition as to express a hope that the noble lord will pause before he expends so much of the public money on those lands.”  The noble lord did pause, and every Minister since his time has continued to pause; so that the four and a-half millions of waste acres are still unreclaimed, and the public money which, as was proved, might be profitably expended on them, has been saved for other purposes, such as foreign wars, which, since the Irish Famine, have cost as much as would reclaim them twenty times over, although no one, I should think, would call those wars “reproductive employment;”—­nay, the money spent on the Crimean war alone, undertaken to keep the Grand Turk on his throne, would reclaim them twenty times over.

The Government having evidently abandoned their promise of bringing forward a measure for the reclamation of Irish waste lands, Mr. Poulett Scrope, (an English member!) on the 22nd of June, moved the following resolution in the House of Commons:  “That the waste lands of Ireland offer an available resource for the immediate employment and future maintenance of a part of her population, now apparently redundant; and that it is expedient to apply them to this great national object, making equitable compensation to their present proprietors.”  The hon. member proceeded to speak in support of his resolution, but, says Hansard, he had not proceeded far when the House was counted out. (!) With respect to this “count out,” the following appeared in the pages of a Dublin morning journal, from its London correspondent:  “In my private note of last night I enclosed you a copy of a resolution, which Mr. Poulett Scrope had given notice of his intention