have looked to this part of the subject, they say, with the more anxiety, from the entire conviction, that in proportion to the aggregate number of persons who are reduced to this unfortunate dependence, must be not only the increase of misery to each individual, but also the moral deterioration of the people, and ultimately, from the concurrent tendency of these evils, the insecurity and danger of the state itself.' The comparison of Friendly Societies and Saving Banks is thus brought into discussion, and we confess that we view with some alarm the favourable mention of 'Parochial Benefit Societies, calculated to afford greater pecuniary advantages than would result from the unaided contributions of the subscribers.' To us it appears that this involves a most dangerous engagement and insurance against the events of futurity, as affording to the present occupiers of land a power to burthen the land itself, thereby violating the principle so fully recognised by the Committee, that there can be no check upon such a fund, whereby persons would be made to contribute to the rates who are not upon the spot to control the expenditure.' The responsibility voluntarily undertaken by the poor law system is sufficiently serious; but as it is gratuitous, (that is, not for value received,) it may be withdrawn at the pleasure of the too-generous promiser of what may become impossible, and in the mean time is injurious to both parties. But this newly proposed responsibility is of far different character,—a regular compact which must always be irresistibly construed against the insurer. The workhouse system has been sufficiently mischievous in causing the expenditure of about five millions of capital in building and furniture, and the current waste of about a million a year, by persisting in the use of what, if it were disused, would be felt as a reproach by the projectors; but the capital has been expended, and the annual profusion may cease, or be repressed at discretion; whereas these parochial benefit societies might become the origin of interminable evil. We do not comprehend upon what principle Friendly societies can be deemed at all advisable as compared with Saving banks, unless they can be supposed to offer an incentive to a general increase, rather than a general decrease of frugality, and it be thought that more subscribers would be allured by their regulations, or to a greater amount, than by the quiet unostentatious economy of a Saving bank. In our judgment it would be otherwise, and we have no doubt that for all other reasons Saving banks are preferable. Nothing can be less friendly in fact than the societies so misnamed. Cabals of all kinds are constantly going on, inasmuch as the majority of the members are always under temptation to commit a ruinous injustice against the old subscribers, (a mode of rascality of which scandalous instances have come before the pub S 2 lic,) lic,) and besides this danger of wholesale fraud, in detail every claimant on the society is regarded with an evil eye, and many ousted from benefit on frivolous pretences. But setting aside the incompetency of Benefit societies to provide relief beyond cases of sickness, (because we suppose the committee have further views,) and setting aside the drunkenness and debauchery connected with them, of which ample evidence* was produced, the political consequences of these societies in large towns is not to be slighted, most of them indeed forming the ways and means by which workmen in all trades are enabled to combine against their employers. It is matter for serious consideration how far such things may have tended to produce that spirit of resistance against all that are set in authority over us,' the effects of which are daily more and more apparent. We must beware of whatever facilitates political combination,-whatever leads men to establish little senates of their own, more likely to form Catilines than Catos. Already the highest courts of judicature are degraded below the lowest in the liability to disrespect and insult; and if the disposition which has thus audaciously been manifested be not checked, it will soon prevent the punishment of any crime for which the populace shall think proper to proclaim impunity. Saving banks are liable to no such abuse: they are unequivocally good in their beginning, end, and operation. It is a little remarkable that the habit which they tend to generate and foster should be reprobated as selfishness by a witness who was examined before the Poor Law Committee, and whose evidence in other respects bore marks of sound judgment; as if such a degree of selfishness (usually termed prudence) were not precisely the quality which constitutes persoual respectability, and in its extent the bond of every society in which property is well secured,—that is, of every civilized nation upon earth. Two curious instances are adduced of parish farms, by means of which the poor-rates are said to have been lessened; but such establishments are generally objectionable, for the same reasons which have always prevented parishes from carrying on any trade so advantageously as individuals; and the failure of such a farm would involve a waste of capital injurious to the public, as well as the particular parish. But this species of imprudent speculation is not likely to be very extensive. We entertain much greater apprehension of a plan somewhat allied to it, because it recommends itself under the seducing guise of benevolent patronage and liberality,the COTTAGE FARMS, of which specimens are given in the Appendix to the Poor Law Report. We must be permitted to dilate a little on this subject. All the comforts and conveniencies of life, beyond bare subsist * App. Poor Law Report, p. 134. ence, ence, arise from the surplus produce of agriculture beyond what is consumed by the agricultural population: and such surplus will be the larger in proportion as farms are of sufficient size to be cultivated to the best advantage by the smallest number of labourers and of working cattle. Hence it is obvious that an arable farm should be large enough for the full employment of one tolerable plough team; and this is now become so generally the case and so effectual, that nearly two-thirds of the agricultural produce of England and Wales is consumed by those who are employed in producing and dispensing the necessities and elegancies of civilized life,* manufacturers, tradesmen, professional men, statesmen, men of letters, and philosophers. If the face of the country were divided into small occupations cultivated by the spade, the same population perhaps might exist in a state somewhat superior to the beasts of the field, though far inferior to that of the lowest labourer at present, whose tea and sugar are fetched from opposite sides of the globe, and who pays less by half for his clothing, household furniture, and working tools, than he must pay in labour, or in money, supposing a less complicated state of society. He would be sunk, and no one elevated by thus recurring to the rude industry of primitive times. But the admirers of cottage farms would say, that their views extend not beyond pasturage for a cow or two, though we find lambs also mentioned in one of the examples given. Pasturage, however, is not so abundant in most parts of the kingdom, that it could be taken from the large farms for such a purpose; and if it could, the want of winter food (which is inevitable) usually compels such a cottager to steal it, or to see his cattle perish-an alternative which no one who looks to the public weal would wish to become more common than it already is.