XIV 



when, in subsequent years, he collected Returns of agricultural produce 

 for the Government, when he was made Chief Commissioner for inquiry 

 into the Irish Poor Law in 1848, and in the next year held the same 

 place in the Commission for the reform of the Dublin Corporation. 

 The importance of the Reports of the Boundary Commissions, over 

 which he presided, may be judged by the fact that the Unions and 

 electoral districts of Ireland were remodelled in accordance with the 

 suggestions contained in them. In 1850 he became Deputy Chairman 

 of the Board of Works ; and in the year following, a member of the 

 Senate of the Queen's University. 



It will thus be seen that in the process which placed Ireland, during 

 a rapid course of scientific inquiry and judicious improvement, far 

 ahead of the larger island, Larcom was certainly one of the principal 

 agents; and, indeed, it would be difficult to mention any one name more 

 immediately concerned in producing that result. It was almost, then, 

 a matter of course, that when a vacancy occurred in the Irish Under- 

 Secretaryship, he should be selected for that post in 1853 ; but it 

 distinguishes him from all others who have held it, that the office was 

 for the first time made non-political and permanent, in order to keep 

 him at the helm ; while since his retirement, after a service of nearly 

 seventeen years, its permanent character has been, perhaps unfor- 

 tunately, abolished. During the Viceroyalty of Lords St. Germans, 

 Carlisle, Eglinton, Kimberley, and the Duke of Abercorn, the subject 

 of this memoir passed through the several gradations of military 

 rank till he became Lieutenant- General, and was decorated with the 

 K.C.B. It was during the latter part of this time that the Fenian 

 Insurrection threatened, developed itself, and — greatly owing to 

 General Larcom's incessant vigilance and consummate precautions — 

 was quelled. The interruption it caused to the steady flow of Irish 

 prosperity, which had set in after the famine and subsequent emigra- 

 tion, was a serious grief to the Secretary who had done so much in 

 the previous years to remove the incumbrances of ages, and to foster 

 the material prosperity, the education, and the social improvement of 

 the Irish people. To name in this sketch the numerous instances of 

 the sort, which are indeed well known, would be quite beyond our 

 limits. For some time before his retirement he had begged to be 

 relieved from an office which had begun to overtax his energies ; but 

 he could not be spared ; nor was he the man to desert his duty as long- 

 as it was believed by his superiors that his services were necessary. 

 When he retired, in 1869, the Government of the day bestowed on 

 him the Baronetcy he had so well deserved, the Irish Privy Councillor- 

 ship, and a pension equivalent to his pay. The exhaustive minutes 

 drawn up by him for successive Governments, many of which fur- 

 nished the speech 3S of Ministers and Viceroys, form of themselves a 

 history of the progress of Ireland ; but, perhaps the best tribute to 



