peal, which was sent to the United States by the last steam
packet, Elihu Burritt, speaking of the locality he had visited,
says:--"I have come to this indescribable scene of destitution,
desolation, and death, that I might get the nearer to your sympathies;
that I might bring these terrible realities of human misery more vividly
within your comprehension. I have witnessed scenes that no language of
mine can portray. I have seen how much beings, made in the image of God,
can suffer on this side the grave, and that too in a civilized land."

The reader will judge for himself, when he has perused the following
record of only three days of this journey, whether the foregoing
language is too strong. Although the fearful facts Elihu Burritt relates
may have found a parallel in the statements of others, it is thought
desirable to publish them in this country, as he recently witnessed them
in the very district to which the sympathies of the English have been,
for several months past, particularly directed, and for which locality
large subscriptions have been specially contributed. A single individual
is reported to have given L1000 for Skibbereen. Yet, notwithstanding all
that has been subscribed, up to the period when this journal was
written, no effectual means had been adopted for the decent interment of
the dead, or even for their timely removal from the hovels of the
living, and the great expenditure of the British Government, appears to
have effected, at least in this district, but little mitigation of the
fearful calamity.

There are many noble instances of individual sacrifices by personal
attention to the sufferers, and other efforts for their relief, but
nothing short of a law to give the poor of Ireland the right to claim
support from the owners of the soil, before they are reduced to
starvation, will effectually meet the evil, or be any security against
its recurrence.

The Poor Law of England admits the claim of the people for support from
the land and other fixed property; and, until this is given, neither
landlord or mortgagee is entitled to rent or interest.

This should be fully applied to Irish legislation, and partial and
unjust laws removed, including those of primogeniture and entail. To the
neglect of these measures and that of giving the cultivators of the soil
a proper security for the labour and expense which they bestow upon it,
is mainly to be attributed the fact that a country possessing some of