We will now turn to the commissioners’ Report of 1844, which commences by declaring that “The administration of relief of the poor in Ireland had been attended with some difficulties during the past year, arising in a great measure from the political influences which had agitated that country.” The influences and agitations here alluded to, were connected with the great movement for a repeal of the Union, stirred up and organized by the late Mr. O'Connell, the consequences of which were in various ways exceedingly pernicious, diverting the people from their legitimate and necessary occupations, exciting jealousy and ill-feeling towards England, inculcating distrust of the government, weakening the authority of law, and inciting to a resistance of whatever was established, of course including the Poor Law. Some indications of this hostility appeared before the author quitted Ireland towards the end of 1842, but shortly afterwards it was openly manifested, and the Poor Law was declaimed against as being an intolerable burden inflicted and enforced by England and English officials, and that it ought consequently to be opposed by every true Irishman. [Sidenote: Resistance to the law.] Under these circumstances, and in the then state of Ireland, it cannot excite surprise that there should be resistance to the law, and that efforts should be made to evade its provisions. As early as the end of 1842 there had been resistance to payment of the rates in some of the divisions of the Skibbereen and Waterford unions, which afterwards extended to Tipperary and several other unions in different parts of Ireland. At Skibbereen indeed a death had unhappily occurred, through the violent resistance made to the constabulary while assisting the collectors in levying the rates. In a return made to an order of the house of commons, 21 unions are named as having down to the 1st of January 1844, so far resisted the payment of the poor-rates as to require the intervention of the constabulary or the military to enforce the collection. In 11 of these unions, a military as well as constabulary force was deemed necessary. In the other 10, the constabulary alone were found sufficient to protect the collectors in the execution of their duty. But it was not alone resistance to the rates which obstructed the working of the law; in the Tuam union a rate was made in October 1842,[119] but no part of it had been collected on the 1st of January 1844. This was not owing to resistance on the part of the ratepayers, but to the unwillingness of the guardians to proceed in the administration of relief. The workhouse, capable of accommodating 800 persons, had been declared fit for the reception of destitute poor in August 1842, a master matron medical officer and porter had been appointed, but such was the backwardness of the guardians in fulfilling the requirements of the law, that no case of destitution however urgent,