Galway, Ireland, Aug. 2, 1851.

I came down here yesterday from Dublin (126½ miles) by the first Railroad train ever run through for the traveling public, hoping not only to acquire some personal knowledge of the West of Ireland, but also to gain some idea of the advantages and difficulties attending the proposed establishment of a direct communication by Mail Steamers between this port and our own country. And although my trip is necessarily a hurried one, yet, having been rowed down and nearly across the Bay, so as to gain some knowledge of its conformation and its entrance, and having traversed the town in every direction, and made the acquaintance of some of its most intelligent citizens, I shall at all events return with a clearer idea of the whole subject than ever so much distant study of maps, charts and books could have given me.

The Midland Railroad from Dublin passes by Maynooth, Mullingar, Athlone (where it crosses the Shannon by a noble iron bridge), and Ballinasloe to this place, at the head of Galway Bay, some twenty-five miles inland from the broad Atlantic. The country is remarkably level throughout, and very little rock-cutting and but a moderate amount of excavation have been required in making the Railroad, of which a part (from Dublin to Mullingar) has been for some time in operation, while the residue has just been opened. (The old stage-road from Dublin to Galway measures 133 miles, or nearly seven more than the Railroad.) I presume there is nowhere an elevation of forty feet to the mile, and with a good double track (now nearly completed), there can be no difficulty in running express trains through in three hours. From Dublin to Holyhead will require four hours, and from Holyhead to London six more, making fifteen hours in all (including two for coming into Galway) for the transportation of the Mails from the broad Atlantic off this port to London. Allow three more for leeway, and still the entire Mails may be distributed in London about the time that the steamship can now be telegraphed as off Holyhead, and at least twelve (I hope fifteen) hours earlier than the Mails can now be received in London, to say nothing of the saving of thirty or forty hours on the Mails to and from Ireland, and twenty or so for those of Scotland. Is there any good reason why those hours should not be saved? I can perceive none, even though the steamships should still proceed to Liverpool as heretofore.

Galway Bay is abundantly large enough and safe enough for steamships, even as it is, though its security is susceptible of easy improvement. It has abundant depth inside, but hardly twenty feet at low water on a bar in the harbor, so that large steamships coming in would be obliged to anchor a mile or so from the dock for high water if they did not arrive so as to hit it, as they must now wait off the bar at Liverpool, only much further from the dock. But what I contemplate as a beginning is not the bringing in of the Steamships but of their Mails. Let a small steamboat be waiting outside when a Mail Steamer is expected (as now off the bar at Liverpool), and let the Mails and such passengers as would like to feel the firm earth under their feet once more, be swiftly transferred to the little boat, run up to Galway, put on an express train, started for Dublin, and thence sent over to Holyhead, and dispatched to London and Liverpool forthwith. Let Irish Mails for Galway, Dublin, &c., and Scotch Mails for Glasgow be made up on our side, and let us see, by three or four fair trials, what saving of time could be effected by landing the Mails at Galway, and then we shall be in a position to determine the extent and character of the permanent changes which are required. That a saving of fully twelve hours for England and thirty for Ireland may be secured by making Galway the European terminus of the Atlantic Mail Route, I am very confident, while in the calculations of those who feel a local and personal interest in the change the saving is far greater. But this is quite enough to justify the inconsiderable expense which the experiment I urge would involve.

