IS THERE TO BE ANOTHER IRISH FAMINE ?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 286, 25 October 1878, Page 9

IS THERE TO BE ANOTHER IRISH FAMINE ?

The year 1878 will be memorable as one of famines. India, China and Brazil have received its devastating visits. In India, as Lord -Napier declared in the House of Lords on the 26th ult., the ground in some parts was covered with the bones of human victims, in Mysore alone, one-third of the population having disappeared. In China a Catholic Bishop stated that people had devoured members of their own mealy, recalling the scenes of 450 in Italy. And now in Morocco it is asserted that 3,000,000 persons are suffering from want of food and thousands are in a state of starvation ; and a resident writes that the famine will grow worse from month to month." The territory under British rule appears to be particularly unfortunate in the visits of famine. It devastated England in 1193, 1395 and 1438, so that the people were compelled to devour dogs and fern roots ; and there were also three great famines in that country during the last century. In Bengal, in 1771, nearly the whole population was swept away, and even within the last twelve years British India was visited by famine three times. P^ Cc more from Irclan(i com e the ominous symptoms of famine 1 tie failure of the potato crop threatens, for the seventh time within this century, to bring on its ravages. There is danger that the scenes may be renewed of 1814, 1816, 1822, 1831, and of 1846 and '47, in which latter years, according to John Martin, there were half a million victims. It is significantly stated that the present season in Ireland has been almost a precise repetition of that in 1847. From King's County, Galway, Kildare and other counties come reports of the potato blight, and in some cases it is said the turnips are also attacked A Moneymore correspondent of the Dublin, Freeman, July 2G, states that m that section the potato haulms arc black, and the tubers tainted. A Galway paper says that near Ballinasloe the stalks are, in almost every case, withered, a circumstance never known within living memory so early. The Irish Farmer, in a lengthy article on the crops in the west and north-west of Ireland, says : " Last year the potatoes of all kinds wore an almost total failure, the yield in some instances not paying for a tenth of the cost of planting and if a similar disaster were to befall the people this year, little short of a famine would be the result." The Fanner, however, speaks hopefully and says that if dry weather should set in, no further danger need be apprehended.

The last Irish famine showed that the country produced enough to feed twice the population. Vast quantities of land lay unreclaimed while hundreds of thousands starved. O'Connell said that if Ireland had a, pariiament of her own, they would meet the evil by temporarily closing Irish ports against the exportation of food, and stopping distillation. Yet that was the time when the British Parliament in repealing the Corn Laws in England, impoverished the Irish farmers by putting them in competition with all the world in prices, while absentee landlords spent most of their means out of Ireland. May we hope that before another famine shall visit Ireland, she will have a home Parliament to meet it with home legislation I— Pilot.