JANUARY 155 



Ireland, through the very nature of circumstances, has 

 escaped, there would be less of that one-sided judgment 

 which inclines to think that all the woes of Ireland are 

 peculiarly her own, yet solely due to the rule of the English. 

 Troubles and difficulties come to all nations alike, and 

 certainly England herself is in no way exempt. Witness, 

 for instance, the terrible misery produced by the introduc- 

 tion of machinery, the cotton famines, and even the legisla- 

 tion of recent days which stopped the importation of rags 

 for fear of the cholera. Let those who care for a vivid 

 picture of such times read an old, forgotten novel by 

 Benjamin Disraeli, written in the early part of this reign 

 and .called ' Sybil.' 



During a short excursion into the country by rail I 

 was shocked to see how the trees, already less plentiful 

 than they ought to be, proclaimed that sure sign of 

 neglect they were almost invariably covered with Ivy. 

 This beautiful semi-parasitical plant is very picturesque, 

 and many people have a sentimental love for it from its 

 greenness in winter ; but it destroys the trees, and though 

 it may hasten the end of very old trees to cut the 

 Ivy down suddenly, it should always be killed on young 

 trees by cutting it through the stem at the base and 

 allowing it to perish and fall away. I am told that one of 

 the curious effects of the last Land Act is that the pro- 

 prietors of land imagine they have an unlimited right to 

 cut down their trees, without considering the evil effects 

 this will have on the future climate and wealth of their 

 country. As it is, Ireland has been far too much deprived 

 of her forests in the past, and I, with the tyranny of one 

 who imagines that she understands everybody's affairs 

 better than they do themselves, should make the cutting- 

 down of trees penal. The wise old Dutch settlers at the 

 Cape understood this subject well. They made a law 

 which enforced that every man who cut down one tree 



