The First Minister, strange to say, did not attach any
great value to these objections. "I think," he said, "the object being
relief, and to combine relief with a certain amount of work, to show
that habits of industry have not been entirely abandoned, that the
productive nature of the work was a question of secondary importance. We
spend in Ireland upwards of L1,000,000 a-year in poor-rates, and I do
not believe that if enquiry were made it would be found that any
productive works were the result." So much the worse; and it was one of
the great objections to the Irish Poor-law system, that under it no
provision was made for the profitable employment of able-bodied paupers.
To call the productiveness or non-productiveness of the labour of half a
million of men a matter of secondary importance was, certainly, most
cool assurance on the part of a professed political economist, who must
hold as a central dogma of that science that labour is the principal
producer of capital. Everybody admitted that the crying want of Ireland
was the want of capital; yet here is a Minister, holding in his hands
her destinies during a life-and-death struggle for existence, and an
ardent disciple of Adam Smith besides, expressing his belief that to
expend in useless and even pernicious works the labour of half a million
of men was a matter of secondary importance; and because it was, he did
not attach any great weight to the objection! It was not, therefore, he
said, such an objection that caused the Government to sanction a
modification of the law as was announced in the letter of the Irish
Chief Secretary, but because it was desirable to obtain the co-operation
of the landed gentry of Ireland, and, if possible, to have the labour
made reproductive, that the plan of reproductive works was sanctioned.
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