REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS. 1 



witnesses and of local circumstances, to act as our repre- 

 sentatives ; they were not instructed to furnish any gene- 

 ral report nor to make recommendations ; for as each As- 

 sistant Commissioner was restricted to one branch of the 

 general Inquiry, and prosecuted that branch in a single 

 division of the country, we considered that any general 

 conclusions to which he might come would be drawn from 

 partial evidence, and consequently be little trustworthy. 

 We, however, reserved the power to call for either should 

 we ultimately deem it expedient. 



In addition to the certainty of having every portion of 

 the Inquiry investigated in each of the districts visited, 

 the systematic form adopted makes the evidence bear the 

 same arrangement for every district, each point for each 

 district being always in the same part of -the evidence. It 

 has also enabled us to separate the evidence upon each 

 branch of the Inquiry into several distinct heads, and to 

 print the evidence on each head taken in various parts of 

 the country conjointly. By this arrangement, the mind 

 will not be perplexed in the consideration of any subject 

 by the constant intervention of matters wholly foreign. 

 The examinations relative to the support of deserted and 

 orphan children, for instance, taken in a variety of pa- 

 rishes, and in each parish nearly at the same time with 

 examinations relative to six other subjects, have been se- 

 parated from those other subjects, and have been printed 

 consecutively in the alphabetical order of the names of the 

 parishes ; a certainty is created by this arrangement, that 

 however extensive the whole evidence may be, every fact 

 bearing upon any one subject will be found within a small 

 compass. The primary questions circulated have each, 

 with the answers belonging to it, been added as a supple- 



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