pauperizing the labour of the country.  To elucidate this result in the simplest manner, let us suppose that there are one hundred labourers in a district which belongs to two landlords, whose incomes are equal, and one of whom now employs fifty independent workmen, whilst the other does not employ a single labourer.  It is at present necessary to provide for the maintenance of fifty unemployed labourers.  These are now set to work upon the roads, and the expense of their maintenance falls upon the two proprietors in equal proportions.  If the proposed plan be adopted, the improving landholder will naturally desire to exempt himself from taxation, without employing more hands than he at present requires.  This he could do by dismissing all his present workmen.  There would then be one hundred surplus labourers in the district.  As these must be maintained at the expense of the two properties, each proprietor would eventually be compelled, in self-defence, to employ fifty.  The landholder who originally employed this number will thus escape taxation, without engaging more labourers than he requires; but his labourers will cease to be independent workmen, chosen and paid by himself, and subject to his own control.  They will be sent to him by the Relief Committee of the district; they will be placed under the superintendence of an expensive staff of stipendiaries appointed by the Board of Works, and will be paid out of the funds raised for the relief of the poor.  A system not very dissimilar to this was acted upon in several parts of England, previous to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and was found to produce effects most demoralizing to the labouring population—­paralyzing all the energies of independent labour and of individual enterprise, and in many respects operating most unjustly upon particular classes of property."[198] Referring to the value of independent labour, the Premier said:  “I admit the evils of the present system, but I think that still greater danger would have ensued if we had done that which I conceive to be one of the most pernicious acts which a Government can do, the depriving labourers of their independence, and thus permanently injuring the great and important class to which those labourers belonged.”

Through all the Famine time, there is nothing more remarkable than the manner in which the expounders of the views of Government, as well as many others, managed, when it suited them, to confound two things which should have been kept most jealously distinct,—­(1.) What was best for the Famine crisis itself; (2.) What was best for the permanent improvement of the country.  The confounding of these two questions led to conclusions of the most unwarrantable and deceptive kind.  In the present instance, the Prime Minister himself seems to fall into the same mistake; or he goes into it with his eyes open, that he may be able to draw conclusions to suit his purpose.  The proposition laid down by him is by no means unreasonable in itself;