selected in haste; many of them were
corrupt, and encouraged the misconduct of the labourers. In many cases
the relief committees, unable to prevent maladministration, yielded
to the torrent of corruption, and individual members only sought to
benefit their own dependants. The people everywhere flocked to the
public works; labourers, cottiers, artisans, fishermen, farmers, men,
women, and children--all, whether destitute or not, sought for a share
of the public money. In such a crowd, it was almost impossible to
discriminate properly. They congregated in masses on the roads,
idling under the name of work, the really destitute often unheeded
and unrelieved because they had no friend to recommend them. All
the ordinary employments were neglected; there was no fishing, no
gathering of sea-weed, no collecting of manure. The men who had
employment feared to lose it by absenting themselves for any other
object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to obtain it. The
whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in road-making. It
became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or the cultivation
of the land would be neglected. Works undertaken on the spur of
the moment, not because they were needful, but merely to employ the
people, were in many cases ill chosen, and the execution equally
defective. The labourers, desirous to protract their employment, were
only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their
overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. The favouritism,
the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases were
shockingly demoralising.

In order to induce the people to attend to their ordinary spring work,
and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of
distributing free rations. On March 20, therefore, a reduction of
twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place, and
the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous
relief was brought into full operation. The authority under which this
was administered was called the 'Temporary Relief Act,' which came
into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution was at
its height, and three millions of people received their daily rations.
Sir John Burgoyne truly describes this as 'the grandest attempt
ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country.' Never in the
history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner by the
public bounty. It w