sake of their utility, but to keep the people from being idle.  Had this class been employed upon really useful works, such as reclaiming land, tilling the soil, draining, subsoiling, or railroad-making, they would, no doubt, have had more heart for their daily labour.  There is a natural repugnance in the mind of a man to apply himself in earnest to what he has been told is useless,—­to what he sees and feels to be useless.  If a labourer were hired, and even given good wages, for casting chaff against the wind, I make bold to say, he would soon resign his employment, from sheer inability to work at anything so much opposed to his common sense.  A third and a very large class of the labouring population were opposed to task work, because they were able to earn so very little at it.  “Those who choose to labour may earn good wages,” writes Colonel Jones to Mr. Trevelyan; but he forgot, or was ignorant of the fact, that great numbers of the working class had been already so weakened and debilitated by starvation, that they were unable to do what the overseers regarded as a day’s work; and it is on record that task work frequently brought industrious willing workmen less money than they would have received under the day’s-work system.[149]

At the end of October a Treasury Minute was published to the effect that such prices were to be allowed for Relief Works, executed by task, as would enable good labourers to earn from one shilling to one shilling and sixpence a day; the day’s work system, at the wages fixed by the Treasury Minute of the 31st of August, was to be in future confined to those who were unable or unwilling to work by task.  There was some concession in this.  Under it the labourer could choose piece work or day’s work as seemed more advantageous to himself.  The spirit, at least, of the August Treasury Minute was, that all should work by task.  “The persons employed on the Relief Works,” says that Minute, “should, to the utmost possible extent, be paid in proportion to the work actually done by them.”  In a few instances task work was reported to have given satisfaction, but in the great majority of cases it was resisted by the labourers, and it sometimes resulted in serious disturbances, as we have seen.  The local Committees, who had much to do with preparing the lists of those whose circumstances made them proper objects for the public works, were repeatedly complained of by the Government officials.  Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, who appears to have been more severe and distrustful than his subordinates, accuses Committees of insulting his officers, producing improper lists, and even of balloting amongst themselves for the persons who were to be put upon the works.