“It has been argued that the workhouses will eventually fail in Ireland, as they have failed in France, at Munich, and at Hamburgh; but there is no analogy between the two cases. The workhouse principle was never recognised in these establishments, which were all either poorhouses for the maintenance of the aged and infirm, or manufactories for setting to work vagrants, mendicants, and other idle persons. All these institutions were established under the notion that profitable labour could be always found, and that pauper labour could be made profitable to the community, and their management had reference to these objects. There were certain variations in practice to suit local circumstances, but this was the view under which the institutions were founded, by Count Rumford, at Munich, by the imperial government in France, and by Baron de Voght, at Hamburgh. I need scarcely say that this view is essentially different from the workhouse system established in England, and as it is proposed to establish it in Ireland. Experience has proved that pauper labour can never be profitable. The workhouse is here used merely as a medium of _relief_; and in order that the destitute only may partake of it, the relief is administered in such a way, and on such conditions, that none but the destitute will accept it. This is the workhouse principle, as first established in the two parishes of Bingham and Southwell eighteen or twenty years ago, and as it has recently been established in the unions formed under the Poor Law Amendment Act; and we have the experience of these parishes, and the more varied, though less prolonged experience of the English unions, in proof of the efficiency of the system, which has worked hitherto without a single instance of failure. It is not therefore upon mere hypothesis, that it is proposed to proceed with regard to the Irish Poor Law, but upon the surer ground of experience.