outside.  It may appear as if the citizens of Cork and the clergy of Cork had neglected their duty; but they did not.  The calamity was so great and so overwhelming, that it was impossible to prevent those calamities.  As one instance, I may mention that one Sunday morning I brought Captain Forbes, who came over with the ‘Jamestown,’ United States’ frigate, and Mr. William Rathbone, and several other persons, to show the state of the neighbourhood in which I resided, and to show them the thousands whom we were feeding at the depot, While we were going round a person told me, ’There is a house that has been locked up two or three days.’  It was a cabin in a narrow alley.  We went in, and we saw seventeen persons lying on the floor, all with fever, and no one to give them assistance.  Captain Forbes was struck with horror; he never thought there could be in any part of the world such misery.  That was in the south suburbs.  A poor, wretched widow woman resided there; she let it out for lodgings, and received those people as lodgers, who all got the fever.  We three gave what relief we could, and got them conveyed to the hospitals; but they all died.”

Question 2,365.  “Can you form any judgment what proportion of the population, which is thus added at present, bears to the ordinary population of the City of Cork?”

Answer.  “Those poor creatures, the country poor, are now houseless and without lodgings; no one will take them in; they sleep out at night.  The citizens of Cork have adopted what I consider a very unchristian and inhuman line of conduct.  They have determined to get rid of them.  Under the authority of an Act of Parliament, they take them up as sturdy beggars and vagrants, and confine them at night in a market-place, and the next morning send them out in a cart five miles from the town; and there they are left, and a great part of them perish, for they have no home to go to.  When they fled from the country, their houses were thrown down or consumed for fuel by the neighbours who remained, and those poor creatures have no place to lay their heads."[243]

It would be a useless and a harrowing task to continue such terrible details, I therefore close this chapter with some account of Bantry, that town having had the misfortune to be the rival of Skull, Skibbereen, and Mayo during the Famine-slaughter.

The deaths at Bantry had become fearfully numerous before it attracted any great share of public sympathy, or even, it would seem, of Government attention.  The Southern Reporter of January the 5th publishes this curt announcement from that town:  “Five inquests to-day.  Verdict—­Death by starvation.”  The jury having given in its verdict, the foreman, on their part, proceeded to say that they felt it to be their duty to state, under the correction of the court, that it was their opinion that if the Government of the country should persevere in its determination of refusing to use the means available to it, for the purpose of lowering the price of food, so as to place it within the reach of the labouring poor, the result would be a sacrifice of human life from starvation to a fearful extent, and endangerment of property and the public peace.  This remonstrance was committed to writing, and signed E. O’Sullivan, foreman; Samuel Hutchins, J.P.; Richard White, J.P.