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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7485, 26 February 1885, Page 4

The Spanish Consul makes an appeal in another column, which will not, we hope, pass unnoticed. It is on behalf of his suffering countrymen, some account of whose disastrous fate has appeared from time to time in these pages. When the cable informed us of the terrible earthquakes which had visited the Andalusians and the people of Granada, the story excited the sympathy of the whole population. The mail soon showed us with how much reason. We read of towns shaken to their foundations, and villages laid in ruins, of thousands of lives lost, and of whole populations homeless and destitute. The calamity has come upon them after a succession of bad harvests, and their case is desperate. So desperate that, with all its power to aid, the Spanish. Government is compelled to appeal to the outside world for assistance. The populations afflicted are the poorest in the Spanish Peninsula—an additional reason for the hope that the appeal for help will not be in vain. This country has never withheld its hand in work of this kind. Australasia behaved nobly when the cry of famine came from Ireland. The same cry from India met with a similar response. On that' occasion New Zealand took a high place on the relief list, and Canterbury's position was certainly not the worst in New Zealand. Christchurch. alone, if we remember right, contributed something like a thousand pounds. These were times of prosperity with us, it is true. But they were not days of superior goodwill. The goodwill is with us still, and so is the spirit of organisation. There is enough to excite the first, and to put in motion the second in the sad story which has come from the Spanish Peninsula. It is a story 6f ruin and desolation seldom equalled. Suffering, death, and want have suddenly descended with terrible effect on one of the poorest populations in Europe. Their cry for help has reached our shores. Let us answer it quickly and well.