“In my inquiries with regard to these points, I endeavoured to exercise a care and vigilance proportioned to their importance. The inquiry was entered upon under an apprehension that the workhouse would be less efficient in Ireland, than experience had shown it to be in England; and that it would probably be applicable to the able-bodied in a limited degree only, if applicable to them at all. I was doubtful also, whether it would be practicable to control any considerable number of the able-bodied in a workhouse—whether the proneness of the Irish peasantry to outrage and insubordination would not, as had often been represented, lead them to break through all restraint, and perhaps demolish the building, and commit other acts of violence. The probability of such outrage is strongly insisted upon by the Commissioners of Inquiry, and the same argument was urged upon me by some persons with whom I communicated in Dublin. In the progress of my inquiries however, I soon found reason for concluding that there was no ground for apprehension, either as to the applicability of the workhouse for the purposes of relief, or as to any danger of resistance to such a system of classification and discipline within it, as would make it a test of destitution. In the several ‘houses of industry’ established in Ireland, a strict separation of the sexes is enforced, and a discipline more or less approximating to our workhouse discipline is established. No spirits are admitted, and on the whole, there is enough in these institutions to render them distasteful as places of partial restraint. Yet from no governor of a house of industry could I learn that resistance had ever been made to their regulations, and surprise was even expressed at my thinking it necessary to make the inquiry. I received the same opinion from the governors of gaols. In short, every man whom I conversed with, who had any experience of the habits of the people, declared that the peasantry are perfectly tractable, and never think of opposing authority, unless stimulated by drink, or urged on by that species of combination for securing the occupancy of land, which has become so common in certain districts. Neither of these influences will interfere with the establishment of a workhouse, or the regulation of its inmates, all of whom will have sought refuge in it voluntarily, and may quit it at any moment. As regards the security of the workhouse, therefore, and the establishment of a system of discipline as strict as that maintained in the English workhouses, I believe that there will be neither danger nor difficulty.