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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 38

"Moybologue, Bailieloro', Co. Cavan, 12th February, 1880

"Moybologue, Bailieloro', Co. Cavan,

"Gentlemen,

"A meeting was this day held in the Edengora National Schoolhouse, attended by the Roman Catholic and Irish Church clergymen, and other representative gentlemen of various religious denominations.

"The following resolution, among others, was proposed, seconded, and unanimously passed:—'That immediate application be made to the Mansion House Relief Fund for aid to ward off the dire destitution unfortunately existing among many in this district.'

"The materials upon which such a statement may be based are lamentably extensive. Within the limits of the parishes to which our district is confined are very many cases of whole families in such distress as borders on starvation. The inhabitants are almost all of the struggling small farmer class, depending on potatoes and turf for food and fuel. The potatoes were last year, in rare instances, worth the digging, and the turf had to be abandoned owing to the heavy rains and consequent flooding. The scanty plots of corn sown were, in the first place, ill-productive, and next, only half saved with great difficulty.

"Owing to the excessively low market price of other farm produce, no money was realized to meet the emergency. All these causes conspiring, have reduced the small farmers here to a pitiable condition.

"What is apparent to cursory observers is not a tithe of the real distress existing, inasmuch as those very small farmers, in most cases, would suffer almost page 41 anything short of starvation before they would brook the shame of a public acknowledgment of their distress. No case of actual death by starvation has as yet, thank God, occurred, to the knowledge of the Committee; but unless immediate relief be procured from some source within a fortnight, we know not what fearful results a delay of even so short a time might bring forth. Many of the small farmers are destitute of food, of fuel, and of clothing. They are at the present moment eating, or have already eaten, their seed potatoes and seed corn, to preserve life. Many of them are perishing for want of ordinary clothes, and, what is far more serious, have no bedclothes to protect them at night from the wintry cold. It was the opinion of our meeting that at least two hundred lives are at the present moment in this perilous condition—reduced to the verge of starvation; their seed potatoes and seed corn consumed, having no fuel, their ordinary clothes, in most cases, reduced to shreds, and devoid almost of any covering at night. With this spectre of distress so excessive brooding over so many in our district, we earnestly and respectfully request such a grant from your Committee as the statement of facts here given seems to your Committee to warrant. Pledging, on our part, that whatever sums may be entrusted to us for the relief of the distress, shall be faithfully distributed by us among those who are most necessitous, in the manner stipulated by the donors,

I am, &c.,

"

J. E. H. Murphy,

B.A., Clk., Hon. Sec."