nected with some county infirmaries and poor-houses, formed all the means provided for the medical and moral treatment, or even for the safe custody, of the insane paupers of Ireland. The Report of a committee on the lunatic poor, made in 1817, gives the following appalling description of the treatment of these unhappy creatures: — "There is nothing so shocking as madness in the cabin of the peasant, where the man is labouring in the fields for his bread, and the care of the woman of the house is scarcely sufficient for attendance on her children. When a strong young man is thus affected, the only way they have to manage him is by making a hole in the floor of the cabin, not high enough for a person to stand up in, with a crib over it to prevent his getting out. The hole is about four feet deep: they give the wretched being his food in it, and there he generally dies." Wandering lunatics were dispersed over the country, in the most neglected and disgusting state. The recommendations of the committee now spoken of were followed up by legislative enactments giving them the force of law. The government was empowered to divide the country into a certain number of districts, within which lunatic asylums should be erected; the expenses of the buildings were to be advanced out of the consolidated fund, and repaid by local taxation : their maintenance, when erected, was to be provided for by grand jury presentments. Pursuant to these arrangements, all the counties of Ireland, except that of Cork, and the city of the same name, in which an asylum had been already instituted by a special act, and placed under the control of the grand juries of both these counties, were classed into ten districts, in each of which a lunatic asylum has been erected, and is now in full operation, under the surveillance of the inspectors general of prisons, who give a summary account of them in their annual report to parliament. It appears from the latest of these reports that, in the year ending the 31st of December, 1887, the total number of lunatics in public or private asylums in Ireland was 3,106, showing an average of one lunatic to every 2,576 persons in a population of 8,000,000, or of one to every 2,736 in that of 8,500,000, which, according to some calculations, is now the nearest approximation to the total population. Of this number of Junatics 1708 were in district asylums, 425 in county asylums, managed by the respective grand juries of each; 596 in lunatic wards, attached to houses of industry; 12 in infirmaries; 37 in gaols; 148 in the hospital of St. Patrick, Dublin, endowed by Dean Swift; and 180 in private institutions, maintained by individuals for their own emolument. The following table shows the number of lunatics labouring under the several species of the disease, both in district and other asylums:

Houses of industry have been already noticed, as far as they bear upon the subject of vagrancy. Their institution was occasioned by a tract written by Dr. Woodward, bishop of Cloyne, entitled "An Argument in Support of the Right of the Poor in Ireland to a National Provision.' The act under which they were founded directs every such establishment to be divided into four parts, for the infirm and refractory poor of each sex, and authorises the granting of licenses and badges to beggars, a practice which was soon linquished, as not only useless, but impracticable. This description of pauper establishments appears never to have been highly estimated, as the number of them throughout Ireland does not exceed twelve, including the great central establishment in Dublin already noticed, which is supported exclusively by grants of public money. The combination of punishment and relief in the same institutions is deemed a fundamental defect in their constitution.

re

The public institutions for the support of orphans and deserted and destitute children are chiefly in the city of Dublin. The principal is the Foundling Hospital, opened in 1704 for the reception of destitute orphans and deserted children, of the age of infancy. These, after their admission, were sent out to nurse, generally in the counties of Wicklow and Carlow; and, when of an age proper for instruction, brought back to the central institution, educated, and apprenticed out to trades. The hospital is supported wholly by parliamentary grants, which, from a daily increasing opinion of the unsoundness of the principle on which such institutions are based, are every year diminished, and additional obstacles put in the way of the admission of children into it. The Hibernian school in the Phoenix Park provides for the children of soldiers; the Marine school for those of sailors. The Blue-coat Hospital was incorporated in 1760 for the maintenance of the children of decayed citizens of Dublin. The Female Orphan House, established originally by voluntary collections at charity sermons in the Protestant churches of Dublin, receives an annual grant of public money. The principal institution for the reception of old men, is the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham for invalid and superannuated soldiers, in which about 300 are supported. The house of industry is now chiefly a receptacle for the aged and impotent poor, having attached to it several infirmaries, and an asylum for idiotic and epileptic cases.

