*562 THE POOH LAW AMENDMENT BILL. 



calculation, as we before intimated, at least a twelvemonth might very 

 fairly have been allowed for their consideration, before the legislature 

 were called to act upon them. Yet, what has been the case ? Let us 

 enter into the details of this inquiry as offered by the commissioners 

 themselves in their report. 



The commissioners inform us, that owing to the difficulty of se- 

 lecting the requisite number of persons to the appointment of assistant 

 commissioners, whose office was to be " one requiring no ordinary 

 qualifications, necessarily involving a great sacrifice of time and 

 labour, and likely to be followed by much hostility and accompanied 

 by no remuneration,'" and then of framing the instructions upon 

 which, when so appointed, the said assistant commissioners were to 

 act, " few of them proceeded to their mission before the middle of 

 August, 1832." Having so set out, three months was all the time 

 allowed them for the multifarious and gratuitous labour to which 

 they had been appointed ; " they were DIRECTED to make their re- 

 ports by the end of the following November." Nothing could be 

 more ingenious than this accompaniment, which would just have 

 given us time to " legislate" forthwith in the ensuing session. But 

 the assistant commissioners were but men, however, and did not come 

 to time ; for we are told " very few reports were received until the 

 beginning of January, 1833." In the meantime, however, the com- 

 missioners, who had themselves sent round the country circulars con- 

 taining certain queries, had received answers " so numerous, that it 

 became a question how they should be disposed of" One would have 

 supposed that the most natural course to be adopted by individuals 

 appointed to the important duties of making " a full and diligent in- 

 quiry" into the matter they referred to, and reporting their "opinions" 

 thereon, wo.uld have been diligently to have read and digested the 

 said returns as they came to hand. But this task they shrunk from. 

 The commissioners were not long in coming to the conclusion that 

 the "great bulk" of their reports was "a serious objection to their 

 publication in full," and bethought them that " this objection might 

 be diminished if an abstract could be made containing their substance 

 in fewer words, and they DIRECTED such an abstract to be prepared." 

 This is the second "direction" the hon. board of commissioners ven- 

 tured to give ; but, like its predecessor, it was given in vain. They 

 might " call up spirits from the vasty deep," but as to an abstract of 

 the poor law evidence they found that, " on making the attempt, it 

 appeared that not much could be saved in length without incurring 

 the risk of occasional suppression or misrepresentation" Now this was 

 tantamount to avowing that the persons "directed" by the commis- 

 sioners to make the " attempt" at abstraction were not over gifted 

 mortals, and incompetent to the task ; and it therefore behoved the 

 commissioners, having seen the necessity for such an abstract, to see 

 to it themselves, especially when they assure us in the very next sen- 

 tence that " a very considerable portion, perhaps not less than half" 

 of the above returns were positively " of no value." Such being the 

 case, the commissioners had the sagacity to perceive that the omission 

 of such worthless matter " would have materially diminished the ex- 

 pense of copying and printing, and that the remainder would have 

 been more easily consulted and referred to when unincurnbered by 



