THE SUFFERES IN INDIA.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XIV, Issue 1091, 11 December 1857, Page 3

THE SUFFERES IN INDIA.

" O men with mothers <?ear f O men with sisters and wives." The calamity th3t has fallen upon an immense number of English women and English children is appalling, as much for its terrible completeness as for its uppaialleled extent and intensity. At this moment thousands of these hapless beings, most of them suddenly struck down m the- enjoyment ot luxury, are now huddled together in Calcutta, like so many sheep, in the greatest misery. Most of these unhappy ladies have lost all they posspssed in the world, as well as, lost all that was dear to them in life— their husbands some, their children others — and, to aggravate the wretchedness they feel, grinding want supervenes, levelling all distinction. The community of Calcutta, native and English, have done much for the sufferers ; but the local tre-isury would be exhausted in supplying their wants, and private benevolence begins to fail. Under these circumstances a subscription has been opened in the city of London, which has been readily met, far thp purpose of despatching means to India to relieve th c more pressing and immediate necessity of the fugitives from the upper provinces, and to supply such of them as choose to return to England with the means of so doing in some degree of comfort. A larger sum than that subscribed, however, will be required ; and therefore the attention of the public at large is directed to the object in view, to the end that a sufficient sum for the purpose may be raised. When »orae districts in France were flooded, a year ago. thousands of pounds were furnished for the relief of those whose property had been swept away in the Soods. It surely will never be said, when our own people are suffering in a far distant land a calamity with which that ot the French peasant bears no comparison, that they were permitted to perish. Forbid it all that is humane,— all that is patriot. c I To relieve such urgent distress, it would be well if every portion of the empire, every town, every district of a town, every parish even in the whole length and breadth of the land, met together anet contributed its quota to swell the fund now on foot for the succour of these unhappy and innocent victims to internecine war, escaped from the barbarities of an unbridled alien 10Idiery, and a hostile fanatic population, only to fall into* the lowest dp'pths of wnnt and woe -within the wa)l» #f Calcutta To do this would be- to honour niiae of England more than to gain, a hundred battles. * .