The scene at Skibbereen, west Cork, in 1847. From a series of illustrations by Cork artist James Mahony (1810-1879), commissioned by Illustrated London News 1847
FAMINE AND PESTILENCE 1847 IRELAND
So many stories and articles have beeen written about the Great Famine an Gorta Mór ... but these first hand accounts certainly portray the reality of that time.
Courtesy of TROVE
South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), Wednesday 21 July 1847, page 3
National Library of Australia
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48543642
To make it easier...
FAMINE AND PESTILENCE.
IRELAND.
There are reports of continued mortality, of the usual stamp. According to the parish priest of Coaclford, 4,000 out of 6,000 souls who compose the population of this parish have not for the last three months had 'even one substantial meal in the day.' One in every seven of the population is reported to be sick ; and of 300 families, among the most destitute, ' not less than three on an average in each family are afflicted with fever, dysentery, or dropsy.' The mortality, as may be easily conjectured, is very great under such circumstances ; so many as forty adults dying in one day.
Commander Caffin has addressed a second letter on the state of Mayo, to the Kev. G. Stoddart, which we have been requested to publish : —
Her Majesty's Ship Scourge, Belmullet,
Co of Mayo,
March 10, 1847.
My dear Sir— I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter and its enclosure, with many thanks, for really the demands upon my own purse were so many and great, that I should soon be a beggar, or else have to steel my heart against the misery and woe around me. To do this would indeed be a work of difficulty, and my only desire is, that all who are rolling in riches and affluence in our land might be a participator with me in those scenes which I feel it my duty to witness and represent; nay, I will say more, it would 'indeed be well for their souls' good to see what poor human nature can be reduced to, and must thrust the inquiry upon all, 'Who maketh me to differ?' I much regret that I could not have furnished you with the state of thing in 'his barony before; but really my time is so much occupied in attending to duty, that it gives me little to devote to myself. I must plead this, too, as an excuse at this moment, fear-ing I shall be able only to give you a hurried and short note, as I leave for Westport, Newport, and Clifden, to-morrow morning, delivering the remainder of the cargo of the Society of Friends. In the barony of Erris about Belmullet, the wretchedness is very great, and the cases of death from starvation of frequent occurrence, I, although the greater number are carried off by dysentery caused by insufficiency, change, and unwholesomeness of food. On both sides of Blacksod Bay they are very badly off, aud nothing but gratuitous issue of meal in the extreme cases can do any good. This too often comes too late, and the poor sufferer is carried off without benefiting by it. On the west side of the bay, throughout the whole length of what is called 'within the Mullet,' is wretchedness and woe. At the extreme south point is a village, seldom visited by anybody, called Surgeview; it has about 150 or 200 inhabitants; at this place they had been living upon horseflesh for three weeks past. I rode there in order that I might be able to bear testimony to this extreme state of destitution. It was the fact, and on entering one of the cabins, and being shown a piece of horse, my heart sickened, but a moment's reflection led me to commend these poor people to bring themselves to this rather than allow themselves and their large families to die; some, however, preferred death, or a miserable existence upon limpets and sea-weed, which may be said to have kept them in a state of existence during the winter, together with a little fish which they catch when the weather permits them to venture out in their frail boats, which are only made of open basket work, covered with horse hides or canvas. In one cottage they had a quantity of the horse flesh salted, and some of it smoked. I asked them 'how they obtained this meat? They said that the horses died of starvation, the owners of them skinned them, and then allowed the flesh to be taken; in some cases taking a portion for their own use. In this village lived an old lady with her two daughters — in fact the village belongs to her. She says she cannot get the rents paid, and the people impose upon