of the season, by providing sustenance for the destitute,
through the means of labour, in the most available manner of which the
circumstances of the case would admit. In giving the option of
reproductive work, his Excellency said he had taken upon himself "a
responsibility;" but that the option was conceded with as little
departure as possible from the spirit of the measures sanctioned by
Parliament; whereas the adoption of the townland, instead of the
electoral division, would, in many cases, lead to the greatest
expenditure, where the amount of destitution was least. Perhaps his
Excellency gave his real reason, when he concluded with something
stronger than a hint to the Royal Agricultural Society, which comprised,
as he said, the leading gentry of the country. He calls upon them to
discharge their duties in their various localities, and to avoid or
prevent the misapplication of the funds given for the relief of the
really destitute. He cannot, he says, forego the opportunity of
expressing an earnest hope that they will, in their various relief
committees, lend their aid to the Government in resisting a practice
which, he has reason to fear, has very extensively prevailed--namely,
"that of allowing persons, who are by no means in a destitute condition,
to be employed upon the public works, thus depriving the really
distressed of the benefit which was intended for them, as well as
withdrawing from the ordinary cultivation of the soil the labour which
was essential to the future subsistence of the people."[180]

The latter part of the answer means just this: that the landlords were
already turning the public works to their private gain, by getting
numbers of their well-to-do tenants, often with their carts and horses,
upon those works, in order to obtain their own rents more securely; a
practice of which they were repeatedly accused by the Board of Works'
people; and that, therefore, if townland boundaries were conceded, the
landlords would have increased power, and a still greater amount of the
same kind of jobbing would be the inevitable result.

It is not surprising that at this period society in Ireland was shaken
to its foundations. Terror and dismay pervaded every class; the starving
poor suffered so intensely, and in such a variety of ways, that it
becomes a hard task either to narrate or listen to the piteous story; it
sickens and wrings the heart, whilst it fills the eyes with the
testimony of irrepressible s