Numerous representations were addressed to the board on the subject of mendicancy, urging provision should be made for its being put an end to simultaneously with the commencement of relief under the Poor Law. The question was very generally discussed by the boards of guardians, and forty of them, for the most part unanimously, passed resolutions in favour of a measure for the suppression of mendicancy; but three of the boards took a different view, and were adverse to such suppression. The correspondence which took place on these occasions appears in the Annual Report, and also a minute which the Dublin board addressed to the assistant-commissioners on the occasion. In this minute, after pointing out the necessity for repressing vagrancy and mendicancy as a measure of police, the repression is declared to be likewise necessary for ensuring the effective operation of the Poor Law; for so long as the vagrant classes were permitted to levy contributions on the plea of destitution, the ratepayers, although taxed for the relief of the destitute, would not be protected from the daily demands of the mendicant, nor be exonerated from those compulsory contributions which the mendicant so well knows how to exact. Unless mendicancy were repressed therefore, great injustice would be inflicted on the ratepayer, whose payment of the poor-rate entitles him to protection from such demands. The most expedient way of effecting this object, was considered to be by establishing a law founded on the English Vagrancy Act, with such modifications as might be necessary for adapting it to the state of Ireland.[100] ----- [100] Clauses to this effect had been inserted in the original bill, but were withdrawn, as has been before stated. Ante, p. 195. ----- [Sidenote: Emigration.]