REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS. 23 



the whole country and its population is yet compara- 

 tively very limited in the subject. An Inquiry as to 

 whether any measures can improve the condition of a 

 people, might and would include an investigation into the 

 immediate and remote effects, both on morals and on pro- 

 duction, of every law and every usage. It must embrace 

 every class of the community, in every district of the 

 country. 



No Commission could possibly be entrusted with a 

 wider or more complicated subject for its investigation 

 than ours; few Commissioners, perhaps, ever received 

 such wide instructions. Few Commissioners have had a 

 greater district over which to extend their examinations. 

 None could have had a larger portion of a community to 

 consult. None have had a community in which informa- 

 tion was more difficult to collect than that of Ireland ; and 

 we think the evidence which we now lay before Your 

 Majesty will show that the minuteness and accuracy of 

 investigation will bear a comparison with the known re- 

 sults, of any other Inquiry. Thus, whilst no other Inquiry 

 has upon any one point exceeded in difficulty that with 

 which we have had to contend, we have had to encounter 

 the combined difficulties of all other Inquiries. 



These remarks are not made under the impression that 

 Your Majesty has considered us to have been dilatory in 

 our proceedings ; they are not made with the desire to dis- 

 parage the labours of others, nor to claim for ourselves 

 any peculiar merit. They are made, because we know 

 that on the close of our labours a period will have elapsed 

 rather exceeding that occupied by several very effective 

 Inquiries, particularly by that on the English Poor Laws. 

 We refer to that Inquiry, because the highest estimate has 



