property of others unless he can prove this is so unreasonable as to be absurd. And yet, according to the present administration of the poor laws, relief is made imperative upon proof of poverty instead of merit; so that if a man has wilfully wasted food from fastidiousness and insolence, he would, because he and his family were destitute in consequence, receive further relief in reward as it were of his own delinquency.

Reverse this, and the whole evil and inconvenience of the poor laws disappear at once; and to effect this, nothing more is required than a strict adherence to the spirit of these laws as they exist, in making a broad and intelligible distinction between misfortune and misconduct, between the industrious and the dissolute poor. For the laws enjoin this as clearly as the common interest demands it. The committee' apprehend that an order of relief is invalid which does not adjudge the party applying for relief to be impotent as well as poor;'-the sums to be raised for the relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other being poor and not able to work,' can be applied, they say, according to the letter of the law, to the relief of such persons only as the law contemplates and describes; such persons only as the justices can conscientiously adjudge to be not only poor, but helpless and unable to work. Here then is the true remedy for all the evil of the poor laws, leaving the good untouched and with increased power of operation. Proclaim that, for the future, the poor, no more than the rich, are to be exempted from the consequences of their own imprudence and misconduct; that they must suffer misery when they have brought it upon themselves, or have not exerted themselves to avoid it; in fine, that they shall not escape the common lot of human nature, whereby it has been wisely and benevolently ordained that industry shall be rewarded with temporal blessings, and idleness draw after it its proper punishment. It is thus* in all the higher classes; a man's misconduct brings down wretchedness not only upon himself, but upon those also who are or ought to be most dear to him; those who are his pledges to society that for their sake he will do his duty and endeavour to be a worthy member of that community in which he is placed.

The fitness of the principle thus assumed will probably not be contradicted; but the application of it may be thought difficult or impracticable till it be examined in its details and its effects, in its enforcement, and its power of resisting the arts which will be put in array against it by all the profligate and all the disaffected, and

It is not,' says Mr. Courtenay, in his Letter to the committee, with persons in the very lowest conditions only that the effects of poverty are felt in the aggravation of bodily sufferings, or even in the acceleration of death; and it would not perhaps be harsh or unfeeling to observe, that in persons and families of the superior classes, the mental sufferings under any of these circumstances are infinitely more acute and bitter.'

all

all the sluggards who had rather be maintained by the industry of others than their own. This may best be done in the way of illustration. A pauper applies in the usual manner to the vestry, or parish officers for relief, and the question becomes, not what his present wants may be, but what have been his endeavours to maintain himself and his family. It may be that the parish officer deems him deficient and culpable in this respect, and refuses to assist him in doing what he has not honestly endeavoured to do for himself. The pauper then has recourse to the magistrates, carrying with him what proof he can, from his employer, of his industry; from his neighbours, of his economy and prudence; the parish officer attending as usual, and assisting the magistrates with his observations. The result would frequently be unfavourable, till such time as good character shall have become of value to the poor; and the pauper would be told, that until he exhibited evidence of amendment he must not expect the parish to engage with him in a joint effort for maintaining himself and his family, and that if he is reduced to want by idleness and profligacy, his fellow parishioners must prevent the last extremity of human suffering in the manner least burthensome to themselves, as well as most appropriate to his own past conduct.

What kind of relief this is to be, in justice to the two parties concerned, is the gravest question which arises in pursuing to its results the proposed apportionment of relief according to the character of the applicant. A man who has been proved by process of law to have committed a minor crime, is ordered by the magistrates to the House of Correction. A man who has proved himself to be industrious and thrifty is to be relieved from the acquired property of others through the poor rates, which would thus be made to operate as a national insurance office for the encouragement of industry and fair character. We are now considering a middle case: what shall be justly awarded to him who can claim nothing on the score of his past conduct, but whose family, as well as himself, must, for the sake of our common nature, be preserved from actual famine and its shocking consequences? Undoubtedly the food of such a man ought not to be quite so good as that of any other man in the British islands who maintains himself by honourable industry. To pass this limit would be a total perversion of justice, though to stop much short of it might seem rigorous and cruel towards those whose nature, vitiated by the degrading habit of reliance on the poor laws, has never been expanded into healthful exertion. Subsistence, therefore, must be afforded in a frugal manner, determined according to circumstances; and the article of clothing with the same sort of reference and comparison, always taking care that the mode of subsisting those who

prey

prey on the substance of others be not better than that which is the lot of any who subsist on their own resources. 'It should,' to use Lord Sheffield's words, be a determined principle, that the rate and mode of subsistence should be lower than what any industrious man or woman could earn. The object should be to provide that which is wholesome and cheapest, but by no means to subsist the poor in workhouses on better diet than that on which the industrious labourer can subsist in his own habitation, at the lowest rate of wages.' The fruitless expectation that the parish can be directly benefited by the unwilling labour of such persons ought to be entirely laid aside; and their reformation trusted to the effect of a diet which they would not dislike the less because they had deserved no better. The parish workhouses (as they are called) would afford residence, more than could be required, for such inmates. Of the places which separately maintain their own poor, more than one in four possesses a workhouse so called; and many more (indeed most places) a residence of smaller dimensions for the poor who cannot otherwise be disposed of. For the proper use and application of such houses, the several counties might be partitioned by the magistrates assembled in Quarter Sessions; so that by the junction of small hundreds, and the division of large ones, (especially of the enormous wards and wapentakes of the North,) districts should be formed, not exceeding a moderate day's journey in diameter--suppose from ten to fifteen miles; within this district from four to eight small workhouses, or perhaps one large workhouse for parishes already united, would usually be found. The strongest building would of course be appropriated for the reception of those who deserved no better diet than that of the lower orders in Scotland and in Ireland, and authority must be given for the prevention of outrageous behaviour among the inmates. The other workhouses would become the residence of orphan children, or the helpless aged of the district, if not better provided for; and, if any houses still remained untenanted, they would easily be divided into cottage tenements, rent-free, (if that seemed advisable,) for the most meritorious families of the labouring poor.

