Beyond doubt, the Government, and those under them, had enormous difficulties to contend against. Every new scheme, or modification of a scheme, proposed by them had its inconveniences. Inspectors, engineers, and overseers appeared to regard the opposition to task work as the dislike of the lazy Celt to labour for his daily bread, and to his wish to get the "Queen's pay," as the wages on the works were termed, without doing anything for it. Hence they were of opinion almost from the outset, that the sooner the system of task work was enforced the better, as the people, they said, seemed to be generally under the impression that no work was really required from them. This was a very wrong and demoralizing notion, if it were entertained to any considerable extent. Very probably it had a percentage of truth in it, but no more. Worthless idlers, in no very urgent distress, must from the nature of things, have got employed upon works so extensive, but the officials were too fond of founding general conclusions on isolated, or at least on an insufficient number of cases. The opposition to task work arose from more than one cause. Lazy unprincipled people were opposed to it, because they were lazy and unprincipled; a far larger class were opposed to it, because it was no secret that the works were carried on not for sake of their utility, but to keep the people from being idle. Had this class been employed upon really useful works, such as reclaiming land, tilling the soil, draining, subsoiling, or railroad-making, they would, no doubt, have had more heart for their daily labour. There is a natural repugnance in the mind of a man to apply himself in earnest to what he has been told is useless,--to what he sees and feels to be useless. If a labourer were hired, and even given good wages, for casting chaff against the wind, I make bold to say, he would soon resign his employment, from sheer inability to work at anything so much opposed to his common sense. A third and a very large class of the labouring population were opposed to task work, because they were able to earn so very little at it. "Those who choose to labour may earn good wages," writes Colonel Jones to Mr. Trevelyan; but he forgot, or was ignorant of the fact, that great numbers of the working class had been already so weakened and debilitated by starvation, that they were unable to do what the overseers regarded as a day's work; and it is on record that task work frequently brought industrious willing workmen less money than they would have received under the day's-work system.[149]