her sadly. The poor creature, with tears rolling down her cheeks, told me she went to bed last night supper less, and cannot tell how one meal in advance of the others is to be obtained. She is the only Protestant in this wretched vllage, and appears well prepared for that end which must shortly overtake her. Her manners and those of her daughters are quite ladylike, whilst their dwelling is more wretched than you can conceive - a mere hovel, clean as far as it could be. There was no sickness in this village, and the looks of the people bespoke a better state of things than we found. On our return we visited other villages; at Fallmore we found them eating horse-flesh, as in Surgeview. Everywhere the poor creature- with their children barely clad were to be seen searching for potatoes ; and ground which had not been cultivated for two years, on account of the failure, they were now turning and returning, and had done this three and four times over, still looking for some ; those that they got were no larger than marbles. Their principal support during the winter, as throughout this narrow neck of land, was seaweed and limpets. With few exceptions the middle aged and young people were healthy looking, with all their distress ; but the old people and children mostly objects of starvation, and I should fear they were neglected, being unable to provide for themselves. Some of these poor creatures were in bed exposing their limbs in order to show us their emaciated state, and many children positively skeletons, and without clothing. I need hardly tell you that it is very heart-breaking this spectacle, and one which can never be effaced from my memory. It is impossible to convey the melancholy aspect of the whole country lying fallow— not a patch of it touched — and the groups of poor creatures only looking for and hoping that employment may be found for them. Their spirits are sadly depressed. Their cry is for seed, and I do think if they saw any chance of this coming they would rouse themselves, believing that their poor country might yet be saved; but no provision has been made for the ground to do its part ; and the state of things next year must be ten times worse than this. The 12th of next month is considered here the end of seed time, and no ground has as yet been prepared. If seed, however, was to be brought, without delay, I do think the people would rouse themselves and prepare the ground, and things might yet brighten upon them. Green crops, too, such as turnip - and mangold-wurtzle, would do well they say in this soil. It is no use my entering in detail into the actual starvation cases, or to tell you of the particular distress which prevails in any one locality : for they are all alike, getting worse as you travel south, and at Sclhull and its neighbourhood the very climax of misery finds its resting-place. I have no doubt ultimate good will result from all this misery, when He alone who brought it to pass shall speak the word, and say "It is enough.'' A stranger coming among these people is at once struck with the filth and wretchedness of their habitations and persons, but little indeed removed from the very beasts who herd among them. He is at first inclined to think this is consequent upon the present distress ; but it is not so. They have thus lived from the earliest period till now. No care has been shown to improve their condition, and they are little inclined to do it themselves. I think, however, the time has come when it might be done effectually ; and I think your society should, in granting any gratuitous relief, require that some labour be performed for it, such as paving their cabins with slabs of stones, which are to be found in abundance about them, putting their cabies in order, building chimneys to them, and in endeavouring to raise them to a degree of comfort which they are at present ignorant of; this would not stop short of improving their minds too. l have written more than I thought my time would allow —it has been written at random ; but I will convey to you any further information should I feel I can interest you, or forward the object of your society. You, of course, are at liberty to make use of this letter, or any parts of it, as you may think fit ; and refer any one for particulars to the simple truths which I stated with reference to Schull for detail, which will answer quite as well here as their starvation, in all its stages, is to be found.— Believe me, my dear Sir, very truly yours,
Crawford Caffin.
