Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/64

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 And