379. Destitution in Ireland
Destitution in Ireland
Mat_25:35 : ’93I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat.’94
Owning California, Australia and Golconda, all the reindeer of the forest, all the buffalo of the plain, all the wild, duck of the marshes, all the plover of the sky, all the fish of the five oceans, all the grain fields of two hemispheres, all immensity of space, all eternity for duration’97yet hunger. Why did Christ submit to this faintness and gnawing and physical torture? It was that he might persuade all nations that he is in full sympathy with anybody that has not enough to eat. Every moral and industrious man has a right to enough to eat. I lay down this principle, whatever social or political theory it may seem to contravene. If in all the earth there is a moral and industrious man who has not enough to eat, it is because somebody else has more than his share. God spreads his table three times a day all around the earth, and there is plenty on it for the fifteen hundred millions of the race; but the trouble is that some seize the platters and the pitchers on the table, and having supplied their own hunger, put the rest in their pockets and leave millions to rise up unfed.
The great question in America, England, Ireland and Scotland, and the great question in every civilized country today, is the question, How much property a man may gather up? and then by law roll it down from generation to generation, the larger estates swallowing up the smaller estates; until in the far distant future, if the principle be unimpeded, one man will own a continent, and then more continents until one man will own the whole earth, and will have the capacity, if he desires, to sell the water so much per gallon, and put a tax on sunshine and fresh air! There are estates rolling up in this country which set all political economists to thinking about the future. The reason things with us are not as ominous as they are abroad is because we have not yet had time enough to make them ominous. One man in Wall street a few weeks ago turning over with one hand twenty million dollars’92 worth of stock is very suggestive.
While I will not attempt to grapple with the political phase of this subject, I will say that in which you must all agree’97that as long as the Sultan of Turkey has a salary of six million five hundred thousand dollars per year, and thirty-two thousand people in Great Britain own all the soil, though there is a population of thirty-six millions, and the Duke of Norfolk owns five hundred thousand acres at the Hebrides, and the Duke of Sutherland, in Scotland, owns from sea to sea, and the Duke of Richmond owns three hundred thousand acres at Gordon Castle, there must be something deplorably wrong in the condition which allows a great many people to starve. It is a question so vast and intricate that you and I cannot settle it, nor America, nor England. There is only one Being in all the universe that can settle it, and he is God; and settle it he will. North and South politicians were busy scores of years studying how to get rid of American slavery, and they ciphered and ciphered, and accomplished nothing. Then God rose up to extirpate American slavery, and he did the work; but one million five hundred thousand men, North and South, brave men, dropped into their graves. Whether it will require a greater or lesser sacrifice of human life, or no sacrifice at all’97as I pray God it may be’97to settle this land question, I will not attempt to prophecy; but this I know, that Christ is in sympathy with all the distressed, and a voice today comes thrilling through every American cabin and every Irish peat hovel and every destitute English home, saying, ’93I was an hungred.’94
This rage of unappeased appetite which men call hunger is a terrific demonstration. It has often been seen on shipboard, when, all the food exhausted, lots were cast as to who should die, and with his own body furnish food to others. It has been seen again and again among the Arabs, when children have been roasted for food for their own parents. Famine in Jerusalem. Famine in ancient Utica. Famine in Canaan. Famine in lands entirely depopulated by it, leaving the whole country to the jackals hunting for corpses. Famine in Leyden, Holland, where the Spaniards for months besieged the city, and the food was gone, and rather than surrender to the tyrant, the burgomaster came out in the presence of the famine-stricken and said: ’93My life is at your service; here is my sword; plunge it into my breast; take my flesh; tear apart my body, and appease your hunger; but surrender the city I will not.’94
Famine is a monster that has at some time put its paw on almost every nation, with hot tongue lapping up the fevered blood of the starving; and this morning it is howling for its prey, and its voice comes shuddering across the Atlantic. Last Tuesday I received a cablegram from the Lord Mayor of Dublin, saying: ’93Famine is inevitable; aid needed.’94 Last Sabbath I received a cablegram from Lord James Butler, of Dublin, who said: ’93Fuel and food needed in the west of Ireland,’94 while at the same time in that telegram he deprecated political agitation, as, in his opinion, doing great damage. I have received this week also a cablegram from the Earl of Kintore, the great Scottish philanthropist, who confirms all these tidings; so it is very certain in my mind that this is not a political trick, as some have contended; it is not even a quarrel between landlord and tenant; it is an unmistakable, agonizing, overwhelming, stunning, million-voiced shriek for bread.
