byterian, or Methodist church, who did not plead for the moderate use of this fatal poison. I met with one Baptist minister, one Unitarian, and a few priests, who abstained entirely.
The famine, if possible, urged many of the lovers of the "good creature," to greater diligence in the practice to "keep themselves up," as they said, in these dreadful times. They preached sermons on charity—they urged the people to greater-self-denial—they talked of the great sin of improvidence, of which Ireland is emphatically guilty; but few, very few, it is to be feared, touched one of these burdens so much as with one of their fingers. There were noble cases of hard labor, and even curtailing of expenses, by some of the clergy; even labor was protracted till it ended in death by some, but these were isolated cases indeed:
An able writer, who wrote the pamphlet on Irish Improvidence, placed the subject in the most fearful light, when he said, "Next to the absurdity of Cork and Limerick exporting cargoes of Irish grain for sale, and at the same time receiving cargoes of American grain to be given away at the cost of the English people, may be ranked the folly—if it may not properly be called by some worse name—of seeing hundreds dying for want of food, at the same time permitting the conversion of as much grain as would feed the whole of those dying of starvation, and many more, into a fiery liquid, which it is well known, even to the distillers themselves, never saved a single life or improved a sin-
