L229,464 8s. 0d. being the amount of grants, and L1,185, 721 5s. 7d. being the amount of loans; besides which there was expended by the Board of Works under various drainage Acts, for the year ending 31st December, 1846, a sum of L110,022 14s. 4d.

In the week ending the 3rd of October, there were 20,000 persons employed on the public works in Ireland; in the week ending the 31st of the same month, there were over 114,000.  In the very next week, the first week of November, there were 162,000 on the works; and in the week ending the 28th of November, the returns give the number as something over 285,000!  A fortnight later, in a detailed account of the operations of the Board, supplied to the Treasury, this remarkable sentence occurs:  “The works at present are in every county in Ireland, affording employment to more than three hundred thousand persons."[157] The increase went on rapidly through December.  In the week ending the 5th of that month, there were 321,000 employed; and in the week which closed on the 26th, the extraordinary figure was 398,000![158]

The number of persons employed was greatest in Munster, and least in Ulster.  At the beginning of December, they were thus distributed in the four Provinces:  Ulster, 30,748; Leinster, 50,135; Connaught, 106,680; and Munster, 134,103.  At the close of the month the same proportion was pretty fairly maintained, the numbers being:  for Ulster, 45,487; for Leinster, 69,585; for Connaught, 119,946; and for Munster, 163,213.  According to the Census of 1841, there were in Ulster 439,805 families; in Leinster, 362,134; in Connaught, 255,694; and in Munster, 415,154.  From these data, the proportion between the number of persons employed on the relief works in each Province, and the population of that Province, stood thus at the close of the year 1846:  in Ulster there was one labourer out of every nine and two-thirds families so employed; in Leinster there was one out of about every five and a quarter families; in Munster, one out of every two and a-half families; and in Connaught, one out of every two and about one-seventh families.

At the end of November, the number of employees superintending the public works were:  62 inspecting officers; 60 engineers and county surveyors; 4,021 overseers; 1,899 check clerks; 5 draftsmen; 54 clerks for correspondence; 50 clerks for accounts; 32 pay inspectors, and 425 pay clerks—­making in all 6,913 officials, distributed over nine distinct departments.

The gross amount of wages rose, of course, in proportion to the numbers employed.  At the end of October, the sum paid weekly was L61,000; at the end of November, L101,000; and for the week ending the 26th of December, L154,472.

The number of Relief Committees in operation throughout the country at the close of 1846, was about one thousand.  Indeed, everything connected with the Public Works and the Famine tends to impress one with their gigantic proportions;—­even the correspondence, the state of which is thus given by the Board in the middle of December:  “The letters received averaged 800 a-day, exclusive of letters addressed to individual members of the Board, on public business; the number received on the last day of November was 2,000; to-day, (17th December,) two thousand five hundred.”