1831.] Affairs i?j General. 317 



I knew the appetite could not falsify though the tongue might, and therefore I 

 Jilled the stomach, while some of the other soup-rooms, by delivering soup out, 

 were perhaps in many cases only filling the hog's trough, or the ditch bottom." 



This shewed David's good sense, at once saved his soup, and saved 

 his soup-eaters. But the man himself was on the spot, which in those 

 cases implies all the difference between charity and speech-making. 

 Friend David's next steps were scarcely less necessary, and were in 

 the same spirit of common sense and practical benevolence. 



" Now, since the press of the famine is over, I have been turning my attention 

 to a more permanent good than merely feeding. I have selected 80 girls from 

 those whom I have been feeding, and clothed their worse than Indian nakedness, 

 to beget in them the virtue of decency ; and have them now at work, sewing, 

 spinning, knitting, &c., to inculcate the good order and ingenuity of employment. 

 I have adopted this scheme to do away with their resorting to begging, and as a 

 plan of ' practical morality,' since the priests will not hear of any thing in the 

 shape of education, fearing religious conversion amongst the children." 



So much for popery, which is all the same in every corner of the 

 earth, and would rather see human beings turned into brute beasts than 

 see the most trivial chance of the pope's losing a slave, or their own 

 reverences losing a sixpence. Plague upon them ! why are they afraid 

 of reading and writing, unless from their love of darkness, and their con- 

 sciousness that men cannot exert their common understandings without 

 discovering the tricks, basenesses, and superstitions of popery ? It is 

 this that has been the plague of Ireland, worse than all its famines, re- 

 bellions, and beggaries, and itself the cause of them all. Yet we have 

 paid nearly a quarter of a million ! to keep up a popish college in 

 wretched Ireland, and are at this hour paying £8000 a-year to propa- 

 gate this most guilty and pernicious superstition. More fools we. 



The effects of friend David's system are beginning to be felt in his 

 narrow sphere, and he holds it out as an evidence of what may be done, 

 and justly solicits the attention and benevolence of those, who, though 

 they may be Irishmen, are not agitators, and may be Christians, though 

 they are not papists, to help a design of practical good. 



" The system," says David, " has already been productive of considerable 

 change in the character of the girls, for, from a practice of squatting in groups 

 round a puddle, or manure-hill, chattering, musing, or dreaming their time away 

 into idiotcy, they have become excited by the spur of labour to emulate our 

 English industry. However, I fear my establishment is on too small a scale to 

 become a national example, which has been my object from the first — and, there- 

 fore, I appeal to the benevolent to assist me with funds, according to their means, 

 to extend its scale. Their contributions may be sent through the relief com- 

 mittee, Castlebar, County Mayo, and applied under their inspection. 



Westport, July 25. David Matthews." 



Of this statement, we of course know nothing more, than that it has 

 appeared in print, and that it shews good sense and practical charity, 

 which are worth all the fine speeches and appeals to " our suffering 

 country," that ever broke from the lips of man. We wish success to 

 David Matthews, whoever he is. 



A clever book might be written, and ought to be wi-itten, on the state 

 of periodical literature on the Continent. It is little known here, and 

 not much known there, and yet its state must form one of the elements 

 of that computation on which we can decide the comfort and freedom 

 of the people, or the security of their gcivernment. Thus in Poland 



