object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to obtain it. The
whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in road-making. It
became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or the cultivation
of the land would be neglected. Works undertaken on the spur of
the moment, not because they were needful, but merely to employ the
people, were in many cases ill chosen, and the execution equally
defective. The labourers, desirous to protract their employment, were
only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their
overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. The favouritism,
the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases were
shockingly demoralising.

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,