unnatural combination: the tone of demand for parish relief would always be sufficient reason for refusing it, and indeed would be symptomatic of a state of mind for which low diet would be the proper regimen. Not only those who have witnessed the insolence and threats of paupers in their demands, but those who have read the evidence given before the Poor Law Committees of the last session, will require no lengthened description of the exasperation and ill-blood which, from this single cause, exists in every parish, instead of the bond of mutual good-will, which ought to be stronger in proportion as human beings are in nearer contact and necessary to the welfare of each other in the reciprocal duties and offices of the employer and the employed. Magistrates, who are of necessity the referees in all such parochial disputes, would find the most disagreeable part of their duty disappear as if by enchantment, and even the Quarter Sessions would be exonerated of law-suits, in proportion as the settlement of a pauper in any parish might seem to entail so little expense and inconvenience as not to be worth a contest. Of how many evils should we be rid by this single measure of simple and salutary justice!

The number of those persons whom the law was designed to relieve, and who have both a moral and legal claim to public charity in the kindest acceptation of the word, will be greatly diminished hereafter when the Saving Banks (which are, indeed, a true sinking fund for the extinction of pauperism) shall be generally established. Some miserables however there always must be, on account of those misfortunes against which no human prudence can provide, and those calamities which are the inheritance of human nature: and at present, disgraceful as the fact is, the lowest class of the labouring people have nothing better to look forwards to than parish relief when, in their own melancholy language, their work is done. This is neither as it should be, nor as it will be, when care is taken to train up the people in good principles and industrious habits, and when the means of husbanding the produce of their industry shall be universally afforded them. At this time we are feeling the effect of long deterioration on their part-itself the consequence of negligence in those whose duty it was long since to have provided that sound, instruction, and those means which we, in our generation, are only now beginning to provide. The burthen, while it continues, must be borne, and it will be borne cheerfully when the due line of distinction is drawn. No person will repine at paying his assessment to the poor rates, when he sees that it is strictly applied to alleviate the inevitable evils of sickness, and to supply the industrious in old age with the few bodily comforts which age is capable of enjoying. This is what the law intends, wisely and religiously; this is what a charitable nation (and if ever

there

there was a charitable nation, it is this) desires to see most fully accomplished. But the abuse of this wholesome law may well make the landholder repine at the frightful and ruinous increase of assessment which it occasions. He may well repine when the lusty spendthrift, who is both able to work and to find work, chooses, instead, insolently to claim a corrody upon the lands of the parish; when the unblushing harlot* comes, year after year, to demand maintenance for another bastard; and when it becomes a system for hinds and journeymen to marry before they have any means, or any reasonable prospect of means, for supporting a family, without any principle of independence, or any of that honest feeling by which the poorest Englishman used to be distinguished.

In a subject of this immense importance, it is especially desirable to have it well considered what the law may reasonably be expected to accomplish, and what things are beyond its jurisdiction. It is proposed by Mr. Davison, in his eloquent and able pamphlet, with regard to children the offspring of a marriage contracted subsequently to an amendment of the law, that from the date of that amended law no person should be entitled to any legal relief on their account.

'The simplest and the most equitable amendment,' he says, would be that which referred the entire charge of the offspring of such marriages to the care of the parents. The marriage so contracted would be wholly independent of any artificial inducement; the parents themselves would understand and appreciate their proper character; and in that character would pledge themselves to provide for their offspring upon the principles of a natural duty. The alleviation of the parochial burthens, and the redress of much abuse of the parochial law, under the effect of this one regulation, would be immediate, silent, and progressive. It would be a sinking fund created upon the existing evil. Another race, born and reared under happier auspices, would be springing up. The good habits and example of the parents, which they would not be able to sacrifice with impunity, would reckon both for themselves and for the propagation of a healthier feeling among others. Such parents and families would take the lead in helping to restore the deteriorated spirit, as well as condition, of their whole class in the community.'-p. 119.

The committee also have suggested for the consideration of parliament, whether, when the demand for labour may have revived, it may not safely be provided, that from and after a certain time no relief shall be extended to any child whose father being living is under years of age-a principle which, by altering the age from time to time, might, if it should be thought desirable, be carried still farther into operation.' It may also be

* It is within our own knowledge that there were at one time, in a village workhouse, hree women of this description, with seven children cach, constant inmates. T 2

pro

provided,' they add, with a similar view, that from and after a specified time no relief shall be provided for any child whose father, being living, has not above children under

of age.'

years

If ever there was a question which it was necessary for the legislature to touch with peculiar caution in all its branches, it is this tremendous question of the poor laws. The enactment which is here proposed could not be enforced; because, in the case of children, that principle of rigour, which should be proclaimed and acted upon toward the dissolute poor, is utterly inapplicable. A man who marries without other resource than the value of his own labour, and has a large family of young children, is absolutely unable to provide for them the food and raiment necessary for the support of human life. It matters not what the parents may have been, or how they may have acted, however culpably improvident their marriage, however criminal their conduct, the children, when born into the world, are objects of human charity, of political and Christian care. The practicable part of this suggestion is included in the broad principle which affords low diet to those who cannot prove that their conduct has been such as entitles them to better; and those who engage rashly in marriage after the poor laws shall have been reformed, may properly be warned that they will be deemed to have committed imprudence with their eyes open, and will have less chance of favour. In the passage which we have already quoted, Mr. Davison has admirably described the renovated class of labourers which we may expect to see when the pride and principle of independence shall be re-established among them. He has, with equal philosophy and beauty, shewn in what manner a reliance upon the poor laws injures the labourer in his moral being, and deprives him of the best and highest enjoyments of human nature.