The foregoing statement of the means devised by the legislature, for meeting the claims of pauper disease and infirmity, shows that a provision has been made for the lunatic poor, which is considered by writers well calculated to give a sound opinion on the point, as even more liberal than that afforded in England. The law and practice as to fever hospitals meet all the necessary claims, both of benevolence and of medical police. Infirmaries are established in every county except Waterford; and the dispensary system, combining private subscription with local assessment, and thus affording medical aid to upwards of half a million of sufferers, seems well calculated to produce a reciprocity of kindly feeling between the rich and poor, through the interchange of benevolence and relief. The concurrent testimony of several witnesses before parliamentary com

mittees justifies the opinion that the provision for the sick poor is even larger and more effective in Ireland than in England. In the latter, the institutions for their relief are erected only in large cities and towns, while in the former they are spread over the whole face of the country, and guarded in their management by strict and express

statutes.

The charities maintained by the exertions of private benevolence, wholly independent of any aid from general or local taxation, are very numerous, and in general liberally supported. They comprise orphan establishments, schools, hospitals for the aged and impotent, lying-in hospitals, infirmaries, dispensaries, asylums for female penitents, houses of refuge, societies for the temporary relief of sick and indigent room-keepers and of strangers, savings' banks, charitable loans, and mendicity associations. Such institutions are to be found chiefly in the cities and large towns. Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Londonderry and Drogheda, have each more or fewer of these charitable foundations. They are supported partly by donations, subscriptions, and bequests, and partly by collections at charity sermons. In Dublin, sermons of this nature are preached in one or other of the Roman Catholic places of worship, every Sunday throughout the year, with the exception of Easter; and few, if any, Sundays pass over without similar appeals to public bounty in severa! of the Protestant parochial churches and Dissenting meeting houses. To enter into the details of management, even of the most remarkable, would be impossible in a summary of this nature: a mere catalogue of their names would be equally useless and uninteresting. The societies for the suppression of mendicity may however be deemed worthy of some further notice. They are among the later and the most singular of the benevolent institutions for lessening the amount of human misery in towns and thickly peopled districts. The distinguishing feature of the system is the supplying the able-bodied paupers with work at reduced rates, until they can be otherwise more profitably employed, and the affording of food and shelter during the day to the aged and impotent, allowing both classes to provide themselves with lodging, for which a trifling weekly stipend is granted, in cases where the labour of the individual is insufficient to procure it. The plan was originally introduced into Belfast from Edinburgh, and being found practically useful there, was commenced in Dublin in 1818, on a scale commensurate with the density of the population, and the number of unemployed paupers, who had hitherto been supported in idleness by the contributions of the more affluent. The average annual income of the Dublin institution is 7,000l., by means of which it is enabled to provide subsistence for about 2,000 paupers who had been, or otherwise would have been, mendicants. The success of the experiment was for some time very great, insomuch that several English philanthropists, who visited Ireland shortly after its formation, observed that they experienced as little annoyance from street begging in Dublin as in London. The example of the metropolis has been followed in several of the larger towns, and, in all cases, has had the effect of diminishing considerably the practice of street begging. In the county of Antrim, a considerable number of

parishes have adopted the plan, for the relief of their own poor to the exclusion of strangers.

