STATE OF AFFAIRS IN IRELAND.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 49, 3 May 1873, Page 3

STATE OF AFFAIRS IN IRELAND.

(FROM AN OLD AUCKLANDER.) Dublin, February 2. It is cold —bitterly cold. A keen, cutting north-east wind whistles round the corners of the streets, driving the fine snow before it, and forming drifts in angles, on window-sills, doorsteps, and the gutters of houses. It is difficult to keep up circulation except by vigorous action. The thermometer stands but a little above freezing inside the house, and outside everything is cheerlessly white, except wjiere the cars have made a dirty-looking track in the snow. Snowballing has been the great game of the day ; and unlucky street-passengers were Obliged to run the gauntlet between crowds of mischievous boys and young men. • The car-drivers also liave had their share of pelting ; and policemen seem to think discretion the better part of valour, they keep so quietly in the shelter. The poor must be suffering keenly. Coal last week was sold at 44s per ton, and prices of provisions are very high : in fact there is scarcely anything to be had cheap, as housekeepers know to their sorrow. In yiew of the state of things here our thoughts revert to the lights and shades of New Zealand life, and we can now form a just estimate of the comparative meritjs of the two countries as places of habitation. The poor settlers who live in the Britain of the South should take content from their abundance of cheap fuel and their genial climate, their flocks and herds, and their good potatoes —an article which Ireland can np longer boast ©f. Even moderately good ones are very scarce, and for such as are to be had £lO a ton is obtained. Butter brings Is 4d per’lb. ; meat, lOd to a Is. In presence of the scarcity of fuel, various projects are on foot to utilise the peat of our bogs ; but emigration has so thinned out the working population that the labor question is becoming almost as important a consideration in large undertakings as it would be iii New Zealand.

There seems to be little of political agitation here just now. Home Rule supporters have had their say, and the question is quietly shelved by the unobtrusive disapprobation of the more "thoughtful section of the community. The coming session of Parliament is expected to be occupied with the old and vtexed subjects of education, local taxation, the franchise, land laws, and the laws of succession to property. Probably there may be a struggle and perhaps a change in the Ministry. —We have taken note of the various changes in New Zealand affairs wliich have taken place of late, in all of which we take a lively interest, bearing in mind the possible contingency'of a return some day to your more favored clime.