Litchfield enquirer., 1851-09-04
DestituGiOn fin Ireland.

| ctLHcI pdIlial UT general. Even now, when it is alledged that the condition of the people is improving, many of them are dying of sheer want in the county of Mayo. In late number of the London Sunday Times, we find letter from the Rev. Peter Ward, parish priest at Patree, in that county, soliciting relief for his starving parishiOners, whose suflerings as described by him would move any heart save that of an Ilish landlord. lie says, addressing himself to the editor of the above named paper:
 May l beg leave most respectfully to solicitsat your hands, or at the hands of some dear friend of charity, through you, any little aid or .assis lance to 1sslpcs the lives of some of my starving and per ishing poor ? Itis indeed impossible for me to describe the poor spectacle of hun dreds of suffering fathers and trembling mothers sinking under the agonies of hunger. More than two thousand five hundred creatures died in this doomed and mountainous parish by this awful famine, and two thousand more are fast approaching to the same sad end, who have not morsel to eat but weeds and nettles, aside from the little charity am able to obtain for them-may God re- ward the charitable donors. Upwards of eight hundred poDr families are cast out on the world, their little houses lev> eled to the ground by our very cruel landlord. l know not what to do, look ing at my poor people starving around me, and unable to afford relief, after a famine of five long years. 1t is poor sight to behold naked and innocent chil- dren dying of hunger, and nothing to give them. The dark gloom of despair and death are over us. Iftbe charitable knew our sad state, or witnessed what l witness, think they would not refuse to ssve the lives of one or two of Gods creatures; their reward would be great lSeven and twenty years that 1 am on the mission, never witae. sed more frightful objects of pity.
 Itis with pain and trouble of mind that make this sad appeal to you from the far west for starving and perishiug peo- ple, begging and imploring, through tyour hand. the smallest aid, which will be sincerely and gratefully acknowledg- ed by your very humble and obcdient servant, PETER WARp,P. P.
 St. Mary's Monastery, Partree, .... | Mayo, June l4th, 1851.
 l When the French army in Algiers smoked six or seven hundred Arabs to. death in cave, the whole civilized world exclaimed agai..ss ~CtIe Oarbarous deed. Yet an Irish landlord drives forth eight hundred starving families to perish ip the mountains-leveling their cabins with the earth, lest they should return to enjoy the privilege of perishing under shelter. and the affair merely forms the subject of brief editorial paragraph in @ single newspaper, and is forgotten the day af> ter it's publication No wonder that the census of the United Kingdom discloses such striking decrease in the population of Ireland. In England and Scotland the increase has been over twelve per cent, but in that unfortunate island the population is two millions less than in 1s4.! According to the ratio of its progress prior to ls4l, the population of Ireland in 1851 should be nlne and a quarter millions but the actual sum to- tai is six and quarter million-about what it was in 1921. The increase of emigration, great as it has been, will not account for this frightful failing off of three millions of the previous decennium. One million and half at the very low est calculation. must have perished by starvation and pestilence during that pe- riod. At this rate of depopulation. Ire- land will be without inhabitants in less than thirty years. Who can wonder that our emigrant ships are crowded with Irish fugitives from starvation, and who that has an American heart would deny these poor outcasts a home and coun- try here?