Ireland once had plenty. In the seventeenth century she had a superfluity of grain fields, herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep straying through her valleys and up and down her mountain sides. Prolonged wars, but plenty to eat. The tale of woe of Irish famine began in the eighteenth century, in 1727, and hundreds perished that year; in 1741, and four hundred thousand perished of the famine; in 1756, and a writer of that date says: ’93Two-thirds of our population are starving;’94 in 1826, when a writer says: ’93Ireland is the land of anomalies’97the greatest destitution on the richest soil. The greatest wretchedness in all the world is here. The complexion of the people blue or green according as they have been compelled to devour weeds, decided by the color of the weeds they devour.’94 Famine in 1846, which some of you remember’97in 1846, when the government of the United States sent five hundred thousand dollars to relieve the famine in Ireland, and that great gift on the part of our country was met by the ten million pounds, or the fifty million dollars voted by the English Parliament for the relief of the famine in Ireland. Beneficence in New York responding to the ten thousand dollars given by Queen Victoria out of her own private purse, that the hunger of Ireland might be fed. Persia, China, Egypt, India, joining Christian nations in charitable crusade; yet hundreds of thousands of people perishing, many of them as heroic as the Irish woman who said to her husband, ’93Come here; let us all die together rather than touch that which belongs to another.’94 A famine so terrible that the remembrance of it, in nineteen years, sent three million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand of Irish people to this country.
And now there is another famine. I knew it would come. I saw the deluge in England, Ireland and Scotland last summer. I saw the harvests that had been partially gathered float away on the floods. I heard prominent citizens in the streets of Belfast and Dublin and Londonderry say, ’93We shall have famine; it is inevitable.’94 And it has come, but with this alleviation, that whereas in 1846 it took the news two weeks to come by steamer, and then the reply two weeks to travel back, now, thanks to the heroes of ocean telegraphy, the cry comes in a flash, and the answer goes back in a flash, so that in the morning Ireland cries ’93Hungry!’94 and before nightfall America responds, ’93The bread is on the way.’94
Oh, my country! laden with three years of magnificent harvests, on your rail-trains, hasten down the breadstuffs for dying Ireland. O merchants of New York! standing in this new morning of national prosperity, keep the telegraphs going while with your prompt beneficence you command the foreign grain markets to come to the rescue. And ye people of smaller means, before today you gather at your tables for the noonday repast, plan some way for the relief of the starving people who come to tables in Ireland where there is no food. I implead you in the name of him who said, ’93I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat.’94
Through a merciful God the most of us have been kept from hearing in our household the unavailing cry for bread. No parent’92s heart is stout enough calmly to hear a cry like that. I do not wonder that some of those people in famine get desperate. If I saw my family starving, and I could get neither food nor work, while all around there was plenty; if I saw my children dying by inches, and there was a superfluity all about, and I could neither purchase nor implore help for them’97rather than finish that sentence I will say, ’93God keep me from the temptation.’94 Oh! hunger is an awful thing when it comes down on a household. The work stops, laughter ceases, conversation ceases, and there are hollow eyes, and there is a pinchedness of the features, and there is a suppressed ferocity, and there is a looking out of the window for that which comes not, and there is insupportable despair. The voracity of such was well illustrated when the ships of relief came to Leyden, and the bread was thrown from the ship’92s decks to the wharf, and history says so great was the voracity of those poor, starving creatures that they picked up the bread and choked themselves to death. Ah! it is an awful thing to starve, but that process is going on now, and will continue to go on unless the combined charity of the Christian world speaks out.
Do you know that famine in Ireland is especially distressing, because, as a nation, the Irish are peculiarly affectionate, and it is a little harder for that nation than almost any other nation to see their families suffering and dying? Who doubts this who has noticed that the Irish serving-maids of this country, at the greatest sacrifice, have for the last twenty or thirty years been sending back all the money they could spare to Ireland to buy food and pay rent, and finally to transport their loved ones to this land, many of them giving every penny not absolutely necessary for their expenses’97a story of filial and fraternal and sisterly affection unsurpassed save by the matchless love of God. Now, I say, it is among that class of people, so strong, so peculiarly strong, in their affections, that famine has come; and now, while I speak, great populations are surging up and down the Irish cities carrying the black flag; and the way to put down these riots is by giving them bread, not bullets’97bread, not a policeman’92s club’97bread, not armed soldiery.
