in the House of Commons on the 13th of March.  There was a motion before the House, brought forward by the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, that provision should be made to meet the impending fever and famine in Ireland.  Sir James, in his speech, boasted of the sums of money already advanced, with such liberality, for the relief of Ireland.  Smith O’Brien made a brief reply, in which he said that the moneys advanced were badly expended, having found their way into other channels than those intended.  “He would,” he further observed, “tell them frankly—­and it was a feeling participated in by the majority of Irishmen—­that he was not disposed to appeal to their generosity.  There was no generosity in the matter.  They had taken, and they had tied the purse-strings of the Irish purse.”  “They should compel the landlords,” he again urged, “to do their duty to the people, and if they did, there would be neither disturbance nor starvation.”  In making these observations he must have spoken with unwonted energy, and with a boldness unusual in Parliament, as he apologised for his tone and manner, which, he said, he knew could not be acceptable to the House.  When he sat down, Lord Claud Hamilton rose and replied to him, by one of those fierce invectives which, after the lapse of a quarter of a century he still, on occasion, can summon up vigour enough to deliver.  He taunted the hon. member for Limerick with having then, for the first time during the Session, made his appearance in the House.  He told him that, having neglected his own duties both as a representative and a landlord, an attack upon the landlords of Ireland came from him with a bad grace.  He further accused him with lending himself to a baneful system of agitation, by which Ireland was convulsed, and prosperity rendered unattainable in that country.  Lord Claud having resumed his seat, Smith O’Brien again rose, and said he would not take up their time in replying to him, but he wished to tell the House, that the tone, not so much of the House as of the English press, “about those miserable grants had exasperated him, and a large number of his fellow-countrymen.”  “If Parliament met in November,” be continued, “to enact good laws, instead of now coming forward with a Coercion Bill, they would not be under the necessity of making those painful appeals to Parliament.”  On the 18th of March he spoke again, calling for a tax of ten per cent, on absentees, which would at once, he said, produce L400,000.  But it was on the 17th of April he made his longest and most effective speech.  On that occasion, he began by reading extracts from the provincial press of Ireland, giving accounts of “Fearful destitution,” “Deaths from Famine,” and so forth.  He then said, “the circumstance which appeared most aggravating was, that the people were starving in the midst of plenty, and that every tide carried from the Irish ports corn sufficient for the maintenance of thousands of the Irish people.”  He put forward the