Page:Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland.djvu/7

4 or political character, to which the attention of Parliament was up to last year almost exclusively confined.

The remedies as yet applied—valuable as they are to the extent to which they go—cannot he supposed sufficient of themselves to overcome the enormous amount of social evils to he contended with. Further efforts must be made. And few days pass without threatening indications of the danger that must attend their longer postponement.

With the exception of the Vagrant Act, the Landed Property Act for sanctioning loans to a limited amount to landlords, and one or two others of minor importance, the Poor-law comprised the total of the measures passed in the last session of Parliament for the improvement of that horrible state of society which has long existed in Ireland; which Parliamentary Reports and Royal Commissions have more or less disclosed from time to time to the few who chose to attend to them, but which would have remained still unheeded by the directors of public affairs had not the potato blight at once raised its horrors to. an intolerable climax, and forced their consideration upon the Legislature.

Urgently as I have always pressed for a completion of the Poor-law, as the necessary foundation and commencement of social reform in Ireland, I have never failed to express the opinion that it would require other supplementary measures to be adopted at the same time, to enable it to be suc-