d on July 31, 1838. Between
that year and 1851 one hundred and sixty-three Poor Law Unions were
created. The number is at present one hundred and fifty-nine, and they
are administered by elected and co-opted Poor Law Guardians to the
number of more than eight thousand. In every Union there is a workhouse,
and in that workhouse all the various classes of destitute and poor
persons are maintained. They include sick, aged and infirm, legitimate
and illegitimate children, insane of all classes, sane epileptics,
mothers of illegitimate children, able-bodied male paupers, and the
importunate army of tramps. The mean number of such inmates in all the
workhouses on any day is about 40,000, of whom about one-third are sick,
one-third aged and infirm, one-seventh children, one-twentieth mothers
of illegitimate children, and one-twelfth insane and epileptic. This
awful confusion of infirmity and vice, this Purgatory perpetuating
itself to the exclusion of all hope of Paradise, presents the vital
problem of Irish Poor Law Reform.

A radical solution must be found for it. On that point the reports of
all the Commissions are unanimous. They differ, where they do differ,
only as regards means to the end.

The supreme reform which must be undertaken by any Government that seeks
to remove this great blot on Irish administration is the abolition of
the present workhouse system on some basis which, while effective, will
make no addition to the rates. The two chief reports (those of the
Viceregal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws) are in
agreement, not merely as to this necessity, but as to the guiding
principles of reform. They recommend classification, by institutions, of
all the present inmates of the workhouses--the sick in hospitals, the
aged and infirm in almshouses, the mentally defective in asylums.
Appalling evidence was given before the Viceregal Commission and the
Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded with
regard to the present association of lunatics, epileptics, and imbeciles
with sane women and children in the workhouse wards. The latter
Commission recommended the creation of a strong central authority for
the general protection and supervision of mentally defective persons.

The reforms do not contemplate the amalgamation of Unions and the
complete closing of only a certain number of workhouses. They suggest
rather the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of