“If a poor-law were established in Ireland, it must not however be expected to work miracles. It would not give employment or capital, but it would, I think, help the country through what may be called its transition period; and in time, and with the aid of other circumstances, would effect a material improvement in the condition of the people. The English Poor Laws, in their earlier operation, contributed to the accomplishment of this object in England; and there seems nothing to prevent a similar result in Ireland. Facilities now exist in Ireland for helping forward the transition, and for shortening its duration as well as securing its benefits, which England did not possess in the time of Elizabeth, or for a century and a half afterwards. By ‘transition period,’ I mean that season of change from the system of small holdings, con-acre, and the subdivisions of land, which now prevails in Ireland, to the better practice of day-labour for wages, and to that dependence on daily labour for support, which is the present condition of the English peasantry. This transition is, I believe, generally beset with difficulty and suffering. It was so in England; it is, and for a time will probably continue to be so in Ireland; and every aid should be afforded to shorten its duration, and lessen its pressure. It has been considered that the existence of the con-acre system is favourable to such a transition. I am disposed to concur in this view, and think that the annual hiring of the con-acre, may help to wean the Irish peasantry from their present desire of occupying land, and lead them to become labourers for wages. The eager clinging to land, and its subdivision into small holdings, is at once a cause and a consequence of the rapid increase of the people, and of the extreme poverty and want which prevail among them. It is not because the potato constitutes their food, that a kind of famine occurs annually in Ireland between the going out of the old, and the in-coming of the new crop; but it is because the peasantry are the sole providers for their own necessities, each out of his own small holding; and being all alike hard pressed, and apt to under-calculate the extent of their wants, they thus often find themselves without food before the new crop is ripe. In this emergency there is no store provided to which they can have recourse, and misery and disease ensue. A poor-law would lighten the pressure under such a visitation, and the poor-law machinery might be useful in cases of extreme need, as well as for preventing a recurrence of the calamity.