61
thousands and tens of thousands who in an extraordinary time of famine may require assistance, but for whom, as mere labourers in ordinary times there is not, nor is there likely to be, any demand. Another fault is the denial of all power to the Boards of Guardians to employ in useful and reproductive out-door work, whether on Union farms, or waste lands, or other public works, any of the able-bodied poor whom they are nevertheless compelled to maintain out of doors in unproductive and demoralizing idleness. Again, the collection of the entire Poor-rate from the occupiers, however poor themselves, in the first instance, leaving it to them, to recover a portion or the whole of it, if they can, from their immediate landlords, to whom they often owe a hopeless arrear of impossible rent, is a third error in the law which threatens to be fatal to its. success.
These defects I see with pleasure are beginning to be recognized, as they could not fail to be, in the practical working of the measure on the spot[1] And
- ↑ As one instance among others I annex the following Resolutions agreed to by the Guardians of the Bantry Union, on the 26th September last:—
That by the enactment of last session of Parliament, the principle of gratuitous relief being admitted as applicable to the circumstances of Ireland, it is much to be feared that its working may be attended with very demoralizing effects, unless the powers of the Board of Guardians are otherwise extended.
That no project seems more likely to ward off these consequences than the extension of the 35th section of the Act 1st and 2d of Victoria, chap. 56, which provides, that not more than
