The new and more decisive failure of the potato crop called for great exertions from Lord John Russell’s recently formed Government, and the plan resolved upon was explained in the Treasury Minute dated the 31st August, 1846, which was published for general information[24].
The system of public works was renewed by the Act 9 & 10 Vic., c. 107, which was passed without any opposition in either House of Parliament. In order to check the exorbitant demands which had been made during the preceding season, the whole of the expense was made a local charge, and the advances were directed to be repaid by a rate levied according to the Poor Law valuation, which makes the landlords liable for the whole rate on tenements under 4ℓ. yearly value, and for a proportion, generally amounting to one-half, on tenements above that value, instead of according to the grand jury cess (the basis of the repayments under the preceding Act), which lays the whole burden upon the occupier. It was also determined that the wages given on the Relief Works should be somewhat below the average rate of wages in the district; that the persons employed, should, as far as possible, be paid by task or in proportion to the work actually done by them; and that the Relief Committees, instead of giving tickets entitling persons to employment on the public works, should furnish lists of persons requiring relief, which should be carefully revised by the officers of the Board of Works; the experience of the preceding season having shown that these precautions were necessary to confine the Relief Works to the destitute, and to enforce a reasonable quantum of work.
The question which the Government had to decide, in regard to the renewal of the Commissariat operations, was of the most momentous kind. After all that had taken place during the last few months, it could not be expected that private trade would return, as a matter of course, to its accustomed channels. Neither the wholesale dealers in towns, nor the retail dealers in the rural districts, would lay in even their usual stocks of food; still less would they make the extraordinary provision required to meet the coming emergency, while they had before them the prospect of the Government throwing into the market supplies of food of unknown extent, which might make their outlay so much loss to them. The Government could not, therefore, calculate, as it did on the former occasion, on finding the private trade, by means of which the people are ordinarily supplied with food, proceeding as usual, and on being able to add more or less, at its discretion, to the resources which that trade afforded. Mercantile confidence in this branch of business was, for the time, destroyed. The trade was paralysed; and if this state of things had been suffered to continue, the general expectation of the Government again interfering would inevitably have created a necessity for that interference, on a scale which it would have been quite beyond the power of the Government to support.