Their lordships consider that donations in aid of private subscriptions may be made, when necessary, as heretofore, from the public funds placed for that purpose at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant; and that these donations may continue to be, as a general rule, in the proportion of from one-third to one-half of the amount of the private subscriptions, according to the extent of the destitution and the means of the subscribers.

But their lordships are of opinion, that, in consideration of the assistance so to be given from the public purse, the proceedings of the relief committees in the appropriation of the funds administered by them should be subjected to any degree of control on the part of the Government that may be considered desirable; for which purpose their accounts and correspondence should, at all times, be open to the inspection of Government officers appointed for the purpose, and any further explanations that may be required on any particular point should be immediately furnished.

In order to keep in check, as far as possible, the social evils incident to an extensive system of relief, it is indispensably necessary that the relief committees should not sell the meal or other food provided by them, except in small quantities to persons who are known to have no other means of procuring food; that the price at which the meal is sold should, as nearly as possible, be the same as the market prices which prevail in the neighbourhood; that the committees should not give a higher rate of wages, nor exact a smaller quantum of work, in any works carried on by them from funds at their own disposal, than is the case in respect to the works carried on under the superintendence of the Board of Works, and that works should be carried on by them only to the extent to which private employment is proved not to be available.

The serious attention of every person who will have to take a part in the measures of relief rendered necessary by the new and more complete failure of the potato crop should be particularly called to this important fact, that the limitations and precautions which have been prescribed to the Government boards and officers in carrying out the relief operations, with the object of rendering the necessary interference with the labour and provision markets productive of the smallest possible disturbance of the ordinary course of trade and industry, will be rendered nugatory if the same prudence and reserve are not practised by the relief committees in the administration of the funds placed at their disposal by private or public benevolence; and their Lordships therefore feel it to be their duty earnestly to request that every person concerned will, to the extent of the influence possessed by him, endeavour to secure such a restriction of the measures of relief to cases of real destitution, and such a just consideration for the interests of merchants and dealers, in the free exercise of whose callings