In order to induce the people to attend to their ordinary spring work, and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of distributing free rations.  On March 20, therefore, a reduction of twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place, and the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous relief was brought into full operation.  The authority under which this was administered was called the ‘Temporary Relief Act,’ which came into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution was at its height, and three millions of people received their daily rations.  Sir John Burgoyne truly describes this as ’the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country.’  Never in the history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner by the public bounty.  It was a most anxious time—­a time of tremendous labour and responsibility to those who had the direction of this vast machinery.  A member of the Board of Works thus describes the feeling which no doubt pervaded most of those that were officially connected with the administration of relief:  ’I hope never to see such a winter and spring again.  I can truly say, in looking back upon it even now, that it appears to me not a succession of weeks and days, but one long continuous day, with occasional intervals of night-mare sleep.  Rest one could never have, when one felt that in every minute lost a score of men might die.’  Mr. Trevelyan was then secretary of the treasury, and it was well that a man so enlightened, energetic, and benevolent occupied the post at such a time.  He was indefatigable in his efforts to mitigate the calamity, and he wrote an interesting account of ’The Irish Crisis’ in the Edinburgh Review.  Having presented the dark side of the picture in faithfully recording the abuses that had prevailed, it is right to give Mr. Trevelyan’s testimony as to the conduct of the relief committees during this supreme hour of the nation’s agony.  ’It is a fact very honourable to Ireland that among upwards of 2,000 local bodies to whom advances were made under this act, there is not one to which, so far as the Government is informed, any suspicion of embezzlement attaches.’

The following statement of the numbers receiving rations, and the total expenditure under the act in each of the four provinces, compared with the amount of population, and the annual value assessed for poor-rate, may serve to illustrate the comparative means and destitution of each province:—­

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