_6thly. Of Bastardy._—“As far as I had opportunity of observing and inquiring, the Irish females are generally correct in their conduct. I am aware that opinions somewhat different have been expressed; but my own impression of the moral conduct of the Irish females is highly favourable. Their duties appear to be more laborious than those of the same class in England. Their dress, too, is inferior, and so likewise seems their social position; yet they universally appear modest, industrious, and sober—I state this as the result of my own observation; and if the Irish females have preserved their moral character untainted hitherto, as I believe in the main to be the case, it affords an argument for ‘letting well alone.’ If it had been otherwise however, and if the extent of bastardy, and its demoralising influence on public manners had been greater, I should still have recommended that the Irish females should be left, as now, the guardians of their own honour, and responsible in their own persons for all deviations from virtue. The abuses under the old English bastardy law, and our brief experience of the improved practice established by the Amendment Act, warrant the recommendation that no such law should be applied to Ireland; but that bastards, and the mothers of bastards, in all matters connected with relief, should be dealt with in the same manner as other destitute persons solely on the ground of their destitution.