A SAD PICTURE OF DISTRESS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3625, 23 February 1883, Page 4

A SAD PICTURE OF DISTRESS.

Of all the accounts of the distress now prevailing in Ireland none is more heartrending than that supplied to an English contempora.iv by the Rev. F. AY. Gallagher, parish pricit, Carrick Glen, Columkill, County Done-al. He says :-•' Sheer want and the cry of my dying poor forces me with sreat pain and reluctance to bring before your many readers their wretched, starviny condition. Absolute famine and deep distress are increasing daily, and are being intensified by the great severity of the weather. lam hourly surrounded by crowds of poor sufferers begging with heart-rending appeals the price of a few pounds of ludian corn to save life. By the j charity of some few individuals—for which I heartily thank them, and earnestly pray that God may reward them a thousandfold 1 have been enabled to prolong their lives up to the present. All resources are now exhausted, and it is heart-rending to have to listen to their piteous cry when one can't assist them. Take, for example, v few instances out of yesterday s applications One family of six children, lather, mother, grand mother, had been subsisting for three days previous on their entire store of -libs of ludian meal. Another applicant -was a poor woman, who in frost and snow travelled ten miles. She left her husband and three children without food, nor had they any for two days before, n.nd she was apprehensive that she would find some of them dead on her return. A third instance was tho case of a family whore the mother had been confined to bed after childbirth, her only food in this delicate state being tne extract of Indian meal, obtained by pouring hot water upon it, and known among the poor as Indian meal ten." Mr Gallagher ndds that he could supply similar instances of distress by the score, and proceeds: — " Since the beginning of last October 1 have been distributing alms to the extent of _ £30 sterling per week. These alms, were given, as a rule, in lieu of work done on their own farms &c. 1 have hitherto succeeded in warding off death, but now all available resources are exhausted ; and unless immediate and abundant relief be sent me I shall not be able to do so any longer, whilst the lives of over twenty-five hundred individuals who are without food or the means of procuring it, are in immediate danger. The situation, then, may be summed up thus— Immediate relief or immediate death,