Galway was formerly a place of far greater commerce and consequence than it now is. It long enjoyed an extensive and profitable direct trade with Spain, which, since the Union of Ireland with England, is entirely transferred to London, so that not a shadow of it remains. At a later day, it exported considerable Grain, Bacon, &c., to England, but the general decline of Irish Industry, and the low prices of food since Free Trade, have nearly destroyed this trade also, and there are now, except fishing-boats, scarcely half a dozen vessels in the harbor, and of these the two principal are a Russian from the Black Sea selling Corn, to a district whose resources are Agricultural or nothing, and a smart-looking Yankee clipper taking in a load of emigrants and luggage for New-York—the export of her population being about the only branch of Ireland's commerce which yet survives the general ruin. Galway had once 60,000 inhabitants; she may now have at most 30,000; but there is no American seaport with 5,000 which does not far surpass her annual aggregate of trade and industry. What should we think in America of a seaport of at least 35,000 inhabitants, the capital of a large, populous county, located at the head of a noble, spacious bay, looking off on the broad Atlantic some twenty miles distant, with cities of twenty, fifty, and a hundred thousand inhabitants within a few hours' reach on either side of her, yet not owning a single steamboat of any shape or nature, and not even visited by one daily, weekly, monthly, or at any stated period? Truly, the desolation of Ireland must be witnessed or it cannot be realized.

I judge that of nearly thirty thousand people who live here not ten thousand have any regular employment or means of livelihood. The majority pick up a job when they can, but are inevitably idle and suffering two-thirds of the time. Of course, the Million learn nothing, have nothing, and come to nothing. They are scarcely in fault, but those who ought to teach them, counsel them, employ them, until they shall be qualified to employ themselves, are deplorably culpable. Here are gentlemen and ladies of education and wealth (dozens where there were formerly hundreds) who year after year and generation after generation have lived in luxury on the income wrung from these poor creatures in the shape of Rent, without ever giving them a helping hand or a kind word in return—without even suspecting that they were under moral obligation to do so. Here is a Priesthood, the conscience-keepers and religious instructors of this fortunate class, who also have fared sumptuously and amassed wealth out of the tithes wrenched by law-sanctioned robbery from the products of this same wretched peasantry, yet never proffered them anything in return but conversion to the faith of their plunderers—certainly not a tempting proffer under the circumstances. And here also is a Priesthood beloved, reverenced, confided in by this peasantry, and loving them in return, who I think have done far less than they might and should have done to raise them out of the slough in which generation after generation are sinking deeper and deeper. I speak plainly on this point, for I feel strongly. The Catholic Priesthood of Ireland resist the education of the Peasantry under Protestant auspices and influences, for which we will presume they have good reason; but, in thus cutting them off from one chance of improving their social and intellectual condition, they double their own moral responsibility to secure the Education of the Poor in some manner not inconsistent with the preservation of their faith. And, seeing what I have seen and do see of the unequaled power of this Priesthood—a power immensely greater in Ireland than in Italy, for there the Priests are generally regarded as the allies of the tyrant and plundering class, while here they are doubly beloved as its enemies and its victims—I feel an undoubting conviction that simply an earnest determination of the Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland that every Catholic child in the country shall receive a good education would secure its own fulfilment within five years, and thenceforth for ever. Let but one generation be well educated, and there can be no rational apprehension that their children or grandchildren will be allowed to grow up in ignorance and helplessness. Knowledge is self-perpetuating, self-extending. And, dreadfully destitute as this country is, the Priesthood of the People can command the means of educating that People, which nobody without their coÖperation can accomplish. Let the Catholic Bishops unite in an earnest and potential call for teachers, and they can summon thousands and tens of thousands of capable and qualified persons from convents, from seminaries, from cloisters, from drawing-rooms, even from foreign lands if need be, to devote their time and efforts to the work without earthly recompense or any stipulation save for a bare subsistence, which the less needy Catholics, or even the more liberal Protestants, in every parish would gladly proffer them. There is really no serious obstacle in the way of this first great step toward Ireland's regeneration if the Priesthood will zealously attempt it.

