This was doubtless a considerate, but it was at the same time a necessary proceeding on the part of the government. The impoverished unions, whose utmost exertions could not raise within themselves sufficient for relieving their own urgent necessities, would of course find it impossible to pay the consolidated annuity for which they were made liable; whilst the continual accumulation of this charge hanging over them would paralyze local effort, and tend to prevent the introduction of capital from other quarters. The accumulation would for the present be put a stop to by this Treasury minute; and if, in consideration of their late sufferings and present difficulties, parliament should confirm the boon, it will it is thought inspire confidence, as well as afford present relief; and it may then be hoped, that at no very distant day the impoverished unions would be able to emerge from their state of depression, and join in the general race of improvement. [Sidenote: The _15 and 16 Vict., cap. 16_.] The requisite confirmation was given in the following year by the _15th and 16th Vict. cap. 16_, entitled ‘An Act to amend the Acts relating to the Payment of Advances made to Districts in Ireland.’ After reciting the _13th and 14th Vict. cap. 14_, and the Treasury minute of the 21st October 1851, made “upon representations contained in memorials from many unions in Ireland, of the pressure upon the local resources of several electoral divisions on account of the necessary expenditure for the relief of the poor, and in anticipation of a measure to be submitted to parliament”—it is declared to be expedient that the directions contained in the said minute should be confirmed, and it is accordingly enacted that “the sums payable in the year 1851 in respect of the annuities mentioned in such minute and directions, shall be remitted and deemed to be discharged without further payment.” The remissions thus sanctioned amounted altogether to about 75,000_l._—that is 48,000_l._. to Munster, 24,000_l._ to Connaught, and 3,000_l._ to Leinster. The remission, it will be observed, only applied to the annuities due in 1851, and no expectation was held out of similar indulgence in future. [Sidenote: The medical charities.] Some account has already been given of the inquiry into and Report upon the medical charities in 1842, and of the bill then prepared but not proceeded with, in consequence of the opposition made to it by the medical profession.[193] In August 1851 however a bill, founded on that Report, and similar in principle and in its main provisions to the bill of 1842, was introduced and readily passed, the necessity for such a measure, and for bringing the rating powers and machinery of the Poor Law in aid of the medical charities, being then admitted by all parties; and this was the object of the Act of 1851, as it had been of the bill prepared under the author’s direction in 1842. ----- [193] Ante, pp. 267 and 279. -----