They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide.

Some go in search of employment to Great Britain, during the harvest; others wander through Ireland with the same view.

The wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg; but they do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from home, that they may not be known.

Mendicity, too, is the sole resource of the aged and impotent of the poorer classes in general, when children or relatives are unable to support them.

To it, therefore, crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture, and general crime.' Such was the wretched condition of the great body of the labouring classes in Ireland; 'and with these facts before us,' the commissioners say, 'we cannot hesitate to state that we consider remedial measures requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor.