The Express.
London, England, 1847-02-19 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 19, 1847.

deaths some weeks since were numerous, there bas'
been none within the last week. The soup kitchens
and contributions of the charitable have mitigated
the effects which would otherwise have flowed
from the closing of the workhouse. How soon
distress has affected social disorganisation in that
county ! The calendar of prisoners for the county,
to be tried next assizes, amounts to 108 only, being
not within one hundred per cent. of the usual amount
of crime for the spring assizes.
The fruits of the fish-curing. system adopted!w
the Board of Wotks are beginning to be developed.
Mr. Farnell has opened an establishment in I-
mullet, at which he purchases all the surplus fish,
and cures it also, for the instruction of the fishermen.
The Lent will give a stimulus to the demand for
cured fish. .

I learned to-day a fact of a very gratifying nature,
which proves that the apathy of the Irish farmers is
not so great as to make them abandon all hope of the
future. In a letter from an eminent seed merchant in
London, received in Dublin, it is stated that a larger
quantity of seed, chiefly of the green crop sort, had
been ordered from that single establishment this pre-
sent season than all the other London seed houses
together had orders for in the past year. Much of
this, however, may be connected with speculation.
On this subject the Coleraine Chronicle contains a
letter to Lord Besborough from a Mr. Orr, a resident
landlord and practical farmer, not unworthy of atten-
tion. The only defect in the suggestion is how the
required seed is to be purchased.
TO HlB ENCELLENCT THE EARL OF EVAROROVOH.
My Lord,—Permit me to urge the immediate necessity of
appointing select committees in each electoral division,
through the chairman and guardians of the different unions,
to make correct and faithful returns of such occupiers as are
unable to seed their land, • list to be sent to your lordship,
and a second to he kept in the board-room of each union, for
the information of those concerned. It is hoped that mea-
sures will be adopted without delay to acres', as much as
possible, the desolation which is threatened, in addition to
the present sufferings of Ireland.—l have the honour to be,
your lordship's obedient servant. SAMUEL Oast.
Coleraine, 11th February, 1847.

GALWAY Ecgerrow.—The result of the polling of Mon-
day was a majority of five for the Solicitor. General. At a
quarter past one o'clock, P M., on yesterday, the gross Roll,
both aides admit, was—O'Flaherty, 602; Monahan, b 00;
leaving the former in a majority. A highly respectable
solicitor, however, who had gone down to Galway to poll for
Monahan, state' that at two o'clock the parties were equal
on the poll, and the Solicitor-General's friends were con-
fident.
COUNTY TIPPERARY seems more calm—there are fewer
outrages of every kind. The miller, upon whom life an
attempt was made, who was wounded in the body with shot,
and the steward on the public works who was assaulted, are
both out of danger.
The sum of 18.0001. was agreed to be assessed :upon the
barony of Clanwilliam, Tipperary, at a special sessions held
on Friday last. The sessions preferred proceeding under the
Labour Rate Act to Mr. Labouchere's letter, but adopting
the Treasury minute, the assessment will be by electoral
divisions.