To the Rev. George H. Stoddart, Hon. Secretary, United Relief Association, 40, Leicester square. The following letter has been addressed by the Rector of Schull, in the county of Cork, to a London contemporary : —
Sir,~Of all the direful scenes of misery which it has been my lot to witness during the last two or three months, what I recently beheld bears the fearful palm of wretchedness; and despite all the unkind observations made respecting us and our innumerable woes in another quarter, you, Sir, will, I am persuaded, listen with patience and compassion to tbe narrative of our sorrows in this ill fated, famine-stricken land. A remark of Captain Caffin's during his late visit to my parish, I shall not easily forget:-' My preconceived ideas of your misery seem as a dream to me compared with the reality ;' and when an eyewitness could thus speak, it may well be presumed that the reality is something fearful. What Captain Caflin witnessed, however, was but a very smail portion of our wretchedness. He had leisure only in a hurried drive to examine the hovels on the rode side : higher up among our rocks and fastnesses he might have seen appalling sights indeed. One of these I shall now briefly describe. As I was returning from my sorrowful rounds a boy came up to me and earnestly requested me to go and visit his father. As the boy was personally unknown to me, he and his family being Roman Catholics, I inquired where his father lived, and told him to show me the way to his cabin. Turning from tbe main road, we crossed a bridge which the winter torrents had nearly swept away; and pursu-ing our walk onward we reached the scene of woe. Ay, Sir: and a scene of woe it was, such as in your happier country, could nowhere be paralleled, and which, I almost fear, will be deemed incredible in the delineation. In one wretched hovel, whose two windows were stopped with straw, lived, huddled together, sixteen human beings. They belonged not, however, to one family ; three wretched households inhabited this miserable abode. Out of the sixteen, there were but two of whom it might be said that they were able to walk, and on the exertions of these two poor pallid objects had the rest to depend, if we may except the husband of one of them, who, I was informed, had crawled out to crave a little sustenance from some charitable hand. Of the others, eight were crowded into one pallet— a bed it was not — formed of a small handful of straw, which scarcely kept them from the cold mud floor. The poor father— who has since died— was sitting up, and showed me his legs swollen to the last degree ; beside him lay his sister, and at his feet his children - all hastening to eternity. The remembrance of that sight wrings my heart. But, to proceed. Of another family, the mother, a widow, lay in an opposite corner, famine having scarcely left in her countenance a vestige of humanity, while her son, an only child, sat crouching over a few turf embers, a most gastly object— both of them so hideous, that the very sight of them was most distressing. At the other extremity of this horror-filled abode, were three children, one of them apparently folded up in its deathful sleep ; another pale and amaciated : and the third, an infant, which could not long survive— for among our poor, no mother can now attempt to nurse, all the sources of maternal nourishment being being dried up in her care-worn, hunger-wasted frame. Alas ! Sir. such a scene of woe ! could human misery exceed it ! I withdrew from that emporium of mortal wretchedness with feelings which I dare not to recal. O, what courage does it require to go from one such scene of horror to another! It does, Sir, believe me, and I feel it wearing my very life away. In a parish like mine, which contains 18000souls -I should say contained, for we calculate that 1500 have already perished- and in a district where the potato formed the sole sustenance of our population, can there be otherwise than the most appalling destitution when that esculent was utterly exterminated by a single breath of the Divine vengeance, as it looked on a land steeped with blood ? I have long expected it, and retribution has overtaken us at last !
I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,
Robert Traill, D.D , Rector and Vicar of Schull,
and Chairman of the Schull Relief Committee.
Schull Rectory,
County Cork,
March 14.
A gentleman travelling from the Queen's County to Kilkenny, counted the number of farm labourers and instruments of agriculture to be seen either side the road as he passed along, engaged in the cultivation of the soil; and between the village of Borris-in-Ossory and Kilkenny he could observe but nine men and four ploughs so employed ! The number of labourers engaged on the road under the Board of Works was at the same time quite beyond his power of calculation.— Dublin Correspondent of the Morning Post. The Dublin Pilot, of the 20th March, describes the increase of emigration ; the account is but one sample of those to be found in every paper — Every port is filled with mechanics, farmers, and labourers, eager to escape from this devoted island. The town of Dungarvan is about to lose every tradesman and mechanic that can scrape up enough to pay their passage. We are grieved to say, amonst the artizans of Dublin the greatest destitution prevails ; and we have heard that a general meeting is lo be held to petition Government to enable them to migrate. As to the country, the tanners are selling out their interest in the land in great numbers. So far has this system proceeded in the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford, that we have been assured, on respectable authority, hundreds of farms will lie untilled. The tide of emigration has not yet arrived at its