them to
Government contributions in aid of their funds.

6. That while we affirm, that it is the clear and paramount duty of the
state to take care that provision be made for the destitute, we regret
that the means hitherto adopted for that purpose have, on the one hand,
proved incommensurate with the evil, and on the other hand, have induced
the expenditure of vast sums of money upon useless or pernicious works.

7. That this most wasteful expenditure, tending, as it does, to diminish
our resources and to increase the probabilities of future famine, has
not been the result of neglect on the part of the resident proprietors
of Ireland, but of an impolitic and pernicious law, which they have been
compelled to carry into effect, notwithstanding repeated protests to the
contrary.

8. That, though entirely acquiescing in the justice of imposing upon the
land the repayment of all money advanced for reproductive purposes, we
solemnly protest, in the name of the owners and occupiers of land in
Ireland, against the principle of charging exclusively on their
property, the money which they have been forced to waste on unproductive
works.

9. That the destruction of the staple food of millions of our
fellow-subjects cannot be considered in any other light than that of an
Imperial calamity, and we claim it as our right that the burthen arising
from it, so far as it has been expended on unproductive works, shall
fall on the empire at large, and not be thrown upon Ireland alone, much
less upon those classes in Ireland which have suffered most severely
from it.

10. That though considering the present Labour-rate Act as a most
mischievous measure, to be laid aside whenever a better system can be
introduced, yet, in order to prevent the continuance of the present
waste of money, we call upon the Legislature to amend that Act, by
enabling each proprietor to take upon himself his proportion of the
baronial assessment, to be expended in reproductive works upon his own
property, and thereby to discharge himself from any further taxation in
respect to that particular assessment; and that the objects to which the
taxation shall be applied, should be extended to all permanent
improvement of the land.

11. That we have heard with alarm and regret that in many districts of
Ireland, the usual extent of land has not been prepared, and cannot be
prepared, for cultivation, owing to the poverty of the occupants, and
consequently will be was