CHOLERA CORK
Since the publication of our number of Saturday, up to 12 o'clock last night, this malady continued with unmitigated virulence to add to the number of its afflicted subjects and victims; but from all we can learn during the night there was a marked cessation to the labours of the Chairman – a portion of the hospital establishments that have been in unremitting and melancholy activity for many days in removing the poor sufferers from their wretched homes for medical treatment.
The public feeling has been during this day of a more cheerful character than had marked it for some time; there appears a manifest return of confidence, and business seems to have been almost restored to its wonted activity.
We hope and trust that the cause for all this might not prove illusory and that the distemper is really on the wane; but be this as it may what, we reiterate, is to be done with the poor?
– Are the scores of thousands of unemployed, unfed, and unclothed creatures, with which the city is now and has been for many months afflicted, to be left to their unhappy fate?
– What are the public boards thinking of?
Improvements are needed in every direction – the city is taxed more than sufficiently to afford, at this moment, the expenditure of several thousands – let the 10th part of the unemployed of our population be put to work and with the blessing of God the enemy will soon be dislodged.
Communications are pouring in calling upon us to stir up the surrounding Gentry and many of the affluent amongst us to the performance of their duty. If we possess the means of moving those flinty ones to feel for and contribute to the amelioration of the present awful condition of the destitute, we would soon render ourselves instrumental in the saving of hundreds from an untimely grave and perhaps thousands from famine and disease. But when human misery in its most fearful state – when, in short, the existence of a frightful scourge amongst us – when to avert it even from themselves appears of innovating influence amongst them how, we beg to ask, can we arouse them to their duty? Between their consciences and their God be the reckoning we have done with them.
In the meantime, a strong – and, to be effectual, a detailed and circumstantial representation of the city to the government – it's total inability to meet the dreadful amount of taxation which the devastating visitant will entail – and a call for immediate and extensive aid must be made, and, what is better, if made judiciously, must succeed.
