the rent value being L385,100.  The County Surveyor recommended to the Sessions presentments amounting in the aggregate to L228,000, nearly two-thirds of the entire rental.  The Baronial Sessions, however, were far from resting contented with this.  The ratepayers and magistrates assembled in their various baronies, presented for works to the amount of L388,000, nearly L3,000 in excess of the entire rental of the county; but which was finally cut down by the Board of Works to L128,456 8s. 4d.  Prudent people and political economists will at once be inclined to exclaim, “Very right; it was most fortunate to have an authority to check such recklessness.”  But, softly; let there be no hasty conclusions.  Hear the end.  The County Surveyor gives the population of Mayo at 56,209 families, of whom 46,316 families, he says, were to be employed on the relief works! Taking those families at the common average of five and a-half individuals to each, the total number would be 254,738 persons.  The presentments allowed would thus give about ten shillings’ worth, of employment for each individual, with nine or ten foodless months before them.  The conclusion is inevitable; the presentments allowed were utterly inadequate to meet the Famine in Mayo, the fearful consequences of which we shall learn as we proceed.[145]

Many of the speakers at the Presentment Sessions charged the Government with a breach of faith, in not finishing the works which were prematurely closed on the 15th of August, 1846.  Those works were commenced under the law passed by Sir Robert Peel’s Government, whereby the baronies, or, in other words, the ratepayers, paid one-half the expense, and the Government the other; so that even if Lord John Russell’s Government took them up anew, under the Labour-rate Act, the whole expense should, according to the terms of that Act, fall upon the baronies.  This was looked upon as a grievance, and at the Glenquin Sessions, in the county Limerick, Lord Monteagle, a friend and supporter of the Administration, put the grievance in the shape of a resolution, which was unanimously adopted.  In moving the resolution, his lordship said:  “We claim that we have a right to ask from the Government one-half of the expenses incurred by the completion of these works, on the terms and conditions upon which we entered into the engagement.  The Government are bound to do this in point of justice.”  The resolution was:  “That whilst we express our full approval of these works, yet the magistrates and ratepayers feel that it is also their duty to express their strong and unanimous opinion, that the just construction of the arrangement between this barony and the Government for the completion of such works as have been commenced under the Act 9 Vic. c. 1, requires an adherence to the terms of that contract.”