full at this port; yet every appearance promises a greater drain of the population than ever before took place. The worst of it is, it is the producers of the wealth — the bone and sinew of the country— that are taking their departure; leaving the mass of poverty behind, and the island a iazur-house. The desire for some larger and more efficient plan of emigration, or even of colonization extends. Here is a sample of the feeling, taken from the Dublin Evening Mail, an able Tory paper — Two modes of disposing of the surplus population of the country are open to those who have the guidance of affairs. They must either take the course pointed out by the practice at all times of overpopulated countries — that of colonization — or they must be prepared, sooner or later, to see famine reduce to its proper standard the number of the inhabitants of Ireland. We regret to perceive, from the announcement of Lord John Russell's determination to reject the former alternative, that it appears lo be the intention of her Majesty's Government to permit the population to be diminished by natural causes; but we trust the subject may be taken up by some one who more justly appreciates the evils under which our country is labouring, and who will address himself to removing the causes of those evils, instead of merely applying temporary and imperfect remedies to their immediate effects. The scheme, it is evident, must be on a gigantic scale ; but we feel certain we maintain the true interests of England as well it's of Ireland, when we say, that a considerable present outlay, affording the certaintv of placing Ireland at once in a position to help herself, would be better and more economical than a constant drain on the Imperial treasury for the relief of Irish distress, which must be the result of the proposed mode of dealing with the subject if persevered in. During the last week of February, Lord de Vesci, solely at his own expense, sent one hundred persons from his estate in the Queen's County to New York, he paid their passage out, directed that they should be provided with beds, provisions, and everything necessary for their transit to the New World, and gave an order on New York that they should receive ￡I each on their arrival there. The Paris correspondent of the Times mentions that the Bishop of Marseilles had addressed to the faithful of his diocese a most affecting appeal in favour of Ireland, and had ordered that on two consecutive Sundays donations should be received on behalf of its famishing population in all the churches. A correspondent of the Daily News calls attention to the fact, that there is scarcely a school, either public or private, in which subscriptions have not been raised among the scholars in aid of the funds for the relief of the distressed Scotch and Irish. The pupils of Eton sent £170 to the United Relief Association in Leicester-square. We have much pleasure in recording, as a gratifying trait of feeling in Viscount Ebrington, that one of his lordship's first acts on return of the bridal party from church, was to write a check, in the joint names of himself and Lady Ebrington, for £150, in aid of the distressed Irish. — Devenport Journal. We observe that a London Company is in the course of formation, and we were some time ago informed that another had been set on foot by some public-spirited gentlemen in the city and county of Cork, not merely as a good investment of capital, but with the benevolent object of fostering those habits of industry in the maritime population of the south of Ireland, which would improve their character and raise them above poverty. Such companies, if well managed, would confer a real and permanent benefit on that afflicted country.
Commander Caffin has addressed a second letter on the state of Mayo, to the Kev. G. Stoddart, which we have been requested to publish : —
Her Majesty's Ship Scourge, Belmullet,
Co of Mayo,
March 10, 1847.
My dear Sir— I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter and its enclosure, with many thanks, for really the demands upon my own purse were so many and great, that I should soon be a beggar, or else have to steel my heart against the misery and woe around me. To do this would indeed be a work of difficulty, and my only desire is, that all who are rolling in riches and affluence in our land might be a participator with me in those scenes which I feel it my duty to witness and represent; nay, I will say more, it would 'indeed be well for their souls' good to see what poor human nature can be reduced to, and must thrust the inquiry upon all, 'Who maketh me to differ?' I much regret that I could not have furnished you with the state of thing in 'his barony before; but really my time is so much occupied in attending to duty, that it gives me little to devote to myself. I must plead this, too, as an excuse at this moment, fear-ing I shall be able only to give you a hurried and short note, as I leave for Westport, Newport, and Clifden, to-morrow morning, delivering the remainder of the cargo of the Society of Friends. In the barony of Erris about Belmullet, the wretchedness is very great, and the cases of death from starvation of frequent occurrence, I, although the greater number are carried off by dysentery caused by insufficiency, change, and unwholesomeness of food. On both sides of Blacksod Bay they are very badly off, aud nothing but gratuitous issue of meal in the extreme cases can do any good. This too often comes too late, and the poor sufferer is carried off without benefiting by it. On the west side of the bay, throughout the whole length of what is called 'within the Mullet,' is wretchedness and woe. At the extreme south point is a village, seldom visited by anybody, called Surgeview; it has about 