“Vagrancy as a mode of relief.”
An examination of every dispensary in nine counties is also given, and of every infirmary, and some dispensaries and hospitals in eleven counties. Likewise the examinations concerning institutions not medical, for the relief of different classes of the poor, which are said to be “principally mendicity institutions, houses of industry, almshouses, and societies for visiting the destitute and distributing food, money, or clothes,” in all the large towns.
After thus enumerating the several heads or divisions under which their investigations were conducted, the commissioners proceed to state—
1st.—The difficulties they had to encounter from the extensive and complicated nature of the subject, and the peculiar social condition of the Irish people.
2ndly.—The course they pursued in collecting information, “showing how far it is full and impartial, and therefore how far worthy of confidence.” And
3rdly.—The reasons why they are not yet able to report—“Whether any and what further remedial measures appear to be requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor, or any of them.”
These points are all largely dwelt upon, especially the first. On every side, the commissioners say, they were assailed by the theories of persons who might be supposed to possess means of forming a sound judgment—“one party attributed all the poverty and wretchedness of the country to an asserted extreme use of ardent spirits, and proposed a system for repressing illicit distillation, for preventing smuggling, and for substituting beer and coffee. Another party found the cause in the combination among workmen, and proposed rigorous laws against trades unions. Others again were equally confident, that the reclamation of the bogs and waste lands was the only practicable remedy. A fourth party declared the nature of the existing connexion between landlord and tenant to be the root of all the evil. Pawnbroking, redundant population, absence of capital, peculiar religious tenets and religious differences, political excitement, want of education, the maladministration of justice, the state of prison discipline, want of manufactures and of inland navigation, with a variety of other circumstances, were each supported by their various advocates with earnestness and ability, as being either alone, or jointly with some other, the primary cause of all the evils of society; and loan funds, emigration, the repression of political excitement, the introduction of manufactures, and the extension of inland navigation, were accordingly proposed each as the principal means by which the improvement of Ireland could be promoted.” The commissioners abstain from expressing their opinion upon any of these propositions, but they determine “that the inquiry should embrace every subject to which importance seemed to be attached by any large number of persons.”
Under the second division of their Report, the commissioners advert in considerable detail to the obvious impossibility of collecting the necessary information themselves, and the difficulty of finding Irishmen at once competent and impartial to undertake the duty; and they determine as the only mode of combining local knowledge with impartiality, to unite in the inquiry “a native of Great Britain with a resident native of Ireland.” And in order that the evidence might be full and impartial, and be collected and registered in a satisfactory manner, the assistant-commissioners who had been appointed were desired to adopt in their investigations the following course of procedure:—
First—“To request the attendance of persons of each grade in society, of each of the various religious persuasions, and of each party in politics; to give to the testimony of each class an equal degree of attention, and to make the examinations in presence of all. Not to allow any person to join in conducting the examination, and to state at the opening of the proceedings, that any statement made by an individual, and not impugned by any person present, would be considered to be acknowledged as at least probable by all.”
Second—“To note down at the time of examination, the replies given, or the remarks which occurred to him; to register, as nearly as might be possible in the words of each witness, the statements which might be made; to register the names of all the persons who attended the examination; and before proceeding to examine another district, to send the minutes of the previous examination to the office in Dublin, signed by both the assistant-commissioners.”