“The expense of providing workhouses, will not, I apprehend, be so considerable as has by some been anticipated. If the surface of Ireland be divided into squares of twenty miles each, so that a workhouse placed in the centre would be distant about ten miles from the extremities in all directions, this would give about eighty workhouses for the whole of Ireland. A diameter of twenty miles was the limit prescribed for the size of unions by Gilbert’s Act, but it was often exceeded in practice—it may however, be assumed as a convenient size on the present occasion. In some cases, owing to the position of towns, or other local causes, the unions will probably be smaller; in others, especially in the thinly-peopled districts of the west, they may be larger: but still, there is, I think, every probability that the number of workhouses required will not greatly exceed eighty. In aid of this number, the houses of industry, and mendicity and other establishments, which will be unnecessary as soon as a legal provision is made for the relief of the destitute, will become available at probably a small expense. In some instances, moreover, barracks, factories, or other buildings suitable for conversion into workhouses, may perhaps be obtained on easy terms:—but excluding all such considerations, and assuming that instead of eighty workhouses, a hundred will be required, and that the cost of erecting each will be about the same as for the largest class of English workhouses, namely, about 7,000_l._—this would give a gross outlay of 700,000_l._ for the whole of Ireland—a sum not disproportionally large, when the nature of the object is taken into account. If government were to advance the sum necessary for providing the workhouses by way of loan, as has been done to the unions in England, requiring an instalment of five per cent. of the principal to be paid off annually out of the rates, it would make the whole charge so easy, that it would scarcely be felt. The payment of 35,000_l._ per annum for twenty years, with the interest on the constantly-decreasing principal, could not be considered a hardship on Ireland; and this is in fact the whole of the new or additional outlay proposed: for as regards the relief of the destitute, that would not be a new charge, the destitute classes being now supported, although in a manner calculated to injure and depress the general character of the people.