What the other results of this Irish Tour are to be for me I cannot in the least specify.  For one thing, I seem to be farther from speech on any subject than ever:  such masses of chaotic ruin everywhere fronted me, the general fruit of long-continued universal falsity and folly; and such mountains of delusion yet possessing all hearts and tongues I could do little that was not even noxious, except admire in silence the general “Bankruptcy of Imposture” as one there finds and sees it come to pass, and think with infinite sorrow of the tribulations, futile wrestlings, tumults, and disasters which yet await that unfortunate section of Adam’s Posterity before any real improvement can take place among them.  Alas, alas!  The Gospels of Political Economy, of Laissez-faire, No-Government, Paradise to all comers, and so many fatal Gospels,—­generally, one may say, all the Gospels of this blessed “New Era,”—­will first have to be tried, and found wanting.  With a quantity of written and uttered nonsense, and of suffered and inflicted misery, which one sinks fairly dumb to estimate!  A kind of comfort it is, however, to see that “Imposture” has fallen openly “bankrupt,” here as everywhere else in our old world; that no dexterity of human tinkering, with all the Parliamentary Eloquence and Elective Franchises in nature, will ever set it on its feet again, to go many yards more; but that its goings and currencies in this Earth have as good as ceased for ever and ever!  God is great; all Lies do now, as from the first, travel incessantly towards Chaos, and there at length lodge!  In some parts of Ireland (the Western “insolvent Unions,” some twenty-seven of them in all), within a trifle of one half of the whole population are on Poor-Law rations (furnished by the British Government, L1,100 a week furnished here, L1,300 there, L800 there); the houses stand roofless, the lands unstocked, uncultivated, the landlords hidden from bailiffs, living sometimes “on the hares of their domain”:  such a state of things was never witnessed under this sky before; and, one would humbly expect, cannot last long!—­What is to be done? asks every one; incapable of hearing any answer, were there even one ready for imparting to him. “Blacklead these two million idle beggars,” I sometimes advised, “and sell them in Brazil as Niggers,—­perhaps Parliament, on sweet constraint, will allow you to advance them to be Niggers!” In fact, the Emancipation Societies should send over a deputation or two to look at these immortal Irish “Freemen,” the ne plus ultra of their class it would perhaps moderate the windpipe of much eloquence one hears on that subject!  Is not this the most illustrious of all “ages”; making progress of the species at a grand rate indeed?  Peace be with it.