By all this nothing would be destroyed; and, if the first effort at improvement of the character and condition of the poor should fail, all things might be brought back to their old state and other expedients tried. If these proposed districts averaged one hundred square miles in area, there would be almost six hundred of them, and in each, from twenty to thirty places raising an assessment for the relief of their own poor.

In reality the persons who required the harsher mode of treatment would be much fewer than at first might be supposed without

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consideration, and would decrease to a very insignificant number when the plan was once steadily adopted, and its effects became equally known to the magistrates and to the poor who apply for aid. Indeed it would be found that this severity (for so it would undoubtedly be called both by the poor, and by those whose morbid sensibility has extinguished the sense of justice') would scarcely ever be practised after it became a known and inexorable rule: but it would remain as a wholesome check upon all unreasonable demands, and at one stroke rectify all the disorders, moral and physical, that have been produced by the most mischievous of all human institutions which have been suffered to remain in practice during such a length of time as has elapsed since the 43d of Elizabeth-for such the poor laws have been, well as they were intended.

In the first place, a very large proportion of the poor, who are now clamorous for aid from the parish, would cease to ask for it on the prescribed condition; they would rather choose to reform their own habits, and thus, by proof of amendment, obtain countenance from their employers, and thereby assistance, in a more agreeable form, if it were really necessary; but this very improvement of character would in most cases prevent such necessity. And those who were consigned to meagre fare would be, at the same time, dieted and tempted to reformation; they would be precluded in their new residence from those mischievous habits of pilfering which usually occupy the time of the profligate poor, and they would feel a double motive to escape from the listlessness of no employment, if the value of all the work which they might be encouraged to perform were carried to their account, payable to them on their dismissal from the workhouse; into which, after such entertainment, there would be little apprehension of their re-entry. For on their dismissal they would become fit subjects for the exercise of true benevolence; a much smaller quantity of industry than might entitle to the better kind of parochial assistance, nay, the very promise of amendment would procure means of immediate subsistence from those who hoped well of the repentant sinner, and a laudable intercourse of patronage and gratitude would invigorate natural good feelings, both in the giver and receiver of a benefit thus well timed.

This good effect would be immediate; but of ten-fold efficacy would be the rise of wages, which could not fail to take place as the present practice of indiscriminate relief fell into disuse; for although more work would be done as industrious habits became more and more common, more work would also be created. agricultural labourers would feel of what importance the good-will of their employer was become, for recommending them to the parish

The

in case of need, or assisting them himself; and as he perceived their improved industry and increased zeal in his service, mutual attachment would be engendered by mutual interest. One consequence would be, that the employer would consider what improvements he could devise in which his willing labourers might be profitably, or at least not unprofitably, employed. Nor are we to suppose that he would come to this investigation of his own concerns with the same feelings as when it is required of him to find work for men half paid from the parish-rates: this labour is badly executed, because it is heartless; it operates merely as a punishment to themselves, and perhaps is oftener expected so to operate than to the benefit of their employer. No man of a kindly disposition, and few men who understood their own interest, but would endeavour to attach to themselves the best labourers by good payment, and occasional assistance when obviously needed, and thus the relation of both parties to each other would be what it ought, and the character of both would be gradually exalted.

The difficult problem of checking vagrancy and mendicity would be solved when receptacles were every where open in which such strollers might be lodged, without too much expense to the parish where they were apprehended; and however inveterate their habits, they would soon be convinced that the enjoyments of a vagabond life were dearly purchased by the frequent intervention of a month of low diet, though at the expense of the parish-rate. Yet it should be observed that the laws against mendicity have been too severe ever since that of Henry VIII. imposed a fine of ten pence for every penny so bestowed; so rigorous indeed they are, that locomotion would almost be prohibited to honest poverty, if half the severity of the laws were enforced upon all who could be brought under the vague charge of vagrancy. To us it seems that the wayfaring man, often in search of employment, and usually pretending to be so, is a proper object of charity till he is detected in false pretences; and that it would be effecting a great improvement could any mode of discrimination, by certificate of magistrates, clergymen, or parish officers be devised, whereby the labourer and artizan might be indulged with such freedom of migration as to keep up the balance of the demand between the employer and the employed in the most equable manner. When we consider that the wife and family of a man must follow when he has gained a fair prospect of steady work in a new place, the permission, nay, the encouragement to travel, becomes obviously expedient, and herein the modification of the vagrant laws.

But the most immediate benefit arising from our proposed method of correcting the idle and dissolute would be, that it would deliver us from the odious spectacle of meanness and insolence in unnatural

VOL. XVIII. NO. XXXVI.

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