Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/137

Rh character, never prevented a single crime, or elevated the character of a single family by its use."

Reader, ponder this well.—Enough grain, converted into a poison for body and soul, as would have fed all that starving multitude; while the clergy were preaching, committees were in conclave, to stimulate to charity, and devise the most effectual methods to draw upon the purses of people abroad.

And what shall be said of the pitiful landlords, who were still drinking their wine, pouring their doleful complaints into government's ears, that no rents were paid; and many saying, as one of these wine-bibbers did, that his lazy tenants would not work for pay, for he had offered that morning, some men work who were hungry, and would pay them at night, and they walked away without accepting it. "How much pay did you offer?" he was asked. "A pound of Indian meal," (Indian meal was then a penny a pound.) "Would you, sir, work for that, and wait till night for the meal, when you were then suffering?" Much better try to procure it before night in some easier way.

But these afflicted landlords, the same writer remarks, when exporting to the continent vast quantities of grain, which their poor starving tenants had labored to procure, and were not allowed to eat a morsel of this food; but buy it from others or starve. Neither can it be doubted, nor should it be concealed, that not a few of these landlords, while their grain was selling at a good price abroad, shared the benefit of many an Indian meal donation, for horses, hogs, fowls, and servants. The