-Of the smaller kind of cottage farms, or rather large gardens, we must observe, that if a garden be such as to take the labourers away from farming employments, in that degree must other labourers be introduced into a parish, and the poor rates increased accordingly:-the legitimate limit of cottage gardens therefore is very confined, and they are now, where they exist, too frequently in a neglected state,—as unprofitable to the labourer as to the public at large. This, indeed, happens from the effect of the poor-rate relief, which keeps the cottager in a state of perpetual pupillage, and consequently negligent of his own affairs; to the same pervading evil is attributable, in some degree, his habitual inattention to economical cookery, by means of which the lower classes in Scotland subsist, and at half the expense, better than the labourers in the south of England. See the Population Abstract of 1811. The families in England and Wales employed in agriculture, are 770,199; all other families arc, 1,371,948. It is not necessary for us to say more of cottage farms; but if they were likely to become prevalent, very grave consideration would be called for by the natural effect of heirship, as such customary tenants would not fail again to sap the existence of all large estates, as heretofore happened by the gradual transformation of vassals and retainers into copyholders: but what in the ancient state of society was an improvement, would be in modern times to retrograde immeasurably into barbarism, into a want of every thing beyond the bare necessaries of life. We hold ourselves exempted from entering upon the subject of SETTLEMENT; a difficulty resulting from the poor laws, and increasing with the amount of expenditure on the poor. The astonishing number of 4700 appeals are stated to have been entered for trial at the quarter-sessions in one twelvemonth; and the absolute impossibility of finishing the business brought before the magistrates at these times, begins to amount to a delay of justice not much less inconvenient than the expenditure of £300,000 per annum, in removals of paupers and consequent litigation. For the remedy of this evil, the poor law committee, which reckons among its members several leading magistrates in their respective counties, was admirably calculated; and the pages in which they have handled this * subject at large, therein proposing to establish select vestries, and to give more power to the magistrates in petty sessions, are as masterly in practical views, as many of the preceding pages are in the clear and concise expression of general principles which heretofore had only been understood and recognized by those who had studied good authors, or thought deeply for themselves. And here we particularly advert to the opinion and arguments of the Committee on the subject of 'providing work for all such persons as may require it.' The contingent impossibility of doing this, and the injury sustained from impotent attempts to fulfil such an engagement, are treated with all the delicacy due to the wellmeant enactments of the 43d of Elizabeth, and to those whose active benevolence prompts them to devise employment, or to give alms lavishly, without reflecting that in the first cases they subtract from the funds of labour, unless the newly devised employment be a creation of labour;-and in the second, that money bestowed upon the improvident, is a bounty for the encouragement of improvidence. The old law against giving vagrants alms cannot be enforced; but the distinct knowledge of modern times upon this subject ought to give full effect to its spirit and intention. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25. whereby a penalty of teu times the sum given is imposed upon the donor. In proposing to authorize the appointment of a salaried officer, a kind of assistant overseer, in every parish where the majority of the vestry concur in it, the committee state,* that they proceed on grounds of experience rather than of theory, the practice having long been beneficially adopted in many populous parishes.'-There can be no doubt of the propriety of such an appointment, as being at once the cheapest as well as the most effectual mode of checking unreasonable applications for relief: it is the cheapest mode, because the office of overseer requires a sacrifice of time which it is unreasonable to expect, as being inconsistent with the attention due from such persons to their own affairs,'t—and these affairs, we may be permitted to add, taken in the aggregate, are the affairs of agriculture and commerce, the interruption of which, in serving parish offices and attending vestries, is not indeed a tax, but a loss equivalent to a very heavy tax on the community at large. poor In truth, we deem this to be one of the greatest evils of the laws; and we cannot perceive without regret, that both the Poor Law Committee and Mr. Davison consider it important, nay, of imperious necessity, that the most educated and enlightened' persons, and those most interested (in other words, of the largest property) in every parish should turn their attention to the management of the poor. Upon this Mr. Davison expatiates very forcibly, and in less measured terms than perhaps the Poor Law Committee felt themselves at liberty to do in an official document; but the opinion of both is the same, and both authorities will doubtless carry with them great and deserved weight. We refer to Mr. Davison's pamphlet for a description of the qualities necessary in such persons for the due administration of the poor laws; but, however reluctant we may be to differ from a writer whom we respect so truly, we cannot but aver that any expectations of this kind are unjust and must be illusory. For to call in this manner upon any person who either by inheritance or his own industry is in possession of property sufficient to entitle him to spend his time in the way most agreeable to himself, is to rob him of the advantage he has acquired, and, by forcing him to employ his time and attention much less agreeably than if he were endeavouring to earn a competence for himself and his children, to place him in a worse situation than the class of society next below him. True it is, that the merit and self-satisfaction resulting from time well spent will be supposed in some degree to repay him for this intrusion on his own pursuits, but this compensation disappears as we approach the actual personal interference necessary in the management of the parochial poor. The |