Applications had been frequently made both to the Irish government, and to the Board in Dublin, representing that if the idiotic and harmless lunatics then confined in the gaols or maintained in the lunatic asylums, were transferred to the workhouses of the unions to which they belonged, those institutions would be greatly relieved, more especially the asylums, which would then be enabled to receive more curable cases, and thus extend their usefulness. To such communications it had always been replied—“that the Irish Poor Relief Act made no provision for the support of insane and lunatic persons, specially as such; but that a destitute person, being insane or lunatic, might be admitted into the workhouse if the guardians so decided, in the same manner as any other destitute individual.” To provide for cases of this description, idiot wards had been prepared in every workhouse, which were calculated to afford accommodation for about 2,400 of this class of paupers, whenever the guardians in the exercise of their discretion, should think fit to admit them. It had however been thought right to discourage any forced or immediate transfer of insane or idiotic persons or harmless lunatics from the asylums and gaols, but rather to wait for the gradual absorption by the workhouses of such of these unfortunates as could be properly relieved therein. [Sidenote: Emigration.] Fruitless efforts were made, particularly at Cork and Belfast, to raise the funds necessary for defraying the expense of emigration. In Cork, Dublin, Waterford, Belfast, and certain other large towns, a considerable number of young persons chiefly females, and for the most part the remnants of a former system, had as has been before stated,[115] accumulated in the workhouses, for whom emigration would afford at once the most eligible, and it may almost be said the only outlet. Yet in the present state of the law, it was found nearly if not quite impossible to take advantage of it. The workhouses had not created the present burden, but they had gathered it into mass, and might be made useful auxiliaries to a well-directed plan of emigration. The commissioners declared that it would materially facilitate this object, if the boards of guardians were empowered to apply a portion of the rates for the emigration of such fit persons as had been resident sufficiently long in the workhouse for testing their actual helplessness and destitution. This would in fact be reverting to what was originally proposed, but which had been altered in the progress of the bill through the house of lords, by substituting divisional chargeability for that of the entire union—a change to which is mostly owing whatever difficulties have since occurred in the working of the measure. ----- [115] Ante, p. 275. ----- [Sidenote: Electoral divisions.]