Labouchere says was the
intention of the Government. Government wished the dismissals to be
twenty per cent, in the aggregate, which means ten or fifteen per cent.
of a reduction in one district, and twenty-five or thirty per cent. in
another, according to circumstances. But the Secretary _naively_ adds,
that the Board of Works thought they should best meet the views of the
Government by striking off twenty per cent, of those employed _in each
district._ Probably the Government and the Board of Works understood
each other well enough on this point. Even assuming the extract from
Captain O'Brien's report to have the meaning attached to it by Mr.
Labouchere, as it is the only case of the kind he brings forward, we
must receive it as the exception which proves the rule. The Secretary
next tells us that employment on the public works was far more popular
with the people than the new system of relief. This he asserted in the
House of Commons on the 29th of March. We know the official printed
forms for putting the new Relief Act into operation were not ready for
delivery, even in Dublin, on the 22nd of March, just one week before.
How, in that one week they were got ready, and sent by tons and hundreds
weight to all parts of the country; how the new committees were
organized; how the boilers were set up, the fires lighted, and the soup
made and distributed to three quarters of a million of people; how those
people discussed its flavour and qualities, and how they had had time to
give expression to their views, and how those views reached the Irish
Secretary in London before the 29th of March, are things which could be
only explained by the Irish Secretary himself.
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