150 or 200 inhabitants; at this place they had been living upon horseflesh for three weeks past. I rode there in order that I might be able to bear testimony to this extreme state of destitution. It was the fact, and on entering one of the cabins, and being shown a piece of horse, my heart sickened, but a moment's reflection led me to commend these poor people to bring themselves to this rather than allow themselves and their large families to die; some, however, preferred death, or a miserable existence upon limpets and sea-weed, which may be said to have kept them in a state of existence during the winter, together with a little fish which they catch when the weather permits them to venture out in their frail boats, which are only made of open basket work, covered with horse hides or canvas. In one cottage they had a quantity of the horse flesh salted, and some of it smoked. I asked them 'how they obtained this meat? They said that the horses died of starvation, the owners of them skinned them, and then allowed the flesh to be taken; in some cases taking a portion for their own use. In this village lived an old lady with her two daughters — in fact the village belongs to her. She says she cannot get the rents paid, and the people impose upon her sadly. The poor creature, with tears rolling down her cheeks, told me she went to bed last night supper less, and cannot tell how one meal in advance of the others is to be obtained. She is the only Protestant in this wretched vllage, and appears well prepared for that end which must shortly overtake her. Her manners and those of her daughters are quite ladylike, whilst their dwelling is more wretched than you can conceive - a mere hovel, clean as far as it could be. There was no sickness in this village, and the looks of the people bespoke a better state of things than we found. On our return we visited other villages; at Fallmore we found them eating horse-flesh, as in Surgeview. Everywhere the poor creature- with their children barely clad were to be seen searching for potatoes ; and ground which had not been cultivated for two years, on account of the failure, they were now turning and returning, and had done this three and four times over, still looking for some ; those that they got were no larger than marbles. Their principal support during the winter, as throughout this narrow neck of land, was seaweed and limpets. With few exceptions the middle aged and young people were healthy looking, with all their distress ; but the old people and children mostly objects of starvation, and I should fear they were neglected, being unable to provide for themselves. Some of these poor creatures were in bed exposing their limbs in order to show us their emaciated state, and many children positively skeletons, and without clothing. I need hardly tell you that it is very heart-breaking this spectacle, and one which can never be effaced from my memory. It is impossible to convey the melancholy aspect of the whole country lying fallow— not a patch of it touched — and the groups of poor creatures only looking for and hoping that employment may be found for them. Their spirits are sadly depressed. Their cry is for seed, and I do think if they saw any chance of this coming they would rouse themselves, believing that their poor country might yet be saved; but no provision has been made for the ground to do its part ; and the state of things next year must be ten times worse than this. The 12th of next month is considered here the end of seed time, and no ground has as yet been prepared. If seed, however, was to be brought, without delay, I do think the people would rouse themselves and prepare the ground, and things might yet brighten upon them. Green crops, too, such as turnip - and mangold-wurtzle, would do well they say in this soil. It is no use my entering in detail into the actual starvation cases, or to tell you of the particular distress which prevails in any one locality : for they are all alike, getting worse as you travel south, and at Sclhull and its neighbourhood the very climax of misery finds its resting-place. I have no doubt ultimate good will result from all this misery, when He alone who brought it to pass shall speak the word, and say "It is enough.'' A stranger coming among these people is at once struck with the filth and wretchedness of their habitations and persons, but little indeed removed from the very beasts who herd among them. He is at first inclined to think this is consequent upon the present distress ; but it is not so. They have thus lived from the earliest period till now. No care has been shown to improve their condition, and they are little inclined to do it themselves. I think, however, the time has come when it might be done effectually ; and I think your society should, in granting any gratuitous relief, require that some labour be performed for it, such as paving their cabins with slabs of stones, which are to be found in abundance about them, putting their cabies in order, building chimneys to them, and in endeavouring to raise them to a degree of comfort which they are at present ignorant of; this would not stop short of improving their minds too. l have written more than I thought my time would allow —it has been written at random ; but I will convey to you any further information should I feel I can interest you, or forward the object of your society. You, of course, are at liberty to make use of this letter, or any parts of it, as you may think fit ; and refer any one for particulars to the simple truths which I stated with reference to Schull for detail, which will answer quite as well here as their starvation, in all its stages, is to be found.— Believe me, my dear Sir, very truly yours,
Crawford Caffin.
