average of £23,000 per mile; the land having cost not more than £1,800 per mile, and the permanent way £5,500. Now, he wanted to know in what the remainder was spent? Why, undoubtedly, in labour. In the Leeds and Bradford, again--a more recently constructed line--of which the expenses had been £33,000 per mile, there had been £17,000 per mile to be calculated on the side of labour. The permanent way included sleepers and other things connected with the works. They might, perhaps, say there was a great consumption of bricks; but they could not make bricks without the employment of much labour--and with such facts as these before them, how was it possible they could doubt the accuracy of the statements of the noble lord who had brought forward this measure, and that the right hon. gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was grossly mistaken. The right hon. gentleman, too, had said, that the number of men per mile was about twenty-five or thirty; but on the Orleans line there were as many as 130 per mile. He really thought the right hon. gentleman ought to be better informed before he came down to the House and impugned the statements of other gentlemen."[209] The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the course of his speech, made a statement which reflected severely on the landlords in some parts of Ireland, but which was no argument whatever against the Bill before the House. He said: A few days since, we received a report of the proceedings of a Relief Committee of a barony in the Queen's County; the subscriptions were raised by persons themselves but little removed from poverty, and with little or no assistance from the resident proprietor. The most beneficial results were produced; the whole sum raised was £176; of this £136 were subscribed by the farmers, the policemen, and the priest, and only £40 were contributed by the proprietors of the soil. I have never, said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, perused a document with greater pleasure and satisfaction, for it gives strong hopes of what may be done if all classes unite their efforts, giving money if they have it, and their personal exertions if they have no money, on behalf of their distressed countrymen. By this means alone can relief be extended to the starving population. And I confess it was with pain I can scarcely describe, that I received, by the same post that brought me the above report, an account of very different proceedings in the county of Mayo. There I find, so far from subscriptions having been entered into to maintain their people, that the landlords, or their agents, are pursuing a system of ejectment, under processes for rent, to an extent beyond what had ever been known in the country. The number of processes entered at the quarter sessions exceed, very considerably, anything they have been before. At the quarter sessions of the barony of Ballina, 6,400 processes have been entered, of which 4,000 are at the suit of the landlords for rent. The same letter further states,