In order to check the exorbitant demands which had in many instances been made in the previous season, the whole expense of the public works was now under the new Labour-Rate Act made a local charge, to be defrayed by a rate levied and assessed in a manner similar to the poor-rate, which makes the landlord liable for the whole on tenements under 4_l._ yearly value, and for half the rate on tenements valued above that amount. It was also determined that as far as possible task-work should be adopted, and at a rate of payment below what was usual in the district. It was further determined in order to avoid embarrassing the operations of the private trader, that government should not order supplies from abroad, and that its interference should be confined to the western districts, in which no trade in corn for local consumption existed. Moreover, the government depôts were not to be opened for the sale of food so long as it could be obtained from private dealers, and no purchases were to be made in the local market, where the appearance of government as a purchaser would be certain to raise prices. [Sidenote: The board of works.] Such generally was the plan proposed to be pursued under the pressure of famine, and the other distressing circumstances consequent on the failure of the potato crop at the end of 1846; and it was expected that the resident proprietors and ratepayers would perform their part, by ascertaining the extent of destitution in the several localities, and determining what was necessary to be done in the way of relief, and the best mode of doing it. This expectation however was not fulfilled, and in almost every instance these duties were left to be performed by the board of works, which had thus to obtain the best information it could through hired agents, “to advance the necessary funds, to select the labourers, to superintend the works, to pay the people weekly, to enforce a proper performance of the labour, to ascertain the quantity of labour required for farm-works, to select and draft off proper persons to perform it, to settle the wages to be paid to them by the farmers and to see that they were paid, to furnish food not only for all the destitute out of doors, but in some measure for the paupers in the workhouses”—in short, “the board of works became the centre of a colossal organization, 5,000 separate works had to be reported upon, 12,000 subordinate officers had to be superintended, and their letters averaged upwards of 800 a day.”[137] ----- [137] See ‘The Irish Crisis,’ by Sir Charles Trevelyan, under whose able superintendence the government aid was chiefly administered in Ireland, and on whose statements of what took place I have chiefly relied in this account of the dismal periods of 1846 and 1847. ----- [Sidenote: The relief-works.]