The Express.
London, England, 1861-11-07 00:00:00

SPORTING LNTELLIGENCE

A !ate edition of the Express is published every
.•enhig during the racing season, containing the
results el the day's races.

A COMmiumuiLe portion of Ireland is again
threatened with famine. From the mouth of the
Foyle to the broad estuary of the Shannon the
failure of the potato crop is said to be more
general and complete than in any year since 1846.
For several seasons after that calamitous era the
smaller landholders showed their distrust of the
unreliable root ; and the re-appearance of the
disease, though in a modified form, was calculated
to check any premature return to the old de-
pendence upon it as a main article of food. Great
pains were taken meanwhile to encourage the cul-
tivation of turnips, marigold, flax, and other green
crops. The vast decrease in the labouring
population rendered the temptation to plant
the prolific potato less and less every year ;
and the formation of many large pasture
farms, where whole villages and their potato
gardens had once existed, led to the sup-
position that whether the inscrutable blight
which had caused so much suffering from 1845 to
1849 reappeared or not, we should hear no more
of acute and wide-spread peasant destitution. And
it is indeed happily truo that no such misery as
Ireland endured at the former period is to be ap-
prehended now. The vast numbers of the popu-
lation who subsisted by mendicancy during half
the year, and on potatoes grown on small patches
of cunacre during the remainder, are no longer to
be seen. Famine, pestilence, and emigration have
swept them from the surface of the soil ; and to
these must be added a large proportion of the
labouring and farming classes, who during the last
ten years have emigrated to Australia or America.
Instead of eight millions of inhabitants there are
leas than six now to be fed upon the produce of
the soil of Ireland ; and looking at the aggregate
of that produce and the extent of land
divided between pasture and tillage, it
cannot be doubted that in ordinary years
there is not only abundance for all, but a
large amount available to be exchanged in the
markets of England for the other necessaries of
life. Nor can we believe that the agricultural
produce of 1860 and 1861, short though it has
fallen in both years of an average yield, will not
be found far more than adequate to supply the
wants of the existing population. From the tables
of Agricultural Statistics recently published by
authority of Government, it appears that sheep
have increased in niunber fifty per cent. and
horned cattle one hundred per cent. during the
last twenty years. Simultaneously with this in-
crease there has been a vast additional breadth of
land brought under the plough, not by the dimi-
nution of pasture, for that, as we have amid, has
been steadily extending, but in addition to and
beside it, in consequence of the widely ex-
tended reclamation of waste, both bog and
mountain, and the redemption of land pre-
viously rends red tussles by the flooding
of rivers. During the last three years there has,
indeed, been a decline in the breadth of tillage—a
faa to be accounted for by the discouraging un-
kindliness of the seasons. But comparing 1860
with ten or twenty years preceding, instead of a
diminution there would appear to have been a de-
cided increase, not in acreage devoted exclusively
to cereal crops, but generally to all that needs the
annual expenditure of capital and labour. Of
wheat there s much less than there used to be in
the days when protection lured the farmers in an
uncongenial climate to gamble in its production ;
but of oats and barley, to whose growth and ripen-
ing the Irish soil and atmosphere are far more pro-
pitious, there has never been any lack.
In all this we are speaking generally as of the
entire country, and taking one year with another.
But when we coins to diacriminate between
different districts and different seasons, other
and less pleasing circumstances force them-
selves on our attention. A great portion
of the soil in the counties bordering on the ocean
is inferior to that of the central and eastern dis-
tricts of the island ; and the climate is far more
humid, and loss suited to corn cultivation. Re-
moteness from the greater markets for produce,
and the total absence of any species of commerce
or of manufacture, contribute likewise to render
Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, and Clare poorer
than any other five counties of equal extent in
Ireland. In this out-of-the-way region it was that
the disastrous dearth of 1822 was peculiarly
felt, and the still more fatal famine of 1847 ; and
here we are once more warned to look for the ap-
proach of general destitution and its inevitable
concomitant disease. The failure of the potato is
still the principal cause of the danger to which the
peasantry are exposed, though other circumstances

in the present year tend greatly to aggravate
it. The continuous rains in the counties we have
named, and, we are sorry to say, in several of
those adjacent to them, have rendered it impos-
sible to save the hay crop from destruction, or the
turf, which constitutes the only fuel of the dis-
trict, in a condition fit for present use. We quite
believe that much of the mischief that has so
often arisen in this extreme western district is
referable to the want of drainage, and that the
beat mode in which present relief can be afforded
is by promoting that most essential of all means
of physical civilization and permanent improve-
ment. Much has no doubt been done throughout

other districts of Ireland during the last fifteen
years in the way of arterial and sub-soil drainage ;
and the proofs are numerous and striking, even to
the eye of the superficial observer, of the dif-
ference between a town land where such works
have been completed, and the adjoining
town land where as yet they have not been begun.
But everywhere there ia still great room
for further improvement in this respect, and
especially in the region bordering on the ocean.
We would not be understood as venturing to ex-
press any hasty opinion upon the temporary means
of relief which may be necessary to avert the
direful consequences of want of food by the poorest
, class in the poorest portion of the country during
the next few months. Considering the compara-
tively narrow dimensions within which the present
exigency is circumscribed, and the abundant ex-
perience derivable from the errors of administra-
tion formerly committed, there will be no excuse if
the right thing be not done in the right way, and
done effectually. All we would now say is, that
we trust the blunder may not be again committed
of trying to relieve casual and exceptional destitu-
tion on an unwonted scale by straining the ordi-
nary mechanism of the Poor Law. Nothing but
suffering and shame resulted from that folly on
the part of the worshippers of routine when last it
was tried ; and nothing, we are couvinced,would be
mere unwise on the present occasion.

ir br Court.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Nov. 6.

The Queen drove out in • carriage-and-four this)
morning, attended by the Lady in Waiting and Major-
General Seymour.
The Prince Consort went to London, attended by
. _

Lieutenant-General the /lon. C. Grey and Colonel the Hon.
Ilardinge. His Royal Highoeu visited the Great
Exhibition Building and the Horticultural Gardens at Ken-
sington, and proceeded afterwards to Hanover-square, to
preside at a meeting of the Council of the Royal Agricul-
tural Society.