Every attention was continued to be given for carrying into effect the provisions of the Vaccination Act, and no efforts were spared to realize the benevolent intentions of the legislature for extending the benefits of vaccination, and for preventing the occurrence and the spreading of smallpox. The Appendix to the Annual Report contains a return showing the numbers successfully vaccinated in each of 100 unions, the whole amounting to 104,713, a number fully equal to if not exceeding what could reasonably have been expected under the circumstances. [Sidenote: Mendicancy.] The prevalence of mendicancy continued to be felt as a burden, and was very generally regarded as an evil which ought to be put an end to. It is true that the law did not confer an actual right to relief, and that the workhouses might possibly be sometimes inadequate for the reception of all who were in a state of destitution; but a rate was nevertheless made for the relief of the destitute, and the persons who were most helpless would be received into the workhouses. It was therefore considered that means should be taken, if not for putting an end to mendicancy altogether, at least for its diminution in a ratio corresponding with the means which had been provided for the relief of destitution. Many of the boards of guardians had passed resolutions to this effect; and at a public meeting held in Dublin for considering the subject, it was resolved to apply to the Irish government, urging the necessity of immediate steps being taken to put down the evil. The prevalence of mendicancy was found to be a positive obstacle to the working of the Poor Law. Thus in some of the unions, after the stock of habitual mendicants had for the most part been taken into the workhouses, the ratepayers of particular electoral divisions finding that the removal of what might be called their own established poor did not protect them from mendicancy, but was followed by inroads of beggars from other districts, deemed it better that their own poor should be permitted to levy contributions from house to house as theretofore, than that the ratepayers should incur the charge of maintaining them in the workhouse, and at the same time be called upon for contributions to the mendicants by whom their doors were beset. If the mendicancy clauses in the Poor Relief Bill as originally framed had been retained, these evils would have been prevented, and the repression of begging would have kept pace with the administration of relief under the Poor Law; but in the passage of the measure through parliament, these clauses, as before stated, were withdrawn, and no step had subsequently been taken for their re-enactment in any shape, as was understood to be intended at the time.[109] ----- [109] Ante, p. 211. ----- [Sidenote: Unfavourable weather, backward crops, and consequent distress.]