To the Rev. George H. Stoddart, Hon. Secretary, United Relief Association, 40, Leicester square. The following letter has been addressed by the Rector of Schull, in the county of Cork, to a London contemporary : —
Sir,~Of all the direful scenes of misery which it has been my lot to witness during the last two or three months, what I recently beheld bears the fearful palm of wretchedness; and despite all the unkind observations made respecting us and our innumerable woes in another quarter, you, Sir, will, I am persuaded, listen with patience and compassion to tbe narrative of our sorrows in this ill fated, famine-stricken land. A remark of Captain Caffin's during his late visit to my parish, I shall not easily forget:-' My preconceived ideas of your misery seem as a dream to me compared with the reality ;' and when an eyewitness could thus speak, it may well be presumed that the reality is something fearful. What Captain Caflin witnessed, however, was but a very smail portion of our wretchedness. He had leisure only in a hurried drive to examine the hovels on the rode side : higher up among our rocks and fastnesses he might have seen appalling sights indeed. One of these I shall now briefly describe. As I was returning from my sorrowful rounds a boy came up to me and earnestly requested me to go and visit his father. As the boy was personally unknown to me, he and his family being Roman Catholics, I inquired where his father lived, and told him to show me the way to his cabin. Turning from tbe main road, we crossed a bridge which the winter torrents had nearly swept away; and pursu-ing our walk onward we reached the scene of woe. Ay, Sir: and a scene of woe it was, such as in your happier country, could nowhere be paralleled, and which, I almost fear, will be deemed incredible in the delineation. In one wretched hovel, whose two windows were stopped with straw, lived, huddled together, sixteen human beings. They belonged not, however, to one family ; three wretched households inhabited this miserable abode. Out of the sixteen, there were but two of whom it might be said that they were able to walk, and on the exertions of these two poor pallid objects had the rest to depend, if we may except the husband of one of them, who, I was informed, had crawled out to crave a little sustenance from some charitable hand. Of the others, eight were crowded into one pallet— a bed it was not — formed of a small handful of straw, which scarcely kept them from the cold mud floor. The poor father— who has since died— was sitting up, and showed me his legs swollen to the last degree ; beside him lay his sister, and at his feet his children - all hastening to eternity. The remembrance of that sight wrings my heart. But, to proceed. Of another family, the mother, a widow, lay in an opposite corner, famine having scarcely left in her countenance a vestige of humanity, while her son, an only child, sat crouching over a few turf embers, a most gastly object— both of them so hideous, that the very sight of them was most distressing. At the other extremity of this horror-filled abode, were three children, one of them apparently folded up in its deathful sleep ; another pale and amaciated : and the third, an infant, which could not long survive— for among our poor, no mother can now attempt to nurse, all the sources of maternal nourishment being being dried up in her care-worn, hunger-wasted frame. Alas ! Sir. such a scene of woe ! could human misery exceed it ! I withdrew from that emporium of mortal wretchedness with feelings which I dare not to recal. O, what courage does it require to go from one such scene of horror to another! It does, Sir, believe me, and I feel it wearing my very life away. In a parish like mine, which contains 18000souls -I should say contained, for we calculate that 1500 have already perished- and in a district where the potato formed the sole sustenance of our population, can there be otherwise than the most appalling destitution when that esculent was utterly exterminated by a single breath of the Divine vengeance, as it looked on a land steeped with blood ? I have long expected it, and retribution has overtaken us at last !
I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,
Robert Traill, D.D , Rector and Vicar of Schull,
and Chairman of the Schull Relief Committee.
Schull Rectory,
County Cork,
March 14.
