Star. — 1830-07-17 (London, England)

LMF.S...- i nere is tol.c phenomenon ni ti.e condmon of ore Irish which must, we should think, attract the notice, and by coo .quenee deeply affect the feelings, of all itionane persons in this country. The fact alluded to is the frequent recurrence of cpiddemic fever among that unfortunate and much afflicted people. We •übt whether a satisfactory cause has yet been found to which one can with confidence attribute the visitations of the plague in eastern climes, after long intervals of suspension. A particular wind, a certain temperature, infection from contact with diseased districts or individuals, have each in turn, or simultaneously, had the honour assigned to them of generating that tremendous malady. There is in Ireland • disease more dreadful than the plague, not produced by wind, or heat, or cold, or contact—independent of all these natural and irresistible antecedents—but arising drirectly from a human want, which want has it. *elf been in great part caused by human injuries. The disease is fever —the source of it is hunger. It is worse than plague, because it does not kill so soon ; and because that other, the parent evil, is a scourge not incidental to the contingency of plague. Only let the English reader judge the situation of a people, amongst whom it is on record that famine rages during every fourth or fifth year of the last century,—sometimes for two or three years in' succession—and that the freezing agonies of hunger ripen invariably into the burning paroxysms of fever, the hunger and the fever being alike unmitigated by charity first, and afterwards by science. The essay of Dr. Corrigan, on the Epidemic Fever of Ireland, traces with elaborate ,industry the progress and effects of those fevers, which ravaged the unhappy island during the last century, that is to say, from 1721 i to 182 d. And the fruit of his researches is thus abridged :—" I have thus thrown together, with a concise notice of the most remarkable preceding or accompanying circumeances, the principal epidemics of the last hundred years. It is a maxim in philosophizing, that we must, as far as possible, assign like causes to like effects and if upon a general view of all the instance: adduced, we find some one condition in. variably present to that condition, we give the name of cause. We give the gave of cause to the object which we believe to be the invariable antecedent of a particular change.' Epidemic fevers are the like effects ;we must, if possible, assign them like causes. Upon a general view of these, with the accompanying circumstances, we find one condition invariably present famine *hat we therefore mark down as their common cause. Lien a rapid glance over the table, as I have arranged it, will show, that however all other circumstances, as time, season, climate, might have varied, this one con.' dition, famine, was never absent. No matter how climate altered, or seasons revolved, how summer or winter rolled on, so sure as want appeared, so certainly did pestilence follow. The two have also ever kept pace with one another : as the degree of want, so has been the extent of fever." Ye landlords of Ireland, listen to these accusing tracts ; and if the Lord Limericks of a half-starved nation object to legislative interference for its rescue, because to relieve the poor Irishman by law would be to rob the rich one, we trust in a British legislature to reply, that, to rob,—though it were a robbery, which restitution is not,—but to rob the rich by hundreds is a less crime than to murder the poor by thousands ; and that the aggravation of famine, by defective laws, is equivalent to Jut act of murder.  Mits.—A foolish evening paper, whose haberdasher-loyalty !CMS to have been confounded by our frankness about the late King, has the impertinence to insinuate that we have been governed by unworthy motives in our avowed contempt for adulation. %Srill the wiseacre be so obliging as to mention what son of unworthy motives he thinks (can he think?) can actuate us in treating the objects of Court Idolatry with so little deference ? He is a blockhead. If be and others provoke us to say more, we have a great ,leaf more to tell, compared with which what we have said, is not merely forbearance, but panegyric.