Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/297

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FAMINE IN IRELAND
291

as they have done, and the great pity is, that amid so much upturning there has been so little cleansing. True, the pool has not yet become quiescent, nor the sediment had time to settle; and when it shall, many that were "filthy will be filthy still," and those that were "righteous will be righteous still."

Though truth must and will triumph, judgment sometimes long delays, and the accusations against the nation of that island have a foundation in truth, yet the perverted judgment of men have so misapplied them, that at present the force they contain falls almost powerless. That there is injustice there cannot be denied, and this injustice has often been exercised by those who would have been least suspected. The famine, in spite of all evasions, has told some singular tales of this. The liberality of all nations has been most shamefully abused there, but the poor were not in the fault, and yet the poor must and do suffer all the sad consequences; for now, while the wail of woe and death is still going up in many parts, the response is neither money nor bread, but "they have been ungrateful, they have been dishonest, and we are tired of hearing of Ireland." And were I to speak from honest conviction of what passed there, in much of the distributions belonging to government, and much from other places, that went through paid hands, had it been cast into the sea, the fishes might have been better benefited than were the starving; but to private donors, and to the churches of England, and the laboring classes, who intrusted their offerings to isolated churches and isolated almoners