their pay as well as those on the Caharagh works, or there could be no opportunity of expending the Caharagh money upon them.  If Mr. Notter had got his own money together with the Caharagh money, he certainly would not require both remittances.  There is another thing pretty obvious too:  if the money had been directed to the overseer of the Caharagh works, Mr. Notter would not be justified in paying it away to his workmen.  In reference to the flippant pertness of the Board’s officials, the Rev. Mr. Townsend, the incumbent of Abbeystowry, said:  “We have here M’Kennedy’s death and the cause of it sworn to.  That evidence proves that our people are dying by the ditch-side for want of payment of their hire.  We take no such statements, sir, on gossip, nor shall we be told we do.”  The jury returned the following verdict:  “We find that the said Denis M’Kennedy, on the 24th day of October, in the year aforesaid, at Caharagh, in the county aforesaid, died of starvation, owing to the gross negligence, of the Board of Works.”

The Times, commenting on Lord John Russell’s letter to the Duke of Leinster, said:  “We in England consider it the first duty of the landlord to provide extraordinary employment to meet extraordinary distress; we do not wait until an Act of Parliament converts a duty into a necessity.  In Ireland, even with special facilities, it has been very sparingly and tardily done."[182] This remark about Irish landlords has much truth in it.  They took every means of shifting responsibility upon the Government; they lost no opportunity of publicly declaring and of endeavouring to prove that the duty of employing the people rested with the Government and not with them:  then, when the vast system of Relief Works which sprang up under the hands of the Government in two or three short months did not prove perfectly satisfactory, it became quite the fashion with the landlord class to denounce the Board of Works, and through it the Government.  To be sure there was much reason for this, but the landlords, of all others, had no right to cast the stone; for, in the interests of truth and justice it must be said, that the Government made some efforts to save the people, whilst the landlords as a body, made none whatever.  Their views were put in a striking manner at a meeting of landowners and farmers held at Aghada, in the County Cork.  Mr. Fitzgerald, a landowner, attacked the Board for doing unprofitable work.  They had, he said, a staff of incompetent officers, who were, moreover, absurdly numerous, there being, he asserted, an officer for every workman in the works at Whitegate.  The reply to this attack is obvious enough.  If the Board of Works were doing unprofitable work, they could not help it, they were compelled by Act of Parliament to do it; and when the Government enabled the country to undertake profitable works, where were the landlords?  They were in conclaves here and there, elaborating objections to the Government plan, instead of affording