19 
of Edinburgh, Session 1878-79. 
Ireland, went during last autumn with some of his staff to the 
district, and became satisfied of the correctness of Sir Richard’s 
view. He at once communicated the fact to Sir Richard in a letter, 
which, however, reached him too late to give him the satisfaction 
which it was intended and calculated to afford. 
The famine in the south of Ireland, which occurred in 1822, 
aroused the then Lord-Lieutenant, the Marquis of Wellesley, to 
energetic action in the improvement of the means of communication 
between different parts of the country. He accordingly appointed 
Griffith as engineer, to improve and construct roads in the counties 
of Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. Under his direction the starving 
population were employed to construct some 250 miles of road 
through districts hitherto accessible only with great difficulty, and 
not a little danger from the disaffected population, whom it was not 
easy to render amenable to British authority. While engaged in 
this work he received the important appointment of General 
Boundary Surveyor, the magnitude of whose duties may be inferred 
from the fact that 1000 miles of the boundaries of about 69,000 
Crown lands had to be ascertained and settled. In 1827 he was 
appointed Commissioner of Valuation under Mr Goulburn’s Act, 
and “ Griffith’s Valuation” was accepted as the test of value in 
nearly all the land disputes in Ireland. In 1846, after the great 
potato famine, he was appointed Deputy- Chairman of the Board of 
Works, the onerous duties of which appointment he performed 
regardless of self, working thirteen hours a day without food or 
drink, feeling that the lives of thousands depended on his exertions. 
It will not be necessary to allude to the various appointments which 
he held during his long life, nor to the numerous public works 
which were executed under his superintendence. That which is 
best known in his native city was the diversion of the course of the 
Liffey, and the conversion of a group of dilapidated houses, the 
nursery of vice and fever, into the esplanade which stands in front 
of the Royal Barracks. 
Sir Richard Griffith was seventy-four years of age when he was 
created a Baronet, an age at which most men relax from their 
labours or cease them altogether. It was very different with Sir 
Richard. He had still twenty years of good work left in him. The 
preservation of his physical and mental powers for so long a period 
