was far too late for the fast dismissal of twenty per
cent., for much of the Spring work ought to have been done then. They
should have begun a month earlier at least, which arrangement would have
had the further advantage of enabling them, to make the dismissals more
gradually, and therefore with less inconvenience to the people.[260]

It was either great negligence or a very grave error on the part of the
Government, that they began to close the public works against the people
before any other means of getting food was open to them. The Relief Act,
10 Vic. c. 7, was intended to take the place of the public works, _and
that immediately on their cessation_; but this was far from being the
case,--a point upon which this second report is not at all satisfactory.
In it the Commissioners express their regret that on the 15th of May
there were only 1,248 electoral divisions under the operation of the
Act, whilst all relief works had ceased on the first of May. That was
bad enough; but what the report makes no mention of is that the Act was
not in operation in any part of Ireland on the 20th of March, the day on
which twenty per cent--146,000 individuals--of those who were employed
on the public works were dismissed. On introducing that Act in
Parliament, both the Prime Minister and the Irish Secretary promised
that employment on the public works should be continued until the new
system of relief would be in full operation, whilst this report tells us
that on the 15th of May, a full fortnight after _all_ public works had
been stopped, out of 2,049 electoral divisions only 1,248 were under the
operation of the Act. Besides, "under the operation of the Act" is
itself a doubtful phrase: How long were they under it? How far was their
machinery complete and efficient? Did the Act, to the full extent,
supply the place of the public works, where it had come into operation?
These are questions to which we have no answers from the Commissioners.
On the 23rd of March, three days after the twenty per cent were
dismissed, a Dublin newspaper said, with regard to the new Relief
Act:--"It is not in operation in any district of Ireland. Even in
Dublin--the head quarters of the Relief Commissioners--the residence of
the official printer--the requisite forms for arranging the
preliminaries could not be supplied to the relief committees yesterday,
they not having been as yet printed."[261]

On the 25th of March, some of the Irish members appea