But closely allied to this subject, and not inferior to it in importance, stands that of Industrial Training. The Irish Peasantry are idle, the English say truly enough; but who inquires whether there is any work within their reach? Suppose there was always something to do, what avails that to millions who know not how to do that precise something? Walking with a friend through one of the back streets of Galway beside the outlet of the Lakes, I came where a girl of ten years old was breaking up hard brook pebbles into suitable fragments to mend roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received for that labor. She answered, "Six-pence a car-load." "How long will it take you to break a car-load?" "About a fortnight." Further questions respecting her family, &c., were answered with equal directness and propriety, and with manifest truth. Here was a mere child, who should have been sent to school, delving from morning till night at an employment utterly unsuited to her sex and her strength, and which I should consider dangerous to her eyesight, to earn for her poor parents a half-penny per day. Think of this, ye who talk, not always without reason, of "factory slaves" and the meagre rewards of labor in America. In any community where labor is even decently rewarded, that child should have been enabled to earn every day at least as much as her fortnight's work on the stone-heap would command. And even in Galway, a concerted and systematic Industrial Education for the Poor would enable her to earn at some light and suitable employment six times what she now does.

In every street of the town you constantly meet girls of fourteen to twenty, as well as old women and children, utterly barefoot and in ragged clothing. I should judge from the streets that not more than one-fourth of the females of Galway belong to the shoe-wearing aristocracy. Now no one acquainted with Human Nature will pretend that girls of fourteen to twenty will walk the streets barefoot if the means of buying shoes and stockings by honest labor are fairly within their reach. But here there are none such for thousands. Born in wretched huts of rough stone and rotten straw, compared with which the poorest log-cabin is a palace, with a turf fire, no window, and a mass of filth heaped up before the door, untaught even to read, and growing up in a region where no manufactures nor arts are prosecuted, the Irish peasant-girl arrives at womanhood less qualified by experience, observation or training for industrial efficiency and usefulness than the daughter of any Choctaw or Sioux Indian. Of course, not all the Irish, even of the wretchedly poor, are thus unskilled and helpless, but a deplorably large class is; and it is this class whose awkwardness and utter ignorance are too often made the theme of unthinking levity and ridicule when the poor exile from home and kindled lands in New York and undertakes housework or anything else for a living. The "awkwardness," which means only inability to do what one has never even seen done, is not confined to any class or nation, and should be regarded with every allowance.

An Industrial School, especially for girls, in every town, village and parish of Ireland, is one of the crying needs of the time. I am confident there are in Galway alone five thousand women and girls who would hail with gratitude and thoroughly improve an opportunity to earn six-pence per day. If they could be taught needle-work, plain dressmaking, straw-braiding, and a few of the simplest branches of manufactures, such as are carried on in households, they might and would at once emerge from the destitution and social degradation which now enshroud them into independence, comfort and consideration. Knowing how to work and to earn a decent subsistence, they would very soon seek and acquire a knowledge of letters if previously ignorant of them. In short, the Industrial Education of the Irish Peasantry is the noblest and the most hopeful idea yet broached for their intellectual and social elevation, and I have great hope of its speedy triumph. It is now being agitated in Dublin and many other localities, a central and many auxiliary schools having already been established. But I will speak further on this point in another letter.

Galway has an immense and steady water-power within half a mile of its harbor, on the outlet of Lakes Corrib and Mash, by means of which it enjoys an admirable internal navigation extending some sixty miles northward. Here Manufactures might be established with a certainty of commanding the cheapest power, cheapest labor and cheapest fuel to be had in the world. I never saw a spot where so much water power yet unused could be obtained at so trifling a cost as here directly on the west line of the town and within half a mile of its center. A beautiful Marble is found on the line of the Railroad only a few miles from the town, and all along the line to Dublin the abundance and excellence of the building-stone are remarkable. Timber and Brick come down the Lake outlet as fast as they are wanted, while Provisions are here cheap as in any part of the British Isles. Nature has plainly designed Galway for a great and prosperous city, the site of extensive manufactures, the emporium of an important trade, and the gateway of Europe toward America; but whether all this is or is not to be dashed by the fatality which has hitherto attended Irish prospects, remains to be seen. I trust that it is not, but that a new Liverpool is destined soon to arise here; and that, should I ever again visit Europe, I shall first land on the quay of Galway.