Richmond Enquirer

A TRUE PICTURE OF IRELAND.

[From a London Paper.]

SIR—The enclosed eloquent appeal to Common Sense was received from Portsmouth, where it cost three half-pence; by giving it an insertion in your extensively circulating journal, you will very much oblige

Your humble servant,
P.

To Mr. Will-by-force, Esq.

Harrow'd Sun.

My first Cousin, Dennis O'Hurley, a lad that has carried a hod for ten years past in Covent Garden, acquaints me that your Honor is a very compassionate Kind Jintleman, and that you sweeten your tea with nothing at all, because sugar is made by the poor negers in the West-Indies; that you drink no coffee; and that you would rather be dressed as naked as Adam, than wear a blue coat, because it is died with indigo. Ogh! my sweet creatuz, if you wou'd, upon journeys to Africa and the West-Indies, stop a while in poor Old Ireland, and take a peep at the poor spalpeens of this part of the United Kingdoms, by my soul, I believe you would go no farther. Here we are, my jewel, starving in the land of Promise at Callenagrernch, and among all the sweet things o' creashan. For my own part I shall certainly go mad or else lose my senses, which is pretty much the same thing you know, if some charitable person like yourself, doesn't take compassion on me and my poor family. My old mother has been bed rid for four years. and my wife not able to put a stitch in any thing since she lay in for her fourteenth child. Tho', to be sure, the devil a stitch she has to work at, if she were ever so able, and myself, hardly able to do a stroke for the want of nourishment. Ah! what do you think, Mr. Will-by-force, we all have to live upon? I'll tell you well. By my soul, my jewel, we strive hard not to starve upon it—why four pence a day—two shillings a week to support the whole of us! not two three pence, but Irish money, and that is just down pence less. Ogh! I pray conclude it—before, if you were to see

Ogh! the devil burn me! if you'd go to Africa or the West-Indies, but prevail upon Mr. Tandy, or Heartly, or some good natured Jintlemen, to grant the poor some remedy, for we are all alike, by my soul.

Squire Mac O'Nopoly, the Jintleman, that I work for, rents about two thousand dirty acres of the cleanest land in the county of Limerick, and well stocked it is with bullocks, heffers, sheep, wheat, barley, oats, and other sorts of black cattle, for bread, and beef, and mutton; and yet, as God is my judge, neither I, nor my wife, or my old mother, or the nine children. (which is all that death has left alive with us,) have tasted either bread or beef or mutton or beer, since last Christmas-day, when Martin Fahy sent us some by way of curiosity, from Limerick, in a bottle.—I know very well, Mr. Will-by-force, you'll say, Arrah! how the devil do you live then, Paddy O'Hurley? But, as this is a question, which I cannot give you any information about, I'll tell you, in answer, how we contrive not to starve. We break our fasts on potatoes and spring water, we dine upon potatoes and spring water, and we sup upon potatoes and spring water! and sometimes a few sprats, and sometimes a drop of buttermilk, and sometimes a grain of salt, and very often, when we grow weak and languish for want of salt, sprats and buttermilk, we moisten our potatoes with salt tears! Before the union, we sometimes got scaddans, which you know means salt-herrings; but, the scaddans appear to have disappeared and gone over to England with the Parliament, so that we have a plentiful scarcity of them. Our cabin (an' please your Honor) is a sort of a nate 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 this we keep a pig, whom we once get one, and in another corner we all pig, ourselves, man, woman and child, upon one straw bed. As to clothes, the old woman, who never stirs from under the straw, has no use for any: my wife and the four girls are pretty nearly half naked. (By my soul, dear honey. I speak the naked truth) the five boys are entirely so, and as for myself, I wear an old great coat that was given to me by Pat Cafferty, the coachman, (God bless him) and that covers every thing. Now, my good natured Jintleman, you must know, that there is a near relation, a ninth cousin of my wife's here, who was formerly fixed in America, at the expense of government, for his natural life, for putting a white shirt on the outside of his coat, and who used to work on the same plantation with the black negers in Virginny, and he assures me there is no comparison between the manner they live there and in the West-Indies (where he has also been) and the way we flourish in poor old Ireland since the Union. The black negers, he says, eat and drink, and dance, and are clothed, and work, and would think it the worst of all curses to be sent back again to their own country: while we poor black and blue white slaves can get neither meat nor drink, nor clothes, nor any thing else, (except children.) and are every day flying in whole thousands to foreign countries, though they won't give us leave to go abroad but by the tun. Let me, therefore, entreat, without further excuses, that you will 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,

PATRIC K O'HURLEY.

P. S. Suppose you would give a bit of a hint to the Bible Society or the Waterloo Subscribers.