IRELAND.
A very considerable portion of the session was occupied by the affairs of Ireland. Under the section devoted to the concerns of that country such notice was taken of the proceedings in parliament bearing reference to her, as makes it unnecessary to enter at length into their record in this place. Early in the session the government requested the house to renew the act for the suspension of Habeas Corpus: it was granted. Measures bearing upon the poor-laws, and the commercial state of the country, were subsequently discussed, the government always succeeding in obtaining the support of the house. A bill for facilitating the transfer of encumbered estates was introduced on the 26th of April; its object was, chiefly, to amend a similar act of 1848, which had been found to a great extent impracticable, the usual fate of most whig measures. The new bill was carried; but while it did much good, it was sometimes an instrument of injustice, very imperfectly answered its own objects, and was not conceived or framed in a comprehensive or statesman-like spirit. The great changes which its abettors predicted it would create in the social condition of Ireland were not realized. The estates brought into the court were often purchased by their former owners, or occupiers, or by other Irish landowners, who borrowed money for the purchase at a heavy interest, on the credit of the estates themselves, which soon became as much encumbered as they had been before. English companies and assurance offices were also purchasers: their management was generally bad, expending large sums without obtaining an adequate return. Ignorance of the habits of the people caused much loss to such occupiers, and a species of quackery in cultivation sprung up which was injurious to the interests of the owners and of the country.