I have to tell you, my friends, that this famine in Ireland is especially distressing because it is surrounded by such brilliant scenery. Destitution never so ghastly as when crouching at the foot of such hills, and looking into the mirror of such lakes, and begging at the gate of such castles. I do not believe God has crowded into so small a space so much beautiful landscape in all the earth as there is to be found in that one small island’97an island only about two hundred and thirty miles long by one hundred and ten miles wide’97rhomboid in shape, its rocks showing more of the skill of the Divine Architect than any rocks on earth. Witness the octagonal, the hexagonal, and the pentagonal of her granite, and the forty thousand columns of her Giant’92s Causeway, some of them set up like the pillars of the kind of musical instruments, so that they are called the organ, and as I stood looking on them, I thought that it would be fit to play upon that organ the Grand March of the Last Judgment, God’92s thunders tramping the pedals.
An island indented with ninety-two harbors, as beautiful Galway and Donegal and Kingston and Valentia. Her coasts illuminated by night with sixty-two lighthouses. More than two hundred fairy islands sprinkling the edges of Ireland with magical brightness. Loughs Erne, Corrib and Mask, and that strip of landscape flung out of heaven, the Killarneys. What silvery glee of rivers Shannon and Boyne and Foyle and Bann and Blackwater and other rivers rich with salmon and pike and trout. What flora strewing marvelous ferns among the Kerries, and Alpine plants in Antrim, and seaweed, a very bewitchment of beauty, so that you come away with your hands and your arms and your mind and your immortal soul full of it. The scenery, adorned with glorious old ruins like St. Dunluce and Loughmore Castle and Blarney Castle and Athenry Castle, each moss-covered stone a lyric. Amid that matchless beauty sits famine and starvation, the more ghastly by its surroundings.
The agricultural capacity of Ireland not developed, makes the famine more appalling. Soil waiting to yield to the acre more harvest than in the same space can be yielded in Russia or America. Loam of the richest fertility. Flax harvest the forerunner of richer flax, and hemp enough to hang all the traitors to liberty and justice all around the world. Mineral wealth of iron and lead and copper and silver and gold which have already hinted their presence. Agricultural capacity which, if developed, would make famine impossible, and fill the hands of Ireland with charity for other nations, for the time is yet to come when Ireland, instead of being a mendicant, will be a benefactor. The Irish are generous, they are generous to a fault. If you are in trouble the Irishman will go halves with you, and if that will not bring you out, then he will give you all he has and borrow something from the neighbors! But the squalor and the suffering are aggravated now by the mineral and the agricultural capacity of that country which is undeveloped.
O sirs! Ireland in the day of her sorrow has a right to call upon America. She has always been our friend. Benjamin Franklin, at the close of the last century, wrote to this country, saying, ’93The Irish people are the friends of the American people.’94 So it was proved in 1776; so it was proved in 1812; so it was proved two centuries ago, when there was famine in New England, and a shipload of breadstuffs came from Ireland to Boston; so it was proved in 1861, when our national troubles broke out, and in the front rank of armed courage flashed the Irishman’92s bayonet, and from the first conflict to the last was heard the Irishman’92s battle shout. Some of you know the name of Thomas Francis Meagher, and what he did at Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor. Did the Irishman prove himself self-sacrificing and brave and true to the flag under which he had come to live in our days of civil strife? Let Chickamauga and Antietam and South Mountain and Gettysburg answer.
Moreover, the patriotism and the eloquence of Ireland have been inspiration to orators and heroes all the world over, and Ireland has in that way brought all nations to obligation. In how many crises of our national history have our great men got inspiration from the names of Grattan and Edmund Burke and Erskine and Daniel O’92Connell?
Why, sirs, there is in one passage of Robert Emmet’92s dying speech enough eloquence to kindle the eloquence of a century. The day before he was first hanged and then beheaded in Ireland for the sake of his principles’97the day before, on the road to the scaffold, he waved a last adieu to Sarah Curran (of whose broken heart Washington Irving wrote so wonderfully: she in a carriage along the road waving back the farewell as he went out to die)’97the day before the execution, a young man only twenty-five years of age, Robert Emmet uttered a speech as he looked into the face of an indignant court, a speech so full of patriotism and power and eloquence, it has hardly been equaled.
