Ixvi CHARLES CARDALE BABINGTON. 



— of bad quality ; and the common firing of the country is in most 

 places entirely destroyed. I doubt not, but to a great extent, the 

 people were prevented from cutting their turf; but the common 

 evil is, that there has been an impossibility of drying and saving 

 that which was cut. In travelling, this year, through much of the 

 south of Ireland, I have seen the low-lying bogs covered with water, 

 and the stacks of turf just appearing above the water. There is no 

 turf fit for fuel to be had. How must they suffer, who depend 

 entirely on turf ! A sister of mine living in the county of Cavan,. 

 which depends on turf for firing, was obliged to send forty miles 

 for coal ! The poor cannot do this. I do not know what can be 

 done ; the evil is of such universal extent. I fear one result will be 

 fever in the spring and summer. It is, indeed, beginning already." 



Lord Powerscourt says : " I assure you I am not saying anything 

 beyond the most bare fact, when I say that such a season and such 

 a consequent prospect has not occurred in the memory of the oldest 

 inhabitant." 



The Kev. A. Douglas, Rector of Drumgoon, county of Cavan, 

 writes : "I can bear the most ample testimony to the truth of the 

 destitution and misery under which our poor now labour from the 

 total want of fuel. This part of Ireland (Cavan) depends altogether 

 for firing on a species of turf, called mud-turf ; the mud is mixed 

 up like mortar, then spread and divided by hand into the size for 

 burning ; it requires much fine weather to dry it ; it is also a most 

 expensive operation ; and should a wet summer, like the last, come,^ 

 the poor lose their labour and their winter provision of fuel. I am 

 Protestant Rector of a large parish, which contains sixteen thousand 

 acres, with a dense population of thirteen thousand souls ; the poor 

 have no means to procure sea-coal, being more than thirty miles 

 from any port. I have been over my parish, and can state, with 

 truth, that scarce a turf-stack can be seen, even at the cottage-door 

 of the most respectable farmers ; the fuel, or mud-turf, all out in 

 the bogs ; the tops of the small stacks just above the water. The 

 evil does not stop here ; the frost Avhich has come the last few days 

 bursts and ravels the turf, so that it is altogether destroyed, and 

 the whole of last summer's labour of the poor is lost." He adds, 

 that the people must, under the best circumstances, be "without 

 any fuel for more than eight months," as no new turf will be ready 

 to burn till August ; and that he has been a constant resident rector 

 for more than thirty years, and says, "in the presence of God, 

 I declare I never saw or felt before, such a scene of horrors for the 

 poor, as that which now presents itself to my contemplation." 



The Earl of Cloncurry writes : " The statement as to the nearly 

 total loss of the year's fuel is by no means exaggerated ; and to 

 those who inhabit damp cottages, with scanty clothing, and more 

 scanty diet, the want of a fire is a dreadful privation." 



I could give further extracts, but that I think it unnecessary ; 

 and now. Sir, let us who sit by our comfortable fire-sides, and have 



