"When acknowledging your generous grant of £100, made to our Poor Relief Committee on the 2nd inst., we thought well to remind you that your charity would enable us to save our poor from starvation for not more than six days. You passed us a cheque on Saturday, 7th inst., for an additional sum of £50. Had we received no aid from other quarters, it would have been, imperative upon us to call upon you a week ago for a renewal of your grant. Fortunately, our friends have replied to our appeals very liberally, and, accordingly, we have abstained from trespassing on your fund till now. I am confident you will not be less considerate towards us because of our unwillingness to trouble you so long as we had any means whatever for saving our destitute thousands from starvation. I send you the return of our disbursements. Our Committee relieve daily by themselves about 250 families; by St. Vincent de Paul's Society, 25 families; by clergymen visiting houses, 90 families—365 families in all. Our disbursements (never exceeding 6s. per week in value to a family of five or less in number, and 10s. per week to a family of eight persons) have been, from 2nd Feb. (date of your grant) to 19th Feb. (this day), £313 13s. 9d.—that is, about £17 10s. 0d. per day.

"I ask you, therefore, to come to our assistance again tomorrow, for God's sake. These wretched people are entirely dependent on us. Perhaps the Board of Guardians will do something for some of them, but for the present we must keep them alive.