Mr. Balfour moved in Committee of Supply on Thursday, for
a grant of £55,831 for the relief of distress in Ireland, and made an interesting speech on the measures taken to supply the people of the West Coast with work on the new railways, and with seed-potatoes for the districts where the potatoes had failed. Mr. Balfour showed how heartily ‘everybody had co-operated with him in pressing on the rail- ways, and in so arranging matters that it was possible to employ upon them a very large amount of unskilled labour, instead of having recourse to the skilled labour which must have been imported, and would not have helped the distressed population at all. "As a result, I believe that there are few, if any, instances in which able-bodied persons living in the neighbourhood of the lines, in acute distress, have been excluded from employment." About eight thousand labourers have been employed at wages ranging from 11s. to 14s., and about 240,000 has been paid away in payment of labour since the works began. As evidence that the distress bad really been relieved,—may we not say, too much relieved P—Mr. Balfour mentioned that there had been strikes in several of these districts for shorter hours and higher pay. Evidently the population feel no scruple in looking a gift horse in the mouth, and criticising it very narrowly. The vote was carried without opposition.
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