In Ireland, the growth of the Poor Law, from its first introduction, has been still more rapid and alarming, as might have been anticipated from the greater mass of indigence and destitution with which it there had to contend. The sums raised for relief of the poor in that country, the _nominal_ rental of which is £13,000,000, has stood thus for the last three years-- | Year | | | | | | ending | | |Indoor Paupers,| Outdoor | |Sept. 29| Collected | Expended | August | Paupers | |--------+-----------+-----------+---------------+---------| | 1846 | £359,870 | £350,667 | | | | 1847 | 585,507 | 717,713 | 75,376 | | | 1848 | 1,559,248 | 1,732,597 | 150,000 | 833,889 | | 1849 | 1,648,337 | 2,177,651 | 203,199 | 666,224 | | 1850 | 1,561,846 | 1,274,125 | 264,048[9] | 141,077 | --_Third Annual Report, Ireland_, p. 7. [9] On 22d June, 1850. On 3d July 1847, no less than _3,020,712 persons were fed by the public in Ireland_, being about 40 per cent on the whole population--certainly, at that date, under 8,000,000. Well may the _Edinburgh Review_ say, in reference to this astonishing subject-- "The collection in the year 1847-8 is remarkable: three times the amount of the collections of 1846-7, five times the amount of the collections of 1845-6. A tax unknown in Ireland ten years before was levied in the Year 1848 to the extent of _one-ninth_ of the rateable property of the country, and that in a period of unprecedented depression and embarrassment. In the same year the expenditure had risen _150 per cent_ above that of 1847, _and 500 per cent above the expenditure of 1846_. The expenditure in 1848-9 exceeds that of 1847 by the large sum of £445,054."[10] [10] _Edinburgh Review_, Jan. 1851. The diminished expenditure of 1850 is mainly owing to the reduction in the price of provisions in that year, which has caused the cost of an in-door pauper to decline from 2s. 2d., which it was in April 1847, to 1s. 2d., _or nearly a half_, to which it fell in autumn 1849, which it has never since exceeded. Measured by quarters of grain, the poor's-rate of Ireland, in 1850, was fully twice as heavy as it was in 1848, when the effects of the disastrous famine of 1846 were still felt.