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New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1917, Page 5

f It is impossible to give in the pages of a novel, without detracting from its merits as a novel, a correct account of how the money, voted and given to relieve the famine, was squandered and wasted. It is calculated that England draws from Ireland, yearly, the vast tribute of nearly six millions through absentee landlords, and about eighteen millions of imports, besides a vast revenue. When we consider this, and that one or the terms of the Union was, that each country was to pay the annual charge upon her own debt. Ireland then owed but twenty-one millions, a part of which was for bribing members to sell their country to England ! England owed the nice sum of 446 millions.What did she do? Like a dear sister, that she is, she joined her national debt to ours, or, to use a proper phrase, “Consolidated them.” Well, this was affectionatewasn’t it? Considering that we owed but 21, and she 446 millions ! But this was but a small item of the benefits arising from the Union. Considering all this, one would not be surprised if England came forward liberally and opened the exchequer to save us from the horrors of so dreadful a calamity. |j In 1846 the landlords, not to be taken short, seized on the cattle and crops to secure their rents. The poor rate man, the county cess collector, and all other claimants followed in his track, leaving the poor farmer reduced to beggary, soon to become a pauper himself. | In January there was a grant of £50,000 for public works, as much more for drainage of estates. These grants were placed at the disposal of the Commissioners of Public Works, and, I might safely say, that £IO,OOO of the whole never went into the pockets of the ' poor, ■which £IO,OOO would be but as a drop of water in the .ocean. . Irish members'had the spirit to claim -money, not as alms, but a? ; their , right; but the idea was