Having thus rejected the workhouse, the commissioners next consider how far the objections applicable to a provision for enforcing in-door work, would be applicable to one for enforcing out-door employment; and they come to the conclusion, that having regard to the number of persons for whom work must be found, and the experience of the consequences to which out-door compulsory employment led in England, any attempt to introduce it into Ireland would be attended with most pernicious results. “If (it is said) the farmers were compelled to take more men than they chose or thought they wanted, they would of course reduce the wages of all to a minimum. If, on the other hand, magistrates or other local authorities were empowered to frame a scale of wages or allowances, so as to secure to each labourer a certain sum by the week, we do not think they could, with safety to their persons and property, fix a less sum than would be equal to the highest rate of wages pre-existing in the district for which they were required to act; nor would anything less enable the labourer to support himself and his family upon such food, with such clothing, and in such a dwelling, as any person undertaking to provide permanently for human beings in a civilized country could say they ought to be satisfied with. It would therefore (the commissioners think) be necessary to fix different scales of wages or allowances, which would average for the whole of Ireland about 4_s._ 6_d._ a week. This would be to double the present earnings of the body of labourers, and these appear to amount to about 6,800,000_l._ a year. The additional charge would therefore come to about that sum.” The tenantry, the commissioners say, cannot be expected to bear this burden. They have not capital for it, and the charge must therefore fall upon the landlords. Rents would diminish, commerce would decay, and the demand for agricultural produce and all commodities save potatoes and coarse clothing would contract, while the number of persons out of employment and in need of support would increase, and general ruin ensue. The well-known case of “Cholesbury” is then cited, and held up as an example of what would follow in Ireland, “at the end of a year from the commencement of any system for charging the land indefinitely with the support of the whole labouring part of the community.”