LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 37, 2 January 1885, Page 19

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

In onr issue for the 27th of September we (Nation) re-published a passage from John Mitchell " Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)," showing that the pinch of hunger policy identified witb Mr. George Otto Trevelyan 's name at present, was well known in the famine period to his father, Sir Charles Trevelyan. The following passages dealing with the same subject are taken again from Mitchel's'work :—

" Take another illustration of the spirit in which British charity was received by the Irish people. The harvest of Ireland was abundant and superabundant in 1847, as it had been the year before. The problem was, as before, to get it quietly and peacefully over to England. Therefore the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a form of thanksgiving for an ' abundant harvest,' to be read in all the churches on Sunday, the 17th of October. One Trevelyan, a treasury clerk, had been sent over to Ireland oo some pretence of business ; and the first thing he did when he landed was to transmit toiEngland|an humble entreaty that the Queen would deign to issue a royal ' letter ' asking alms in all those churches on the day of thanksgiving. The petition was complied with ; the Times grumbled against these Irish beggars ; and the affair was thus treated in the Nation, which certainly spoke for the people more authentically than any other journal : — " ' Cordially, eagerly, thankfully we agree with the English Times in this one respect : there ought to "be no alms for Ireland.' " It is an impudent proposal, and ought to be rejected with scorn and contumely. We are sick of this eternal begging. If but] one voice in Ireland should be raised against it, that voice shall be ours. To-morrow, to-morrow, over broad England, Scotland, and Wales, the people who devour our substance from year to year are to offer up their canting thankgivings for our ' abundant harvest,' and to fling us certain crumbs and crusts of it for charity. Now, if any churchgoing Englishman will hearken to us, if we may be supposed in any degree to speak for our countrymen, we put our petition thus : Keep your alms, ye canting robbers — button your pockets upon the Irish plunder that in in them — and let the begging-box pass on. Neither as loans nor as alms will we take that which is our own. We spit upon the benevolence that robs us of a pound and flings back a penny in oltarity. Contribute, now, if you will — these will be your thanks I ' " But who has craved this charity ? Why, the Queen of England, and her Privy Council, and two officers of her Government, named Trevelyan and Burgoyne % No Irishman that we know of has begged alms from England.

'" But the English insist on our remaining beggars. Charitable souls that they are, they like better to give us charity than to let us earn our bread t And consider the time when this talk of almsgiving begins : our ' abundant harvest,' for which they are to thank God to-morrow, is still here ; and there has been talk of keeping it here. So they say to one another — ' Go to ; let us promise them charity and church-subscriptions : they are a nation of beggars ; they would rather have alms than honest earnings ; let us talk of alms, and they will send us the bread from their tables, the cattle from their pastures, the coats from their backs ! '

"We charge the 'Government,' we charge the Cabinet Council at Osborne House, with this base plot. We tell our countrymen that a man named Trevelyan, a Treasury clerk — the man who advised and administered the Labour Act — that this Trevelyan has been sent to Ireland, that he, an Englishman, may send over, from this side of the Channel, a petition to the charitable in England. We are to be made to beg whether we will or no. The Queen begs for us ; the Archbishop of Canterbury begs for us ; and they actually send a man to Ireland that a veritable Irish begging petition may not be a-wanting.

•' From Salt-hill hotel, at Kingston, this piteous cry goes forth to England. 'In justice,' Trevelyan says, •to those who have appointed a general collection in the churches on the 17th, and still more in pity to the unhappy people in the Western districts of Ireland,' he implores his countrymen to have mercy ; and gets his letter published in the London papers (along with another from Sir John Burgoyne), to stimulate the charity of those good and well-fed Christians who will enjoy the luxury of benevolence to-morrow. " Once more, then, we scorn, we repulse, we curse, all English alms : and only wish these sentiments of ours could reach before noon to-morrow every sanctimonious thanksgiver in England, Scotland, Wales, and Berwick-upon-Tweed." In the same number, the Nation took the pains to collect and present statistics, by which it appeared that every day, one day with another, twenty large steamships, not counting sailing vessels, left Ireland for England, all laden with that < abundant harvest '—for which the English, indeed, might well give thanks in their churches.