The second report of the Relief Commissioners bears date the 15th of May.  For practical purposes it may be looked upon as the first report, the one called the first being merely preliminary.  We learn from it that only 1,248 electoral divisions had come under the operation of the Act up to that date, a state of things with which the Commissioners expressed themselves dissatisfied, for they say the Act should have been, at the time of their report, in full operation over the whole country.  They found a difficulty in establishing soup kitchens, because dry meal was universally preferred; and they further say that relief by food instead of by public works was extremely unpopular with every class.  All works, they announce, had been stopped on the first of May.  To this general stoppage, some exceptions, it would seem, were permitted.  Memorandum No. 12 of the Relief Department (marked “confidential”) vests certain relief officers with a discretionary power to continue the works in those baronies where it would be dangerous to stop them, either because the new measures of relief had not come into operation, or on account of the absence of employment, either public or private, in such baronies.  From the general outcry at the stoppage of the works, it would appear that this memorandum was very little, if at all, acted upon.

The second report of the Relief Commissioners, embracing a most trying period of over two months, is very curt and unsatisfactory.  The dismissal, within six weeks, of nearly three quarters of a million of workmen, representing more than three millions of people, could scarcely be effected without the infliction of considerable suffering.  The Government were right in compelling labour to apply itself to the production of food by the cultivation of the land, and they began this movement in the Spring, the proper time for it, but they began too late.  The 20th of March was far too late for the fast dismissal of twenty per cent., for much of the Spring work ought to have been done then.  They should have begun a month earlier at least, which arrangement would have had the further advantage of enabling them, to make the dismissals more gradually, and therefore with less inconvenience to the people.[260]

It was either great negligence or a very grave error on the part of the Government, that they began to close the public works against the people before any other means of getting food was open to them.  The Relief Act, 10 Vic. c. 7, was intended to take the place of the public works, and that immediately on their cessation; but this was far from being the case,—­a point upon which this second report is not at all satisfactory.  In it the Commissioners express their regret that on the 15th of May there were only 1,248 electoral divisions under the operation of the Act, whilst all relief works had ceased on the first of May.  That was bad enough; but what the report makes no mention of is that the Act was not in operation in any part of Ireland