The Kenilworth Advertiser. — 1883-03-10 (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England)

ENGLISH PRIEST ON IRISH  DISTRESS.  On Sunday morning last week, at the Catholic Church of St. Augustine'e, Tunbridge Wells, a special sermon was preached by the Rev. Joseph Searle, on the present famine in Ireland, and a collection was made ofi behalf of the same. In the coarse of his remarks, the rev. gentleman said, they found the Sovereign, Parliament, and statesmen of this British empire were helpless to prevent periodical famines in Ireland, which was no distant possession, but part of the United Kingdom, so precious and so important that were we to lose it as the United States of America were lost, our empire would pass away even as a tale that is told. They might ask him what was the cause. It was not for him to tell them. He was not a politician nor a political economist. He was only there to state to them the fact—to tell them the truth; and a Catholic priest was never afraid of speaking the truth. The policy of the Government appeared to be to drive the people out of the country. Was this what English rule was bringing about? Were their fellow - Christians, their fellow-countrymen, living a few hours' journey from here, to be allowed to die without food, without fire, and only seaweed to live on, while they were sqandering millions, and thousands of lives to protect the Government of the Khedive in Egypt, to do, as they were told in the Queen's Speech, to keep down rebellion? What had they to do with puttting down rebellion in a foreign country in order to secure the money of foreign bondholders or the Suez Canal? He quoted the noble example of the German Emperor William, who, when Prince Bismark asked for a grant of money to relieve the distress by the flood, insisted in increasing the sum. What an example to Sovereigns and statesmen! They might say that there wine reasons, political and social, for all this; that Ireland was thickly populated or too dependent on agriculture; that the country was defiled by crimes. Ireland was not too thickly populated. It was a disgrace to them that Ireland was the only country in Europe whose population is continually diminishing. Why were they starving? Why were they asked to leave their native land? Whose fault was it? By whom was Ireland deprived of its manufactures? This question of the state of Ireland he had recently had occasion to discuss with them. He remembered that secret societies had _ _  _ been favoured by the Government in every country in Europe, and the Catholic Church had been persecuted at regards education and otherwise. (Secret societies had been fostered by the Government in Ireland. As regards the awful crimes which had occurred in that country, they were political crimes. They were not the cold-blooded murders which daily defiled the pages of the newspapers in England. It was not in the streets of Dublin, as in the streets of London. that vice and erime flaunted through the streets in broad daylight, so that reepeotable people were hardly able to pass. He thanked God that, in the midst of all trouble and misery, the multitude of the Irish people were still better than that. This, he said, was not the momentary death of battle, the speedy death of pestilence, but the lingering death of famine. Ireland was not beleagared by the French and Austrian armies and the British fleet, but its people were left to their fate or the tender mercies of unprincipled agents, by absentee landlords, who wasted their time and money in Continental capitals and fashionable watering-places. However, they were not responsible for the sins of others, but he said to each person in that congregation that day, and to those who made the wet weather an excuse for non-attending, that it was their duty to do the utmost in their power to save those who were keeping in the last glimmer of life by feeding upon seaweed, or, in the awful words of the apostle, he would say, "You have denied the faith, and are worse than the heathen."