The _18th and 44th sections_ of the Relief Act provide for dividing the unions into electoral divisions, and for charging against each electoral division not only its proportion of the general expenses of the union, but also the expense incurred for the relief of persons stated in the registry to have been resident in such electoral division; the relief of others not stated to have been so resident, being charged against the union at large. These provisions were inserted in the bill in the house of lords, on the motion of the duke of Wellington, with the professed view of assimilating the mechanism of the Irish unions to the unions in England; but the circumstances in the two countries were widely different, and there would be little analogy between the long-established English parish, and the newly-created electoral divisions. This difference was however overlooked in the desire for assimilation, and the electoral division system was incorporated in the Act, together with a sort of quasi settlement as between the different divisions, approximating to settlement as between parishes in the English unions. Under these circumstances, it can hardly occasion surprise, that although arranged with the utmost care, and with every endeavour to give them a general harmony and coherence, the electoral divisions did not work smoothly. Their separate chargeability interfered with the efficient action of the unions for general purposes, as in the case of emigration, and led to struggles and contention in the boards of guardians as soon as the unions got fully into operation, each division endeavouring to relieve itself from the charge of a registered pauper, by fixing it upon some other, or by casting it upon the union at large; and thus one of the evils of the English settlement-law was inflicted upon the Irish unions, contrary to the intentions of the original framers of the Act, and contrary likewise to what a more thorough knowledge of the condition of the two countries would it is believed have dictated. [Sidenote: Valuation and rating.]