; the
average of the country being about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the
earnings of the labourers came, on an average of the whole class, to
from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the
year round. Thus circumstanced, the commissioners observed, 'It is
impossible for the able-bodied in general to provide against sickness
or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the
destitution of their widows and children in the contingent event of
their own premature decease. A great portion of them are, it is said,
insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. Their
habitations are wretched hovels, several of a family sleep together
on straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes
even without so much to cover them; their food commonly consists of
dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as
to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day.
There are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek
sustenance in wild herbs. They sometimes get a herring or a little
milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and
Shrovetide. Some go in search of employment to Great Britain, during
the harvest; others wander through Ireland with the same view. The
wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg; but they
do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from
home, that they may not be known. Mendicity, too, is the sole resource
of the aged and impotent of the poorer classes in general, when
children or relatives are unable to support them. To it, therefore,
crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that
such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which
encourages idleness, imposture, and general crime.' Such was the
wretched condition of the great body of the labouring classes in
Ireland; 'and with these facts before us,' the commissioners say, 'we
cannot hesitate to state that we consider remedial measures requisite
to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor. What those measures
should be is a question complicated, and involving considerations
of the deepest importance to the whole body of the people, both in
Ireland and Great Britain.'

Sir George Nicholls, who had been an English poor-law commissioner,
was sent over to Ireland to make preliminary enquiries. He found
that the Irish peasantry had generally an appearanc