By the _123rd section_ of the Relief Act it is directed, that an account of the expenditure upon the relief of the poor during the year, and the total number of persons relieved, in each union on the 1st of January, shall be annually laid before parliament, together with the commissioners’ General Report. On the 1st of January 1841, the returns showed that the expense of relief in the previous year, and the numbers relieved in the four unions then in operation, were as follows— No. in the workhouse on the 1st Jan. 1841. Cork £12,453 8 0 1,549 North Dublin 10,407 12 7 1,601 South Dublin 12,732 3 8 1,987 Londonderry (two months) 1,464 4 5 331 ————————————— ———— £37,057 8 8 Total 5,468 [Sidenote: Education and training of workhouse children.] The education of the children maintained in the workhouse, was from the very outset felt to be a matter of the utmost importance. In the North Dublin workhouse there were 500 children under sixteen years of age, and in the South Dublin workhouse there were 635. That these children should be trained up in moral and religious habits, and be fitted by education and by instruction in useful branches of industry for earning their own living, all must admit to be necessary; and for these purposes a protestant and a Roman catholic chaplain, and a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, were appointed to each workhouse. The girls were taught sewing, and were employed in the domestic work of the house, so as to fit them for service. The boys were taught tailoring, shoemaking, carpentering, and some were set to work in the garden: but the various employments to which boys reared in the workhouse are likely in after life to betake themselves, hardly admit of their being specifically trained for them, and little more can be done in the way of preparation than to send them forth imbued with habits of industry, their frames strengthened and inured to labour, their tempers and mental faculties duly cultivated, and above all with their minds duly impressed with a sense of their moral and religious duties. When thus prepared, they will be best fitted for entering upon the duties incidental to their position, on the right performance of which their future condition in life must depend. The earnest attention of the Dublin boards was given to this subject, and arrangements were made with the Commissioners of National Education for inspecting the workhouse schools, and for supplying them with books and other requisites on the most favourable terms. The Board likewise took advantage of every opportunity for impressing upon the guardians and union officers the great importance of attending to the education and training of these children, and of