To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of Cork, Mr. Alexander M’Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father.  He gave me many interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor.  So far these responses have not been very sympathetic.  He invited me to lunch here with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and around the city.  Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase of the public burdens.  Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever seeking outdoor relief in Cork.  This year, out of a total population of 145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of the inhabitants.  This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply coming here because they are sure of relief.  This state of things illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland.  In the opinion of many thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough’s Fund, and with the Mansion House Fund.  Colonel Spaight remembers that in Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty tons.  Mr. Parnell and Mr. O’Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising them to apply for more, and take all they could get.  “With a stroke of a pen,” he said, “we’ll wipe out the seed rate!” Whereupon the applications for seed rose to six hundred tons!

The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of jobbery.  Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee.  These schemes contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of the Union.  This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be turned over to local contractors.  Colonel Spaight on inspection found that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection