The Literary echo, and Pawcatuck advertiser. [volume] (Westerly, R.I.) 1851-1854, 1851-09-18
New York, Sept Is, 1851.

who are continually landing in our streets
from the filth and pestilential air of the
emigrant ship. Driven by grim starvation
from their own native land-once fair, but
now bitterly oppressed, Ireland--they have
come to seek home among strangers, yet
in land which has been represented to
them as land flowing with milk and
honey-a land where but to ask for bread
was to have it. Many, very many of them
find a chilling difference between buoyant
hopes and bright anticipations with which
they left the emerald shores of their native
land and the realization of the fearful
struggle with prejudice and superior skill
which they have to encounter in this pro-
missed land. They have reached that
country which has ever been prominent in
their brightest dreams of earthly bliss
but it is not what their fond anticipation
painted it; on landing they are often
filched of the last hard-earned penny, by
the heartless robbers which even stand
ready to victimize the unwary and the
ignorant, and disenabled of the means of
leaving the city and ignorant Of any means
of gaining a subsistence, they yield to
whitening disappointment. Hundreds may
daily be seen congregated in and around
the parks, seated on the kerb-stones with
all the listliness apathy of hopeless despair.
But with all their wrongs they forget not
the religion of their forefathcrs. On Sun.
days, the various Catholic churches in the
city may be seen throngcd by them and
often the mother may be seen kneeling
with her child even on the sidewalk, unable
to gain admittance to the crowded thresh-
old, devoutly telling her beads and, per-
haps, thanking the "Blcsscd Virgin" for
bringing her babes safely over the wide
water to this country where there is hope.
There must be fearful burden resting
on the consciences of the rumsellers of
this city; that is, always supposing that
they have such an article about them, as
doubtless some of them have, as it is some
times rather difficult commodity to get
rid Of Even a catalogue of the deaths
produced through the influence of rum for
the last twelve months is list which would
be sufficiently appalling to awake any but
"a rumsellcr to a consciousness of the ini-
'quitous business, to say nothing of the
wrctchcdness and misery entailcd on the
living, the disgraceful rows and street
fights, the family discords and quarrels, and
many other iniquities too numerous to
mention, besides an enormous expense
which the city government has too meet
in the disposition of the many cases brought
before the different Police Courts. The
number of deaths reported for the last year
from "delirium tremens' is Ia, and the
the number from "intemperance" SO but
this is probably not more than one-quarter
of the actual number of deaths brought on
through the influence of rum in that period
Many physicians, out of respect to the
feelings of the families, report such deaths
under the name Of apoplexy, congestion
of the brain, sc. TO these may be added
a large portion of those who are "found
drowned" and many of the cases reported
as casualties" besides a great part of
those who have had their skulls fractur-
cd," necks broken," &c. sc. In nearly
all cases of murder, of course rum is the
prime incentive. When we sum all these
up we have grand total of not less than
500 or 6OO According to the reports of
the Chief of Police, there has been during
that period something like twenty thousand
arrests, which are chargeable to intem-
pcrance. The amount of tax levied in the
city for the present year is within frac-
ton of S3,OOO,OOO, of which the aims
-. .,>.ronr;,t;on 10 about G1OO OOO