A gentleman travelling from the Queen's County to Kilkenny, counted the number of farm labourers and instruments of agriculture to be seen either side the road as he passed along, engaged in the cultivation of the soil; and between the village of Borris-in-Ossory and Kilkenny he could observe but nine men and four ploughs so employed ! The number of labourers engaged on the road under the Board of Works was at the same time quite beyond his power of calculation.— Dublin Correspondent of the Morning Post. The Dublin Pilot, of the 20th March, describes the increase of emigration ; the account is but one sample of those to be found in every paper — Every port is filled with mechanics, farmers, and labourers, eager to escape from this devoted island. The town of Dungarvan is about to lose every tradesman and mechanic that can scrape up enough to pay their passage. We are grieved to say, amonst the artizans of Dublin the greatest destitution prevails ; and we have heard that a general meeting is lo be held to petition Government to enable them to migrate. As to the country, the tanners are selling out their interest in the land in great numbers. So far has this system proceeded in the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford, that we have been assured, on respectable authority, hundreds of farms will lie untilled. The tide of emigration has not yet arrived at its full at this port; yet every appearance promises a greater drain of the population than ever before took place. The worst of it is, it is the producers of the wealth — the bone and sinew of the country— that are taking their departure; leaving the mass of poverty behind, and the island a iazur-house. The desire for some larger and more efficient plan of emigration, or even of colonization extends. Here is a sample of the feeling, taken from the Dublin Evening Mail, an able Tory paper — Two modes of disposing of the surplus population of the country are open to those who have the guidance of affairs. They must either take the course pointed out by the practice at all times of overpopulated countries — that of colonization — or they must be prepared, sooner or later, to see famine reduce to its proper standard the number of the inhabitants of Ireland. We regret to perceive, from the announcement of Lord John Russell's determination to reject the former alternative, that it appears lo be the intention of her Majesty's Government to permit the population to be diminished by natural causes; but we trust the subject may be taken up by some one who more justly appreciates the evils under which our country is labouring, and who will address himself to removing the causes of those evils, instead of merely applying temporary and imperfect remedies to their immediate effects. The scheme, it is evident, must be on a gigantic scale ; but we feel certain we maintain the true interests of England as well it's of Ireland, when we say, that a considerable present outlay, affording the certaintv of placing Ireland at once in a position to help herself, would be better and more economical than a constant drain on the Imperial treasury for the relief of Irish distress, which must be the result of the proposed mode of dealing with the subject if persevered in. During the last week of February, Lord de Vesci, solely at his own expense, sent one hundred persons from his estate in the Queen's County to New York, he paid their passage out, directed that they should be provided with beds, provisions, and everything necessary for their transit to the New World, and gave an order on New York that they should receive ￡I each on their arrival there. The Paris correspondent of the Times mentions that the Bishop of Marseilles had addressed to the faithful of his diocese a most affecting appeal in favour of Ireland, and had ordered that on two consecutive Sundays donations should be received on behalf of its famishing population in all the churches. A correspondent of the Daily News calls attention to the fact, that there is scarcely a school, either public or private, in which subscriptions have not been raised among the scholars in aid of the funds for the relief of the distressed Scotch and Irish. The pupils of Eton sent £170 to the United Relief Association in Leicester-square. We have much pleasure in recording, as a gratifying trait of feeling in Viscount Ebrington, that one of his lordship's first acts on return of the bridal party from church, was to write a check, in the joint names of himself and Lady Ebrington, for £150, in aid of the distressed Irish. — Devenport Journal. We observe that a London Company is in the course of formation, and we were some time ago informed that another had been set on foot by some public-spirited gentlemen in the city and county of Cork, not merely as a good investment of capital, but with the benevolent object of fostering those habits of industry in the maritime population of the south of Ireland, which would improve their character and raise them above poverty. Such companies, if well managed, would confer a real and permanent benefit on that afflicted country.
An 1849 depiction of Bridget O'Donnell and her two children during the famine.
Depiction of the Irish potato famine: The Sketch of a Woman and Children represents Bridget O'Donnel. Her story is briefly this:-- '. . .we were put out last November; we owed some rent. I was at this time lying in fever. . . they commenced knocking down the house, and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, carried me out. . . I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead. I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick.
