workhouses—­the sick in hospitals, the aged and infirm in almshouses, the mentally defective in asylums.  Appalling evidence was given before the Viceregal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded with regard to the present association of lunatics, epileptics, and imbeciles with sane women and children in the workhouse wards.  The latter Commission recommended the creation of a strong central authority for the general protection and supervision of mentally defective persons.

The reforms do not contemplate the amalgamation of Unions and the complete closing of only a certain number of workhouses.  They suggest rather the bringing together into one institution of all the inmates of one class from a number of neighbouring workhouses, and the closing of all workhouses as such.  The sick should be sent to existing Poor Law or County Hospitals, strengthened by the addition of Cottage Hospitals in certain districts.  Children should be boarded out.  The bulk of the remaining inmates, classified with regard to their defects and infirmities, should be segregated according to counties or other suitable areas.  On the treatment of able-bodied paupers there are different opinions.  It is suggested by the Philanthropic Reform Association, which includes some of the most earnest and disinterested philanthropists in Ireland, that the well-conducted of this class should be placed in labour colonies, and the ill-conducted in detention colonies—­both classes of institutions to be maintained and controlled by the State, and not by the County authorities.

The areas and resources of the existing Unions are in most cases too limited, and the numbers of necessitous persons too small, to warrant the present Boards of Guardians in erecting as many types of institutions as there are classes of inmates.  The break-up of the workhouse system involves, of necessity, the establishment of larger areas of administration.  It is clear that the County must be substituted for the Union in any radical scheme of reform.  On this point the Royal Commissioners and the Viceregal Commissioners are agreed.  County rating must take the place of Union rating, since the inmates of the different institutions would be drawn from all parts of each County or County Borough.  Substantial economies in administration might be expected from this plan.  Hospitals should be brought into a County Hospital System, with the County Infirmary as the central institution, and nurses should be trained there for the County District Hospitals (now Workhouse Infirmaries).

About such a general scheme of decentralised reform there is little or no disagreement.  There is, however, a good deal of disagreement concerning the control of the new institutions.  The Viceregal Commission advocates the retention by the Poor Law Guardians of many of their existing functions.  It suggests, for instance, that County Hospitals should be managed by a Committee consisting of all members