road which are wholly unnecessary, or in otherwise doing absolute
mischief. It will, however, have the effect of still further pauperizing
the labour of the country. To elucidate this result in the simplest
manner, let us suppose that there are one hundred labourers in a
district which belongs to two landlords, whose incomes are equal, and
one of whom now employs fifty independent workmen, whilst the other does
not employ a single labourer. It is at present necessary to provide for
the maintenance of fifty unemployed labourers. These are now set to work
upon the roads, and the expense of their maintenance falls upon the two
proprietors in equal proportions. If the proposed plan be adopted, the
improving landholder will naturally desire to exempt himself from
taxation, without employing more hands than he at present requires. This
he could do by dismissing all his present workmen. There would then be
one hundred surplus labourers in the district. As these must be
maintained at the expense of the two properties, each proprietor would
eventually be compelled, in self-defence, to employ fifty. The
landholder who originally employed this number will thus escape
taxation, without engaging more labourers than he requires; but his
labourers will cease to be independent workmen, chosen and paid by
himself, and subject to his own control. They will be sent to him by
the Relief Committee of the district; they will be placed under the
superintendence of an expensive staff of stipendiaries appointed by the
Board of Works, and will be paid out of the funds raised for the relief
of the poor. A system not very dissimilar to this was acted upon in
several parts of England, previous to the Poor Law Amendment Act of
1834, and was found to produce effects most demoralizing to the
labouring population--paralyzing all the energies of independent labour
and of individual enterprise, and in many respects operating most
unjustly upon particular classes of property."[198] Referring to the
value of independent labour, the Premier said: "I admit the evils of the
present system, but I think that still greater danger would have ensued
if we had done that which I conceive to be one of the most pernicious
acts which a Government can do, the depriving labourers of their
independence, and thus permanently injuring the great and important
class to which those labourers belonged."

Through all the Famine time, there is nothing more remarkable than the
ma