Oh! the brave words and the brave deeds in Ireland that have been inspiration to all the world. I do not know any passage in history more thrilling than that when the men of O’92Brien, wounded in the hospital, unable to rise, heard the battle was going against them, begged that stakes might be driven in the ground, and they might be brought out and lashed fast to the stakes, so they could stand up, and with the right arm fight for their country. And so it was done, and these wounded men were carried out on couches, and the stakes were driven, and the men were fastened to the stakes, while with the right arm they fought for Ireland, and fought until they died.
But Ireland has sent her magnetic men to this shore. There are many here who remember the oratorical charm that thrilled the court-room when James T. Brady bowed and said: ’93May it please the court and gentlemen of the jury.’94 And there may be here and there is one who remembers so far back as the day of Thomas Addis Emmet, who closed his career as an advocate in Ireland by pleading for a client who must die because of a political oath he had taken’97closing his speech by seizing the Bible and pressing it to his lips, and saying, ’93I go down with my client; I take the same oath.’94 Then coming to this land to become the compeer of William Wirt and John Randolph, rising higher and higher in his influence at the forum, until falling dead in apoplectic fit in the court-house at Snug Harbor, and all the Supreme Court rooms of the land went into mourning, and learned eulogists declared that for purity of life and greatness of soul and magnificence of eloquence Thomas Addis Emmet was unrivaled. By heroic deeds and heroic words Ireland has brought all lands under obligation. Now she sits in the shadow of death, the scenes of 1846 about to be repeated unless relief comes speedily.
’93As we passed along, groups of squalid beings were seen at the road corners, or running from the multitudinous houses, hovels, huts or caverns dotting the slopes and in the bottoms by the streamlets’92 sides, to see the meal taken past them under the protection of bullets, bayonets and cavalry swords, on its way to feed people beyond the mountains, hunger-stricken like themselves, but to whom they would not let it go if bullets, bayonets and cavalry swords were not present. Famine! A father, mother and two children came a short while ago into the street at night to lie down on the pavement. They came from a neighboring town, they said, because they could get no food there. About eight o’92clock the woman went to the door of a house adjoining and begged a piece of turf to make a fire in the street, for her husband was dying. It happened to be the house, the temporary lodgings, of a naval officer of her Majesty’92s service. It need hardly be said that the request was at once complied with and the turf was given. About ten o’92clock the poor woman came to the door again begging for another piece of turf, for her husband was dead and they were lying beside the cold body. The officer went out and found this to be the case, and he proceeded to the constabulary station; but the constables would do nothing with the body, nor for the survivors, who lay beside it until morning. He proceeded elsewhere, and procured some straw for them, and made a bed, and got stakes, and put a shelter over their heads with the straw for the night, and made and administered a warm meal for them. In the morning he was astir in time to relieve them, and going out, met some of the constables. The principal one of them talked loud and angrily to the woman for having her husband dead on that side of the street.’94
O Protestants and Catholics of America! I implore you that, forgetting all ecclesiastical distinctions, and with a faith in God so mighty that shall disregard even the orange and the green, that you put your shoulders together for the relief of famishing Ireland. Merciful God! shall it be that with our barns and our storehouses crowded with food we shall be heartless and unresponsive? No, it shall not be. For as this day I entwine the shamrock around the cross, I hear a voice louder than the groan of famished Ireland’97a voice of tears and blood and sacrifice, exclaiming, ’93I was an hungred and ye gave me meat.’94
By the empty bread-tray of the Irish cabin, by the exhausted sack of oatmeal, by the blasted harvest fields, by the blanched cheeks of women and children crying for help, by the four hundred thousand graves of those who perished in the Irish famine of 1741, and by the vaster number of graves of those who perished in 1846, I implore you not only to be generous, but to be quick. I gather up the plaint of helpless childhood all over Ireland, and the sobbing of mothers whose children are dying on their breasts because the fountains of life are dried up, and the groans of men who can fight back no longer the wolf from the cabin, and by the wailing of uncounted multitudes of the starving’97I gather them all up, and I intone them into one heartrending cry for help. I am sure you will be faithful. Then, when your day of distress comes, you will have a right to expect swift relief. ’93Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.’94 Then, when the last great day of assize comes, and the whole world shall receive its doom, the great Judge will bend smilingly to you in memory of this day, and say: ’93I was naked, and ye clothed me; I was hungry, and ye fed me; inasmuch as ye did this to poor, starving Ireland, ye did it unto me!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage