It is, however, satisfactory to find that in a great majority of the unions relief was provided and administered by the guardians in an orderly and efficient manner. There were some exceptions in addition to the above, it is true, and the commissioners had to exert all their influence and authority in procuring the appointment of relieving officers to receive and inquire into applications for relief, as provided by the Extension Act and directed by their own order. Another point on which the commissioners found much difficulty in winning the acquiescence of the guardians was with regard to the mode of employing poor persons, for whose relief out of the workhouse under the _2nd section_ of the Extension Act, a necessity had arisen in some unions. The guardians wished the employment to be of a productive or profitable nature, and that it should be applied mainly with that view. The commissioners were desirous that the employment should serve as a test of destitution, and recommended stone-breaking as open to least objection, the food to be given not as the price of labour but in relief of destitution, the labour being required simply as the condition of the relief; and in the unions where out-door relief in food was given to the able-bodied on this principle, the numbers are said to have been for the most part kept within moderate limits. [Sidenote: Increase of workhouse accommodation.] But although the labour-test might so far have succeeded, the operation of the workhouse system in the present difficult circumstances had been found far less equivocal, and its efficiency was more universally acknowledged by those engaged in the administration of relief. A large extension of workhouse room, partly permanent partly temporary had been provided. The whole accommodation including additional workhouses and fever hospitals connected with the workhouses would be sufficient for upwards of 150,000 persons, “being an addition of more than one-third to the accommodation originally provided.” In consequence of this great increase of workhouse accommodation, it appears that in 25 of the unions no relief was given out of the workhouse, “except perhaps in the occasional exercise of the provisional powers of the relieving officers,” and yet the workhouses of none of these unions were said to be full. In 35 other unions, out-door relief was afforded only under the _1st section_ of the Extension Act, that is to the infirm, widows with two or more children, and persons disabled by sickness or accident. In the remaining 71 unions, orders had been issued under the _2nd section_, authorizing out-door relief in food; but in only 23 of these was it authorized to be given without distinction of class. [Sidenote: The Dublin unions.]