REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS. 21 



convinced there is for further inquiry, to enable us to de- 

 cide whether much of the now existing misery might be 

 prevented, still we should be compelled to proceed, in 

 order to avoid recommending measures which might lead 

 to new evils. We cannot otherwise tell what might be 

 the effects upon those who are now able to support them- 

 selves, of any mode of relief which might be proposed ; 

 how far such mode of relief to those who are destitute 

 might increase the amount of destitution. These are not 

 idle fears, but such cautions as necessarily suggest them- 

 selves to those who are acquainted with the effects pro- 

 duced upon the labourers in England by the public pro- 

 vision for the destitute in that country. Looking beyond 

 the physical condition of the working classes, we also are 

 desirous of guarding against the moral degradation which 

 might follow in the train of measures benevolently in- 

 tended, but ill-judged, when applied to a nation possess- 

 ing the habits, and being in the peculiar situation, of the 

 people of Ireland. 



Having heard complaints within and out of Parliament, 

 that we have consumed much time and money in prose- 

 cuting our Inquiry, we avail ourselves of this opportunity 

 of soliciting the attention of Your Majesty to one or two 

 remarks on these alleged grounds of complaint. Your 

 Majesty's Commission bears date 25th September, 1833; 

 we have therefore to the present time been occupied one 

 year and ten months. We have the fullest reason to be- 

 lieve that we shall have completed the evidence before the 

 close of the autumn, and that we shall then be able to 

 lay an additional portion of it before Your Majesty, ac- 

 companied by some recommendations as to certain parts 

 of the subject referred to us ; and that early in February 



