"It is painful and humiliating to have to acknowledge that even in this, the premier county of Ulster, there exists distress deep-felt and widespread. Nothing but sheer necessity can force the people to acknowledge want and ask relief. They will struggle on amidst difficulties, and continue to conceal their misery until their blanched cheeks betray them and tell the observer that the gnawing pain is wearing away their vitals. Such has been the case in '46 and '47, when the gaunt spectre, Famine, stalked over the land, and decimated a famished people, and such, unhappily, is the case here now in this County of Down. At all events, such is the case in this parish of Upper Kilcoo, with a population of over 3,000 spread over thirteen townlands, situate in a mountainous district, where, owing to the inclemency of the season, the poor people did not obtain a particle of peat from the bogs—their source of fuel—and their crops were almost completely lost. Their means, which were at best but slender, have been gradually diminishing for the past few years, and are now exhausted, as is also their credit. Hence, we find that the fuel of the majority is the furze and heath which they gather from the hill-sides; and the food of many—alas! too many—an insufficient quantity of Indian meal porridge, without a single drop of milk to make it palatable. It is truly a pitiable plight in which hundreds of the poor people here now find themselves—partially without food, wholly without fuel, or means to procure it; without seed for the land, without clothing, and without credit. Knowing this, knowing that starvation is already at our doors, and claims its victims, it would be little less than criminal to allow a sense of delicacy to prevent us from proclaiming the fact, believing, as we do, that its proclamation will elicit from a generous and sympathetic public such timely aid as may possibly avert the occurrence of the harrowing scenes of the famine years.