The increased extent of workhouse accommodation which has been noticed, had been obtained, either by means of permanent additions to the original workhouses, or by building new ones in the newly-formed unions, or by the erection of a cheap kind of temporary structure to meet the emergency; or else by hiring premises for the purpose. The latter of these expedients had been resorted to more extensively than was consistent either with economy or with efficient management, and most of these premises were now given up, or shortly would be so. Anxiety is expressed that the succeeding year should be commenced with the workhouse establishments concentrated as far as practicable in each union, “so as to avoid the disadvantage of using auxiliary buildings.” Such a concentration was no doubt essential to efficient management, and it was only by such management, the commissioners observe, and by a further reduction of expenditure, “that some of the distressed unions in the west can be expected to become so far solvent as to support their own pauperism without further external aid.” It is certainly important on many accounts that there should be only one workhouse in a union, and that it should have been expressly constructed for the accommodation of the classes to be relieved therein, with all suitable means for their separation and employment. Without these essentials, a workhouse can hardly be effective either as a test of destitution or a medium of relief; and there is always danger of an inefficient workhouse becoming a stimulant, instead of being a check to pauperism. [Sidenote: Annuities under the Consolidated Debts Act.]