would be lent on insufficient security. He then proceeded to refute these objections, and to show that the security afforded to the State in this way would be a sufficient security. Mr. Hudson, the chairman of 1700 miles of railroad, was ready to pledge his commercial credit that the State would not lose a single shilling by acceding to this proposition. Mr. Hudson had informed him that the worst railroad under his direction was capable of affording cent. per cent. security to the Government; and he had documents to prove-which he read to the House-that the worst railroads in Belgium and Germany would afford sufficient security for such a loan as he had proposed. He would assume the interest of money to be now 3 per cent., and, if the line were to pay 7. on every 2001., that would afford ample security; but he undertook to prove that there would not be a single line in Ireland which would not pay more than that sum. He next undertook to show that the effect of passing the measure which he then proposed would so stimulate the employment of English capital in Ireland, that it would forthwith complete all the railroads of that country. To carry that measure into effect, he proposed that the Railway Commissioners, appointed under the Act of last year, should be formed into a board, responsible to Parliament for dealing out those loans. He would throw on that board the responsibility of the full performance of the various duties imposed upon it, and would enact, that unless the board certified at once that the railway would be beneficial, and was a sufficient security, the State should not advance any money to the promoters of it.

Having explained to the House the situation in which his proposition would place the shareholders, he next exhibited the double effects which it would produce upon labour. It would set to work an immense mass of labourers on the railroads, and would at the same time enable the shareholders to set free their money for the improvement of their own estates, and to employ an additional number of men in their cultivation. As an instance of the results likely to arise from his plan, he mentioned that such a loan as he had described, made to the Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford Railroad, would set at once 16,000 men to work, and that, too, in four baronies alone, which had been paying 4,000l. a month for unproductive works, with a prospect of continuing that payment for some months. He thought it better that the advances should be made directly to the railroad companies than through the security of the land; for it appeared to him to be impossible to assess on the land any rate which was to be applicable to the future maintenance of railways. Such were the leading features of his plan; and, in producing it to the House, he did not bring it forward either in hostility or in rivalry to Lord John Russell. Though the plan had originated at the house of Sir J. Tyrell, and though the Bill had been drawn up ever since last November, still, with the exception of the honourable Member for Harwich, it had not been communicated to any Irish railway company or to any gentleman connected with Irish property. It might be said that this measure was more favourable to the proprietors of Ireland than that which they had formerly proposed themselves. It might be so;

but the reason for introducing it was not so much to benefit the landed interest of Ireland as to stimulate the employment of the labour of that country. He showed that such would be the effect of it by reminding the House that plans had been or were before it for completing 1500 miles of railroad in Ireland. Now, to execute those works, sixty men would be wanted for each mile for four years. One thousand five hundred miles would therefore give employment to 90,000 men for four years on earth-works and the line of road, It was estimated that the employment to artificers on those roads would occupy six men a mile. That would employ 9000 more. Moreover, a railway, in making new fences, in squaring fields, and in making drains, water-courses, and roads, would occupy as many men as were engaged in constructing it. Thus, altogether, 109,000 persons would be employed, independently of the other miscellaneous occupations to which the expenditure of so large a body of men would necessarily give rise. He, therefore, estimated that his measure would give employment to 110,000 persons, representing, with their families, 550,000 souls. If, then, by a measure such as this, costing the country nothing and leaving it some profit, he could feed 550,000 souls for four years, he thought that he should go a long way in assisting Lord John Russell to carry out his Act for the amendment of the Irish Poor Law; for, independently of its other advantages, his arrangement would afford the board of guardians additional means of providing labour for able-bodied persons out of employment. He then informed the House that he

had inserted in his Bill clauses providing that the contractors should pay their labourers once a week, and in hard cash; and that, if any of them should postpone the payment from Saturday to Monday, or longer, he should be compelled to be compelled to pay double wages for every day during which the

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payment was postponed. He had also inserted a clause by which the railway companies, on the demand of the Railway Commissioners, would be pelled to provide suitable huts and lodgings for their labourers before the works of the railroads commenced. He then proceeded to consider the effects which would be produced upon Ireland generally by the construction of these railways. He calculated the improvement of the land, one mile on each side of each railway, to be sufficient to pay for the construction of the railways themselves, estimating that in twenty-five years it would add 23,000,000l. to the landed property of Ireland. He also calculated that these railways, when completed, besides relieving the county cess from supporting 550,000 souls, would pay 22,500%. a year to the poor-rates, for the purpose of maintaining the aged, infirm, and impotent. Inducements like these would call forth the capital of the country; and he had no doubt that, if his Bill met the approbation of the House, a week would not elapse without its being poured into Ireland and without 200,000 labourers being employed at once on the railroads. What then would happen? Land would have to be bought for these railroads. On those already constructed 170l. an acre had been paid to the landlord, and 201. to the occupying tenant for his rights.

The effect of his measure in this way would be to place 1,250,000l. in the hands of Irish proprietors for the employment of fresh labour, and 240,000l. in the hands of the occupying tenants for their own purposes. He then came to the bearing of this measure on the revenue. He had heard it said, that his plan of raising 16,000,000l., on the security of 8,000,000l. to be applied to railroads, would knock down the funds, depress the money-market, and operate as a screw on the trading and manufacturing interests of the country. IIe did not think that it would have any appreciable effect if the necessary sums were raised at intervals of three months, as was done in 1835, in the case of the loan of 15,000,000l. for the emancipation of the negroes; and they must be timid financiers indeed who anticipated any mischief from it. Even if he had not the experience of the loan of 1835 to direct him, he should say that money, spent in the country and not out of it, and spent too for the advantage of productive and native industry, must be beneficial to the funds and to the trading interests of the empire. Whilst he was thus calling on his country to lend to Ireland 16,000,000l. at the rate at which it borrowed it, and without any further charge, he felt it right to state that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he advanced loans to public works, did not stand in the same situation as a private capitalist, who looked to nothing but the payment of his principal and interest. He was sure that the right hon. gentleman, when he looked back at the great things which the sums spent in the construction of railways had done for the revenue, would agree with

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him in thinking that the State would be a sleeping partner in this concern. It would reap from the expenditure of 24,000,000%. on railways in Ireland an increase of revenue in the increased consumption of articles of excise and customs. After declaring that it was a scandalous calumny to assert that English loans to Ireland had never been repaid, and after quoting the report of Lord Devon's Commission to corroborate that declaration, he proceeded to eulogise the good faith of the Irish people and to give several striking instances of it. He then denied the danger of any outbreak in Ireland, and expressed his belief that the peasantry who had purchased fire-arms had not purchased them for any disloyal purpose. He was then commencing his peroration, when he recollected that he had not uttered a word respecting the manner in which this loan was to be repaid. It was his intention that the interest of the loan should commence on the day of its being advanced, and that the principal should be paid in thirty years, by instalments, commencing years after a certificate was given of the completion of the railway. He then returned to his panegyric on the character of the Irish people, eulogised their patience amidst the most direful suffering, and concluded by saying, that if by his measure he could fill their bellies with good beef and mutton, and their cottages with fine wheat and sound beer, and their pockets with English gold to purchase the blankets of Wiltshire, the fustians of Manchester, and the cotton prints of Stockport, he, though a Saxon, would answer with his head for their loyalty, and would lead them, through their warm hearts and

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