But though the amount of suffering arising from corporal infirmity, whether occasioned by sudden accident, or by the visitation of disease, be as much alleviated here as in any other country, that produced by the frequent destitution of large numbers of the able-bodied peasantry has attained a magnitude that baffles all the efforts of voluntary charity. Low wages and inconstant employment, occasioned by a redundancy of population, and the usual exhaustion of the supply of potatoes of the previous year before the crop of the succeeding year can be made use of, seem to be the immediate causes of this state of things. Its prevalence, as testified by the wide spread of mendicity, and the despair and outrage to which it necessarily leads, have produced a strong and general conviction that the introduction of some sort of compulsory provision for the support of the destitute poor is absolutely necessary. We have elsewhere (vol. i. p. 440.) endeavoured to show the influence that the want of such provision has had in bringing about that minute and endless subdivision of the land that is the bane and curse of Ireland. It appears to be satisfactorily established by the evidence taken before the commissioners for inquiring into the state of the Irish poor, that without a compulsory provision, the evil of subdivision will continue to gain ground. A number of landlords have, it is true, become fully aware of the mischievous nature of the practice, and have endeavoured, though in most cases with little success, to counteract it.* But all landlords do not participate in these views; many have deceived themselves by supposing that if the small occupiers became unable to pay their exorbitant rents, or that if they themselves chose to change the management of their estates, they might eject the cottiers and convert the lands held by them into larger tillage or pasturage farms. But this, at least, in three fourths of the country, is no longer practicable! The cottiers cling with desperate tenacity to their patches of land, and no wonder. They are the only resource on which they have to depend; and if turned out of them they can hardly escape falling into the extremest destitution. And as the same calamity that has overtaken one, or a few, may equally overtake others, the whole peasantry are instinctively led to combine together; the interest of each being identified with that of his order, every one looks with detestation upon any individual bold enough to come into the place of an ejected cottier. By doing so he makes himself a common enemy, and is marked out for exemplary vengeance, which rarely fails to overtake him, unless he purchase at a high price the good will of the tenant that has been ejected. It is a mistake to suppose, as many have done, that the Irish poor are wantonly savage and destructive. Nine tenths of the outrages they commit are the result of calculation and foresight, not of reckless and sudden impulses. They are the efforts of the peasantry to protect themselves from ruin - efforts forced upon

Mr. Bicheno has fully established, in his Report on the Poor of Ireland, that the subdivision of the land has been but little counteracted, and that the condition of the peasantry has deteriorated materially since the country was visited by Arthur Young,

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them by the oppressive conduct of many landlords, and by the want of any refuge for the destitute. To such an extent, indeed, is the present combination of the occupiers of the soil carried, that, whatever may be the cause of any one of them leaving his possession, if good will" be not paid, in other words, if a guarantee of quiet possession be not previously obtained, no other tenant dare enter upon it. This is so well understood in many parts, particularly in the south, that the landlord does not venture upon removing a tenant, though only holding from year to year, so long as he pays his rent, unless by his own consent! and, even in that case, the occupier uniformly sells his "good will!" This extraordinary state of things, so unlike what obtains in England or any other country, has gone far to subvert the right of property: it forms an insuperable obstacle to all improvement; and without the application of effectual measures for its suppression, it could not fail to terminate, at no distant period, in the abolition of rent. From inability to eject a tenant except by his own consent, to inability to enforce payment of rent, there is but a step, and that, apparently, not a very difficult one: but should it be taken, the consequences would be most pernicious; the distribution of the land into small patches would be perpetuated, and the chances of improvement very greatly diminished.

Nothing, as it appears to us, will be so likely to counteract this baneful practice as the introduction of a compulsory provision for the unemployed and impotent poor. The obligation of supporting all the individuals settled on an estate would compel all but the most inconsiderate landlords to adopt every possible precaution to prevent the undue increase of cottages and of population, and to diminish them if they be excessive; not, however, as has hitherto been too frequently done, by turning out poor wretches with no alternative except that of starving in ditches or on the road side, or of banding themselves in nocturnal predatory associations, but by providing for them, under a well-digested system of general arrangements adequate to meet the pressure of such contingencies throughout all parts of the country, until means could be devised for their employment or emigration. Such compulsory provision would oppose an almost insuperable barrier to the further subdivision of the land, at the same time that it would do more than any thing else to facilitate the consolidation of

forms.

The soundness of the principle here laid down, combined with the urgent necessity of applying an immediate and effective remedy to the daily increasing evil of pauperism, has for several years been pressing itself more strongly on the minds of intelligent and reflecting people. The legislature too has, at length, taken up the subject, and, after much inquiry and discussion, has declared its opinion of the necessity of some general measure to this effect, by a statute which received the royal assent on 31st July, 1838, entitled "An Act for the more effectual Relief of the destitute Poor in Ireland." This statute is copied from the English Poor Law Amendment Act, and adheres to most of its details. After a declaratory preamble of the expe

Mr. Bicheno's Report on Irish Poor, p. 37.