The extraordinary blunders which some of those enthusiastic men who undertake to legislate on Irish subjects so frequently commit, would excite feelings of ridicule, if the observations in which they see fit to indulge were not calculated to produce mischief in quarters where their insignificance is not known, and where their flippant fallacies may be mistaken for facts. Thus, Mr Poulett Scrope exclaims,--"What! are 130 work-houses, capable of containing 100,000 people, to be considered sufficient to supply accommodation for 2,800,000 destitute paupers?" If the honourable gentleman took the trouble of consulting documentary evidence, he would have found that they were much more than sufficient. It is true that the commissioners _reported_ that there were in a population of 8,000,000, 2,800,000 in a state of destitution, and they proposed that 100, subsequently they suggested that 130 houses, capable of containing 100,000 persons, should be built for their accommodation. In the 9th report of those gentlemen, we find that, in the quarter ending December 1842, eighty-six houses, built to contain 73,960 paupers, were in operation in Ireland, and that on the average, only _27,000 persons availed themselves of the relief they afforded_, "_about one-third the number they were capable of accommodating_." In the report for 1843, we see that in _ninety-two houses, built to contain 78,160_, in which relief had been administered from the 10th January 1844, the average number of inmates _was_ 31,578, and the gross number to whom relief had been afforded during the year, was 53,582. And in the 11th report, the last published, "in 105 houses which were open from January 1844 to January 1845, the gross number relieved was 68,371, _and the average number of inmates 37,780, although those 105 houses were capable of accommodating 84,000 individuals_."[10] Thus we have it clearly proved, that those houses never at any time contained _one-half, and very seldom more than one-third of the numbers they were constructed to accommodate_--and yet Mr Scrope waxes furious because more houses are not built, while those already erected are not half occupied.