Eighth annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners with appendices : so far as the same relate to the Administration of the Irish Poor Relief Act. (1 & 2 Vict. Cap. 56).

  • Ireland. Poor Law Commissioners.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighth annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners with appendices : so far as the same relate to the Administration of the Irish Poor Relief Act. (1 & 2 Vict. Cap. 56). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    tions in the Irish Unions will, in general, be hereafter conducted in an orderly and satisfactory manner. 46. In Ireland, as in England, we determined to appoint the Clerk of each Union to be the returning officer, except in cases where.the Clerk was considered to be incompetent to the duty. The Clerk of the Union, in the ordinary execution of his duties, necessarily becomes acquainted with most of the details which require to be attended to in conducting the election of Guardians ; and to make him the returning officer would seem, therefore, to be the natural and obvious course; whilst if another person was to be appointed to the office, he would necessarily have to learn much with which the Clerk was already conversant, and w ould require information which the Clerk only could afford. These considerations led us to decide upon appointing the Clerks to be returnmg officers; and hitherto we have seen no reason to doubt the propriety of that course, but, on the contrary, every- thing to satisfy us of its expediency. A detailed tabular state- ment of the result of the recent elections will be found in the Appendix.* 47. The proviso contained in the twentieth section of the Act was thought to authorise the continuance in office of any individual Guardian who at the close of the year was not dis- placed by the election of anothei- person. The apparent con- venience of such an arrangement was in favour of that construction, and led to its being in several instances adopted as the true one. We, however, were led by a careful consideration of all the sections, in connexion with which the twentiethsection must be taken, to doubt the validity of such a construction, and we accordingly submitted a case to the Attorney-General. His opinion was adverse to attaching such an operation to the proviso, which he considers does not take effect in the instance of an individual Guardian, but is intended to apply to the Board collectively. The case, with a detailed statement of the con- siderations which inclined the Commissioners to that view which was afterwards taken by the Attorney-General, together with his opinion thereon, will be found in the Appendix. | 48. The steps which we took for carrying out the provisions of the Vaccination Extension Act (3 and 4 Vict., c. 29) are ex- plained in our last Report. We have continued to give our best attention to this subject, and have spared no effort to realise the benevolent intentions of the legislature for extending the benefits of vaccination, and for preventing the occurrence and the spreading of small-pox. We have inserted in the AppendixJ a summary of the resuhs in the several Unions, together with a Report of Mr. Phelan,§ and certain other documents in reference to vacci- nation. * Ann. E, No. 12. -t App. C, No. 7. X App. D, No. 3. ' * § App. E, No. 13.