The sudden closing of the works of 1846, some even regarded as a breach of faith with the public.  The Minute of the 31st of August, no doubt, left a course open for their completion, when it ruled, “that if the parties interested desired that works so discontinued should afterwards be recommenced and completed, it was open to them to take the usual steps to provide for that object, either by obtaining loans, secured by Grand Jury presentments, or by other means.”  But this suggestion (for it was no more) did not free the Government from the charge of a breach of faith, for they called upon the country to complete works begun by themselves, and to do so under new and very different conditions.  Besides, it was pretty evident that Grand Juries would not present for the completion of works commenced by the Government, on its own responsibility.  That the Government felt there was some ground for the charge brought against them, of a breach of faith with regard to those works, is evident from a letter from Mr. Trevelyan to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones in the beginning of October.  In that letter he says, the works under the Labour-rate Act must, as far as the Act is concerned, come to an end on the 15th of August, 1847; and he adds, that “if Parliament should determine that the Irish proprietors shall support their poor after the 15th of August, 1847, by payments out of the current produce of the Poor-rate, instead of by loan from Government, the transfer from one system to the other may take place without our being liable to any demands like those which have been lately made upon us to finish what we had begun, on pain of being considered guilty of a breach of faith.”  This, says Mr. Trevelyan, is the full mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.[125]

The Minute of the 31st of August was modified somewhat by a letter from Mr. Labouchere, dated September 5th.  In that letter the Secretary says it is his Excellency’s pleasure that all works stopped on the 15th August should be proceeded with as far as the sums which may have been so sanctioned for them respectively would admit.  Should the balance not be sufficient, a presentment under 10 Vict. cap. 107, should be sought for at the Presentment Sessions, provided the work were a desirable one to undertake.

Nor did the new arrangement, under which the landlord paid one moiety of the rate, and the occupier the other, pass without censure.  It was, to be sure, considered an improvement on the rule which compelled the occupier to pay the whole; still it was urged that great numbers of the occupiers of small holdings would be as much in need of relief as any portion of the community, and in no position whatever to pay rates.  That was true enough, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and when they determined to make the soil responsible, it is hard to see to whom they were to look for rates, had they exempted the small farmers from them.  The exemption they made, namely, of those whose rent was under L4 a-year, was probably not liberal enough, but there does not seem to have been any great reason for finding fault with it.