National Gazette

Dismal Picture of the manner of living among the common people, in Ireland—

Extracted from a letter written by Patrick O'Hurley, to Mr. Wilberforce, dated July 20, 1792.

"Before you set out on your journey to Africa or the West-Indies, to examine into the miserable situation of negro slaves, I beseech you, my dear creature, to stop a while in poor old Ireland, and take a peep at the slaves in this country. By my soul, my dear joy, but I think you need go no farther. Here we are starving in the very land of promise, surrounded with milk and honey, and all the sweet things of creation. For my own part, I shall certainly go mad if some charitable person or other does not take compassion upon myself and my poor family. My old mother has been bed-rid for four years—my wife not able to do any thing since she lay in of her fourteenth child, and nothing to do if she was ever so able; and what do you think, Mr. Wilberforce, we live upon? Why, four pence a day, which is just two shillings a week, to support the whole of us. The gentleman that I work for rents about two thousand acres of land in the county of Limerick, well stocked with all sorts of cattle, and producing wheat, barley, oats, &c. in abundance; and yet, as God is my judge, neither I, nor my wife, or my old mother, or the nine children, which are all that death has left us, has tasted either bread, or beef, or mutton, or beer since last Christmas day. To all this I know Mr. Wilberforce will answer, How the devil then do you all live, Paddy O'Hurley? But as this is really a question which I cannot solve, I'll tell you, in answer, how we contrive to starve. We break our fasts upon potatoes and spring water; and sometimes a few prats, and sometimes a drop of buttermilk, and sometimes a grain of salt, and very often when we grow weak and aguish for want of prats and buttermilk and salt, we moisten our potatoes with salt tears. Our cabin, may it please your honour, is a sort of round building made of mud and wattles, with a hole in the top to let the smoke out, when we can get a bit of fire—in one corner of which, we keep a pig (which I dare not tell you how I came by) and in another corner we all pig ourselves, men, women, and children upon one straw bed. As for clothing, the old woman who never stirs under the straw, has no need of any: my wife and four girls are pretty near half naked; the five boys entirely so; and as for myself I wear an old great coat that was given to me by the squire's coachman, God bless him, and that covers every thing.

I have a relation who was formerly settled in America, and used to work in the same tobacco plantation with the black slaves; and he assures me that there is no comparison between the manner they live there, and in the West-Indies (where he has also been) and the way we starve in poor old Ireland. The black slaves, he says, eat and drink, and dance, and are clothed, and are merry, and would think it the greatest of all curses to be sent back again to their own country, while the poor white slaves in Ireland can get neither meat, clothes or any thing else, and are every day flying in thousands to foreign countries for relief. Let me therefore entreat you, Mr. Wilberforce, to turn your blessed thoughts upon our condition in Ireland, and let your charity begin as near home as possible, and in so doing you will greatly oblige, your obedient servant,

Patrick O'Hurley."