One of the happiest appointments of life, is in the exercise of the domestic duties, upon the principle of a natural or a chosen affection. Out of this fountain of kindly feeling, which flows from the rock of nature, comes much of man's happiness, and much of his virtue, without which indeed the happiness could not be. Among the poor especially, whose feelings and principles are more nurtured by the circumstances of life in which they are cast, than they ever can be by the artificial discipline of any cultivation,. their home is the school of their sentiments, and their best enjoyment entwines itself round the care of their moral family obligations. To have really the charge of his family, as a husband and a father; to have the privilege of laying out his life upon their service, and of seeing them rest exclusively on his protection, is the poor man's boast, in the estimate of the mere relative conditions of life. He himself is all the better for having so grave a charge upon his hands. The wants of his family are his call to work; and no call sounds more piercingly, nor more gratefully, to an uncorrupted ear. There is

music in it, with all its sharpness. But the breath of the parochial law tarnishes the colouring of this family-picture of cheerful native virtue. It flings another atmosphere upon it. By exonerating him from the sole charge of his offspring, it'abrogates the father's proper character. It makes him begin to think them an incumbrance, from which he ought to be discharged. It means, indeed, to do no more than take off from him the load of their support; but it does take off the pressure of much sacred obligation. It makes him and them less intimately pledged to each other; less dear to each other. It sows thistles among the flowers. And is he the happier for this substituted relief proffered to him, almost imposed upon him, by a fixed practice? Suppose he has yielded to the temptations of its convenience, so far as to accept it without repugnance, he retains neither the same solid claims upon the gratitude of his children for an undivided care of them; nor can they look up to his example with reverence, nor feel the same force of filial piety, expanding into a great motive of future reciprocating duty. In the country especially, the family ties have been nearly burst asunder by the artificial adoption which the law has made of the children. It has made parents, children, and brothers hardly know themselves to be such. The interposition for their necessities has disbanded their affections.'-pp.67-69. But the poor laws have done more and worse than this: they have positively created parents, children, and brothers, who never expected or intended to feel the otherwise universal ties of family affection and consanguinity. For marriage is become in many instances the well calculated method of extorting relief from the 'parish; and the birth of a second or third child is hailed as giving a new claim no longer to be resisted, whatever be the insolence, or laziness, or profligacy of the applicant. Such marriages, indeed, as well as those enforced by parish-officers in cases of bastardy, might well be spared; and for some years a decrease of marriage would be the effect of any kind of judicious discouragement. Nor do we perceive any inconvenience in this, not having adopted the modern philosophy, which asserts the supremacy of lust, or the inefficacy of moral obligation to resist its impulse-a philosophy which degrades intellectual man to the level of the beasts which perish; but which is as false as it is degrading.

Age and infirmity require as much commiseration as childhood; and the aged and impotent poor are not so numerous but that an increase may be made to their allowance; the parish expenses will be so much diminished by the strict justice to be adopted toward the idle and dissolute, that this may properly be afforded. The wornout labourer who has done his duty in his station ought not to be left without any of those comforts to which that station is accustomed; he should be maintained in a degree of comfort only short of that which is enjoyed by those who solace themselves in their declining years from the stores accumulated by their own industry and economy. This comparative limitation must never on any occasion

be forgotten; but until the poor laws shall have ceased their baleful influence for some length of time, until the price of labour shall have been higher for a period of years, and the opportunity of a Saving Bank within the reach of every one, the difference ought in justice to be little more than honorary: strictness might be introduced by degrees, as it became more and more proper to mark those who shall have neglected to avail themselves of the means of independence which will then have been afforded to all. It is not desirable that the deserving poor should be collected in workhouses; the allowance ought to be such as might induce some neighbours of their own class to take care of them, where there were no relations upon whom it would naturally devolve. There is no reason here, as in the case of children, for interfering in any degree with the natural charities, which are the very cement of society: for those who have grown old in singleness, or who have out-lived all their nearest relatives, a poor-house, appropriated (as before described) to that purpose only, might be made a respectable and more than decent retreat. They ought never to be confounded with the dissolute and the guilty, made to associate with those whom in their own liberty they would have shunned, condemned to be chamber and table-fellows with the harlot and the drunkard, and exposed to the noise and nuisance of unfathered children, who are growing up in habits as wretched and immoral as those of their parents before them. This is indeed to confound infirmity with guilt, and this must be the picture of a promiscuous workhouse.*

The good conduct of the poor would naturally, in process of time, cause a renewal of the ancient fashion of charitable bequests and foundations for the aged and meritorious; and as the whole body of the industrious poor increased in respectability, the good influence so created would be extensive in proportion. It is difficult to understand the uncharitable policy which, long after all danger of immoderate bequests had ceased, has strengthened the prohibitions of the statutes against mortmain; and certain it is, that were full license now conceded, many years must pass away before the quantity of such property liberated by Mr. Pitt's redemption of the land

* 'Workhouses,' says Mr. Vivian in his evidence before the Committee, 'act two ways, one a little good and one a very great evil; the little good is that they act as gaols to terrify the people from coming to the parish; the evil is that when they are there, however loath they were to get there, they soon become used to it, and never get out again.- -You conceive it corrupts the morals of the people?-Certainly. Should not you think workhouses, which should be considered as hospitals for the aged, and schools for the young, beneficial to the individuals and economical to the parish?-Certainly not; as schools for the young, nothing can be more shocking, except the gaol; and as for the old, they are more comfortable in hard times in private houses with their relations and friends.' Paupers who apply for relief to the magistrates, and are asked why they did not stay in the workhouse, have sometimes replied, 'It is so full of vermin, and there are such indecencies,---and I have been used to live better, and cannot bear it.'Report on the State of Mendicity.