On the 29th August 1846, the returns for the week showed that the inmates of the several workhouses amounted to 43,655, and the numbers continued to increase until on the 17th October, four of the workhouses were reported to be full,[149] and most of the others became so shortly after, although they fluctuated in this respect from time to time. The aggregate weekly returns however showed a continual increase down to the end of February 1847, when the inmates amounted to 116,321. From that time the number decreased, but the decrease was probably owing to the distressed circumstances in which the unions were themselves placed, rather than to any abatement of the general distress. There can, it is observed, be few situations more painful than that of a board of guardians in the present condition of Ireland, surrounded by an appalling extent of destitution, yet without the means of relieving the sufferers. “Possessed of a workhouse capable of holding a few hundred inmates, the guardians are looked to with hope by thousands of famishing persons, and are called on to exercise the mournful task of selection from the distressed objects who present themselves for admission as their last refuge from death.” It was no longer a question whether the applicants were fit objects for relief, but which of them could be rejected and which admitted with the least risk of sacrificing life. Were persons in the last extremities of want to be denied admittance, or on the other hand were those already admitted to be made the victims of over-crowding?—The course which prudence dictated was the one most opposed to human sympathies. Eyewitnesses of the distress which was endured, the guardians could not always resist the appeals made to them; and applicant after applicant was admitted to the workhouse, long after the sanitary limit had been passed. ----- [149] Those of Cork, Granard, Ballina, and Skibbereen. ----- [Sidenote: Overcrowding of the workhouses.]