AN IRISH TRANSFORMATION SCENE. For many years English politics have furnished no more difficult problem than that presented by Ireland, which has been described by some one as a land question at bottom. The problem has been solved in one district in the West of Ireland called Foxford, by the practical interest shown by Mr A. J. BALFOUR whilst Secretary for Ireland, and the continued efforts of the nuns in a convent in the district. In 1890 the outlook appeared hopeless, for the valley was thickly populated and a famine was impending. At Mr BALFOUR'S instigation relief works were started and the means of communication with the outside world improved. A convent was opened with the loan of £1000 and the district schools handed over to the care of the Sisters. The nuns showed that they regarded the matter in a practical light, for they began to feed and clothe the starving children, which naturally increased the attendance in a very short time. But education would not feed the starving population in the valley, not relieve the dire distress. By the aid of the Irish Congested Districts Board, which lent £7000, and gave £1500, a woollen mill fitted with the most perfect machinery was erected, which draws its power from the river flowing through the valley, and anyone who visited Foxford now would see the unique sight of a mill yard managed by nuns, who, we are told, show as much energy and commercial enterprise as any Lancashire or Yorkshire manufacturer. The mill hands are young men and women who a few years ago had no prospect of anything but to eke out a miserable existence from agriculture from probably the most barren soil in the barren west of Ireland. Nor were the establishment of a woollen factory and the spread of education the only work which the Sisteras of Charity has succeeded in discharging. In 1880 the population was not only congested, but it was ignorant of cleanliness and comfort. Clean and healthy cottages have now taken the place of cabins without chimneys and windows, and tidy little gardens are to be seen where formerly the inevitable rubbish heap stood before the door. In a word, by the devoted energy of a small Roman Catholic Sisterhood, assisted by the Congested Districts Board set up by Mr BALFOUR, the valley has been transformed in five years, and when in last September an Industrial Exhibition was held at Foxford, Catholic and Protestant, Home Ruler and Unionist, met in amicable intercourse on the same platform, and the spectator deliberating on such a gratifying sight, felt that the altered conditions of the district furnished a text from which the reform of Ireland might be successfully preached.