in song. Its area is not so great as that of the State of Louisiana, while
its population is almost half that of the Union. It has given to the world
more than its share of genius and of greatness. It has been prolific in
statesmen, warriors, and poets. Its brave and generous sons have fought
successfully all battles but their own. In wit and humor it has no equal,
while its harp, like its history, moves to tears, by its sweet but
melancholy pathos. Into this fair region God has seen fit to send the most
terrible of all those fearful ministers who fulfil his inscrutable decrees.
The earth has failed to give her increase; the common mother has forgotten
her offspring, and her breast no longer affords them their accustomed
nourishment. Famine, gaunt and ghastly famine, has seized a nation in its
strangling grasp; and unhappy Ireland, in the sad woes of the present,
forgets, for a moment, the gloomy history of the past.

Oh, it is terrible, in this beautiful world: which the good God has given
us, and in which there is plenty for us all, that men should die of
starvation! You who see, each day, poured into the lap of your city, food
sufficient to assuage the hunger of a nation, can form but an imperfect
idea of the horrors of famine. In battle, in the fulness of his pride and
strength, little recks the soldier whether the hissing bullet sings his
sudden requiem, or the cords of life are severed by the sharp steel. But he
who dies of hunger, wrestles alone, day after day with his grim and
unrelenting enemy. The blood recedes, the flesh deserts, the muscles relax,
and the sinews grow powerless. At last, the mind, which, at first, had
bravely nerved itself for the contest, gives way, under the mysterious
influences which govern its union with the body. Then he begins to doubt
the existence of an overruling Providence; he hates his fellow-men, and
glares upon them with the longings of a cannibal, and it may be, dies
blaspheming!