A DISTRESSING PICTURE.
The following letter, dated February 15, 1847, from
Commander Coffin, R.N., commanding 11. M. steam sloop
Scourge, to the Secretary of the Admiralty, shows that the
accounts of the destitution in certain districts which have
been published from time to time have not been exaggerated :
My DELR Sia—Having in the course of my late duty (of
discharging a cargo of meal, &c.) at Sehull been brought
into direct contact with the distress which prevails there and
in its neighbourhood, I venture to lay before you (feeling
assured it will interest you in their behalf) that which I had
ocular demonstration of. In the village of Schell three-
fourths of the inhabitants you meet carry the tale of woe in
their features and persons, as they are reduced to mere ske-
letons, the men in particular; all their physical power wasted
away; they have all become beggars. In landing the meal
&c. they used all the cunning they possesse 1 to avoid deter- ,
Lion in cutting open the mouths of the bags and purloining
the contents, and it required great watchfulness to prevent it.
Having a great delve to see with my own eyes some of
the misery which was said to exist, Dr. Train, the rector of
Schell, offered to drive me through a portion of his parish.
I found there was no need to take me beyond the village to
skow me the horrors of famine in its worst features. I had
read in the papers Lett rs and accounts cf this stave of things,
but I thouebt they must be highly coloured to attract sym-
pathy ; but I there saw the reality of the whole—no examen-
don; for it does not admit of it! Famine exists to a fearful
degree with all its horrors ! Fever has sprung up, consequent
upon the wretchedness: and swalinos of limbs and body,
and diarrhoea from the want of nourishment are everywhere
to be found. Dr. Traill's parish is twenty-one miles in ex-
tent, containing about 18,000 souls, with not more than half-
a-doren gentlemen in the whole of it. He drove me about
five or six miles; but we commenced our visits before leaving
the village ; and in no house that I entered was there not to
be found the :dead or dying ; in particularising two or three
they may be taks n as the picture of the whole ; there was no
picking or choosing, but we took them just as they came.
The first which I shall mention was a cabin rather above the
ordinary ones in appearance and comfort: in it were three young
women and one young man and thrae childrett,all coruched over
a fire—pictures of misery. Dr. Traill asked after the father,
upon which one of the girls opened a door leading into an-
othercabia, and there werethe father and mother in bed ; the
father the most wretched picture of starvation possible to
conceive—e skeleton with life; his power of speech gone the
mother but a little better; her cries for mercy and food were
heart-rending ; it was sheer destitution which had brought
them to this; they had been well to do in the world with
their cow, and few sheep, and potato ground; their crops
failed, and their cattle were stolen, although, anticipating
this, they had taken their cow and sheep into the
cabin with them every nige.t, but they were stolen in the
day time. The son had worked on the road, and earned his
Bd. per day; but this could not keep the family, and he,
from work and insufficiency of food, is laid up, and will soon
he as bad as his father. They had nothing to eat in the
house, and I could see no hope for any one of them. In another
cabin we went into, a mother and her daughter were there ;
the daughter emaciated and lying against the wall, the mother
naked upon some straw on the ground, with a rug over her,
• most distressing object of misery. She writhed about, and
bared her limbs, in order to show us her state of exhaustion.
She had wasted away until nothing but the skin covered the
bones. She cannot have survived to this time.—Another
that I entered had, indeed, the appeatance of erretehednete
without, but its inside was misery ! Dr. Train, on
his head inside the hole which answered for • door, IV
" Well, Phillis, how is your mother to-day? " he having
been with her the day before, was replied, " Oh, air, is k
yon? Mother is dead!" Anil there, fearful reeEty, wee
the daughter, • skeleton herself, crouched and steyies imee
the lifeless body of her mother, which was on the floor,
cramped up as she died, with her rags and her cloak about
her, by the side of a few embers of peat.—ln the next cabin
were three young children belonging to the daughter, whose
husband had run away from her, all pictures of death. The
poor creature said she did not know what to do with the
corpse; she had no means of getting it removed, and she was
too exhausted to remove it herself. This :cabin was about
three miles from the rectory.
In another cabin, the door of which was stopped with
dung, was • poor woman whom we had taken by surprise,
as she roused up evidently much astonished ; she burst into
tears upon seeing. the doctor, and said she had not been
enabled to sleepsincs the corpse of the woman had laid in her
bed ;—this was • poor creature who was passing this miser-
able cabin, end asked the old woman to allow her to rest
herself for a few moments, when she had laid down, but
never rose up again ; she died in an hour or so front sheer
exhaustion. The body had remained in this hovel lit feet
square with the poor old woman for four days; she could not
get anybody to remove it. She said she trusted her sins
were pardoned,—she had prayed earnestly for forgiveness;
she had been a wicked sinner, but God was merciful, sad
her Saviour was all-sufficient; she thought she could die, and
longed to depart and be at peace, and she had blocked up
the door that she might not he disturbed; she had some
money—a trifle by her—but living four or five miles from
the village, she could not get any food ; she had asked her
neighbours' children to buy her some , but they were too
much taken up with themselves ; she could not rise
up, and could just manage to kneel she had no-
thing to eat in her miserable hole, and I should
fear must be dead ere this. I could in this manner take you
through the thirty or more cottages that we visited, bat they
without exception were all alike—the dead and the dying in
each, and I could tell you more of the truth of the heart-
rending scene, were I to mention the lamentations and bitter
cries ol each of theme poor creatures on the threshhold of
death. Never in my life have I seen such wholesale misery,
nor could I have thought it so complete. I sin convinced in
that district it is not in human power to stay the evil,
it may be to alleviate it; but this must be bye good
organised system, and the supply chiefly gratuitous. lam
of opinion the employmeut of a number of naval sargeons,
having under their orders a number of men (who might be
selected from the lists of pensioners if they goal be Misty
recommended) to have charge of certain dialglets, tat itely
dispensing medicine where it may be malted, bat absltat
by an order on the relief committee, to soy perm M their
district. The pensioner or two who might be seder mit
surgeon would not only assist in visiting, but In eoaveyleg
the food and medicine &e., to the poor; and by being
strangers to the localities, baring no friends, would do this duty
without partiality: The unseat amid set with the relief
committees, bur independent of thook A board of health
is also now wanted. As it osamet he expected bat • iplati-
knee wiU rage when the num it Owe bodies deenylee,
they have ceased to put them ishpolllmom Mims dm
funeral service performed, and they now* lay then a low
inches under the soil. All that I have Meted above I have
seen with mine own oyes, and can vouch for the truth et
And I feel I cannot convey by words the impression left oa
my mind of this awful state of things. I could tell you alms
of that which I eonld vouch for the truth of, but which I
did not see myself, such as bodies half eaten by the rats ; of
two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan,
whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stop
ping a woman, and asking her what she had on her back,
and being replied, it washer son telling her she would
smother it, but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead
already, and she was goir.g to dig • hole in the churchyard
for it. These are things which are of awry day occurrence.
I trust you will pardon my having troubled you with this,
and taken up so much of your time. I have given the
counterpart of it
stet, ag
ars
Hugot ; but, tbieking you
might like to have it, has indu «ae to send it to you. I