The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1898. THE FAMINE-CRY : A VOICE FROM IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 9, 1 July 1898, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1898. THE FAMINE-CRY : A VOICE FROM IRELAND.

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GLOOMY background lies behind the '98 Centenary celebrations in Ireland. At the farther swing of the century-pendulum stands a forced insurrection ; at this end famine. As in '15 and '4G, Nature gave abundant warning of the coming- distress. Her red flag is all too well known in the most distressful country. For two centuries the land has been spotted over with famine at almost regular intervals. It was the chronic starvation among' a considerable portion of the people — caused by the exactions of landlords — which suggested to Swift his, perhaps, mo^t Haying satire, The Modest Proposal for an export- trade in the ilesh of Irish infants. Nature's warning was supplemented by that of living voices. The Irish party, the Irish Press, the Irish hierarchy and priesthood, warned the Government nine months ago of the calamity that was visibly coming. As in 'J«~>, '-i(J, and '71), Government looked the other way and haw no famine coming. Later on they promised to ' waieh the distress.' They watched it as they did the ghastly tragedy of '-]« and '17 — 'in the spirit of a prison doctor who watches the criminal receiving the lash.' A few paltry works were started. Mr. Joyce, J.P. (Cloubur, Co. Galway), declared that they wete k a mere drop in the ocean, compared to what is required to meet the wants of a famine-stricken community.' They supplied a handful of starved crc,itiuv-> with a minimum of food at a maximum of \c\ation, tiouble, and humiliation. The representations and appeals of those who luil witnessed the dire woe of the West and South were met with the Chief Secretary's heartless sneer : ' Was he expected to supply the starving peasants with champagne?' A better deputy of sympathy might easily ha\e been expected from a Government which exaeis over £2,500,000 a year lrom an impo\erished country, beyoud its legitimate limit of taxation. ■f * * Meantime, the distress is wide-spread and intense. The pangs of hunger are felt ever a great part of the West and South. The published accounts of those who personally witnessed scenes of extreme destitution arc painful reading. Some time ago we detailed the fearful failure of the people's mainstay, the potato crop. Vast numbers of people have now no crops, no possibility of employment, no credit, no food but the dole of charity. Canon Grealy — among other things — tells of a family of thirteen (ten of them children), near Newport, who, for over a month, had subsisted on three ounces of Indian meal each per day. From the same quarter comes news that many families are trying to allay the pangs of hunger by eating periwinkles gathered when the tide is a 1 full ebb. From Knocknatubber (Kerry) comes the stor} of a helpless old woman of eighty found in a i-Umiiu (ondition, without a scrap of food in her cabin ; <u:d of another who had no food for her dying boy.

At Balla-hadereen (Mayo), the Sisters of Charity are bcsftiged by hundreds of famine-stricken people, with pinched, drawn faces, suffering from slow starvation ihere is the sound of a heart-break in the Sisters' tale of want and woe. For lack of means they are 'obliged to look trom face to face in the crowd, in order to see who can bear hunger longest, and to choose out for immediate relief those who can bear the suffering least.' There is no class to whom our sympathy flies on swifter pinion than to the starving children, 'ihe Sisters of Chanty tell of 'the pinched, hungry faces of these once rosy-cheeked little ones, browing children suffer terribly in famine days Canon Grealy tells us how many of them have 'their constitutions undermined and debilitated for life.' In the South, so bitter were the gnawing pangs of hunger that when a scant supply of Indian meal was brought to children, they ate it raw. Numbers of them are almost naked. The Sisters of Charity, on one of their rounds of mercy, saw a body of them in a village clothed only with the remains of worn-out blankets. These are but glimpses of the wide-spread distress that prevails. The situation is deepening as time goes on. The facts revealed in the Irish Press disclose a condition of things that is not alone painful, bub horrible. Several months have yet to elapse before the garnered crops will give surcease of sorrow, and they promise to be months of terrible anxiety and suffering. * * # Several circumstances combine to aggravate a situation that is already sufficiently serious. (1) The demand for Irish harvest-hands across the Irish Sea has greatly fallen off, owing to the extensive evictions of those who were engaged in England and Scotland, in what is known as ' high farming.' Add to this the fact that great numbers of the Western peasantry could not get sufficient work to pay their passage to England. Thus were thousands of the Connaught harvesters deprived of their usual means of paying their rents and supporting their families. On the estate (£30,000 per annum) of the absentee Viscount Dillon in Mayo, some 4,000 small farmers arc in this condition. (2) Again :_ the evictor is on the track of the starving poor, as he was amidst the horrors of ' Black Forty-seven.' Mr. John Dillon, M.P., has stated that in two quarter-sessions in the West over five hundred civil bills were granted to enforce payment of rent, and almost six hundred decrees of eviction—' death sentences,' as the late Mr. Gladstone called them. (8) Owing to the apathy of the Government, vast numbers of the plots of the poor peasants have been imcropped. (4) To crown the disaster, an epidemic of measles and of the dreaded typhus has broken out in the South. The people are terrified at the mysterious scouiye which blackens the body before death. It has claimed many a victim. The Cork Examiner records some pathetic details, and, on the authority of Father Arthur Murphy, tells of things inconceivably horrible wrought by famine and typhus down by Ballinaskelligs Bay. Briefly : the situation is acute ; the need is crying ; help is urgently needed. ° # * * Several funds are working in full swing, but they cannot cope with the need. The disaster is on too vast a scale for them. There is urgent scope for a wider field of practical sympathy. Other colonies have moved. New Zealand, we believe, will not lag behind. In the face of this calamity, and in the name of the starving women and children of the West and South of Ireland, we appeal for aid from the Catholics of New Zealand, to whatever land they may owe their birth. We do so with confidence. We appeal for funds, not to be spent in indolence, but to encourage the famine-stricken Irish poor to help themselves. We shall be glad to leceive subscriptions. They will be forwarded to the proper quarters without delay. The need is urgent. Time presses. Speedy gifts will spare much suffering— perhaps save lives. The wealthy man's cheque, the poor man's little offering, the widow's mite, and the school-boy's modest coin : all alike are wanted and are welcome.