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POOR-LAWS. (E. REVIEW, 1820) | fathers and mothers they are commanded to obey and honour, and are to be brought up in virtue by the churchwardens. And this is gravely intended as a corrective of the PoorLaws; as if (to pass over the many other objections which might be made to it) it would not set mankind popu$. Essay on the Practicability of modifying|lating faster than carpenters and brick

1. Safe Method for rendering Income arising from Personal Property available to the Poor-Laws. Lorgman & Co. 1819. 2. Summary Review of the Report and Evidence relative to the Poor-Laws. By

S. W. Nicol. York.

the Poor-Laws. Sherwood. 1819.

4. Considerations on the Poor-Laws. By

John Davison, A. M. Oxford. OUR readers, we fear, will require some apology for being asked to look at any thing upon the Poor-Laws. No subject, we admit, can be more disagreeable, or more trite. But, unfortunately, it is the most important of all the important subjects which the distressed state of the country is now crowding upon our notice.

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layers could cover in their children, or separate twigs to be bound into rods for their flagellation. An extension of the Poor-Laws to personal property is also talked of. We should be very glad to see any species of property exempted from these laws, but have no wish that any which is now exempted should be subjected to their influence. The case would infallibly be like that of the Income-tax,- the more easily the tax was raised, the more profligate A pamphlet on the Poor-Laws gene-would be the expenditure. It is prorally contains some little piece of fa- posed also that alehouses should be vourite nonsense, by which we are diminished, and that the children of gravely told this enormous evil may be the poor should be catechised publicly perfectly cured. The first gentleman in the church,- both very respectable recommends little gardens; the second and proper suggestions, but of themcows; the third a village shop; the selves hardly strong enough for the fourth a spade; the fifth Dr. Bell, and evil. We have every wish that the so forth. Every man rushes to the poor should accustom themselves to press with his small morsel of imbe-habits of sobriety; but we cannot help cility; and is not easy till he sees his reflecting, sometimes, that an alehouse impertinence stitched in blue covers. is the only place where a poor tired In this list of absurdities, we must not forget the project of supporting the poor from national funds, or, in other words, of immediately doubling the expenditure, and introducing every possible abuse into the administration of it. Then there are worthy men, who call upon gentlemen of fortune and education to become overseers meaning, we suppose, that the present overseers are to perform the higher duties of men of fortune. Then Merit is set up as the test of relief; and their worships are to enter into a long examination of the life and character of each applicant, assisted, as they doubt less would be, by candid overseers, and neighbours divested of every feeling of malice and partiality. The children are next to be taken from their parents, and lodged in immense pedagogueries of several acres each, where they are to be carefully secluded from those

creature, haunted with every species of wretchedness, can purchase three or four times a year three pennyworth of ale, a liquor upon which wine-drinking moralists are always extremely severe. We must not forget, among other nostrums, the eulogy of small farms--in other words, of small capital, and profound ignorance in the arts of agriculture; and the evil is also thought to be curable by periodical contributions from men who have nothing, and can earn nothing without charity. To one of these plans, and perhaps the most plausible, Mr. Nicol has stated, in the following passage, objections that are applicable to almost all the rest.

well superintended and well regulated; magistrates and country gentlemen would be its visitors. The more excellent the establishment, the greater the mischief;

"The district school would no doubt be

because the greater the expense. We may mother may sometimes chide a little too talk what we will of economy, but where sharply, yet here both maternal endearthe care of the poor is taken exclusively ments and social affection exist in perhaps into the hands of the rich, comparative their greatest vigour: the attachments extravagance is the necessary consequence: of lower life, where independent of atto say that the gentleman, or even the over-tachment there is so little to enjoy, far seer, would never permit the poor to live outstrip the divided if not exhausted senat the district school as they live at home, sibility of the rich and great; and in is saying far too little. English humanity depriving the poor of these attachments, will never see the poor in any thing like we may be said to rob them of their little want, when that want is palpably and | all.

visibly brought before it; first, it will give "But it is not to happiness only I here necessaries, next comforts; until its fos-refer: it is to morals. I listen with great tering care rather pampers, than merely relieves. The humanity itself is highly laudable; but if practised on an extensive scale, its consequences must entail an almost unlimited expenditure.

reserve to that system of moral instruction, which has not soc al affection for its basis, or the feelings of the heart for its ally. It is not to be concealed, that every thing may be taught, yet nothing learned, that systems planned with care and executed with attention, may evaporate into unmeaning forms, where the imagination is not roused, or the sensibility impressed.

"Let us suppose the children of the district school,' nurtured with that superabundant care which such institutions, when supposed to be well conducted, are wont to exhibit; they r.se with the dawn;

"Mr. Locke computes that the labour of a child from 3 to 14, being set against its nourishment and teaching, the result will be exoneration of the parish from expense. Nothing could prove more decisively the incompetency of the Board of Trade to advise on this question. Of the productive labour of the workhouse, I shall have to speak hereafter; I will only observe in this place, that after the greatest care and at-after attending to the calls of cleanliness, tention bestowed on the subject, after ex- prayers follow; then a lesson; then breakpensive looms purchased, &c., the 50 boys fast; then work, till noon liberates them, for of the Blue Coat School earned in the year perhaps an hour, from the walls of their pri 1816, 59. 10s. 3d.; the 40 girls earned, inson to the walls of their prison court. Dinthe same time, 401. 78. 9d. The ages of these ner follows; and then, in course, work, leschildren are from 8 to 16. They earn about sons, supper, prayers; at length, after a day one pound in the year and cost about dreary and dull, the counterpart of every twenty. day which has preceded, and of all that are "The greater the call for labour in public to follow, the children are dismissed to bed. institutions, be they prisons, workhouses,This system may construct a machine, or schools, the more difficult to be procured that labour must be. There will thence be both much less of it for the comparative numbers, and it will afford a much less price; to get any labour at all, one school must underbid another.

but it will not form a man. Of what does it consist? of prayers parroted without one sentiment in accord with the words uttered: of moral lectures which the understanding does not comprehend, or the heart feel; of endless bodily constraint, intole "It has just been observed, that the rable to youthful vivacity, and injurious to child of a poor cottager, half clothed, half the perfection of the human frame.-The fed, with the enjoyment of home and li- cottage day may not present so imposing a berty, is not only happier but better than scene; no decent uniform; no well-trimmed the little automaton of a parish work-locks; no glossy skin; no united response house:' and this I believe is accurately of hundreds of conjoined voices; no lengthtrue. I scarcely know a more cheering sight, though certainly many more elegant ones, than the youthful gambols of a village green. They call to mind the description given by Paley of the shoals of the fry of fish: They are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves; their attitude, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess.'

"Though politeness may be banished from the cottage, and though the anxious

ened procession, misnamed exercise; but if it has less to strike the eye, it has far more to engage the heart. A trifle in the way of cleanliness must suffice; the prayer is not forgot; it is perhaps imperfectly reneated, and confusedly understood; but it is not muttered as a vain sound; it is an earthly parent that tells of an heavenly one; duty, love, obedience, are not words without meaning, when repeated by a mother to her child: to God-the great unknown Being that made all things, all thanks, all praise, all adoration is due. The young

be laid.

religionist may be in some measure be- main. It was madness to call them in wildered by all this; his notions may be ob- this manner into existence; but it would scure, but his feelings will be roused, and be the height of cold-blooded cruelty the foundation at least of true piety will to get rid of them by any other than “Of moral instruction, the child may be the most gentle and gradual means; taught less at home than at school, but he and not only would it be cruel, but exwill be taught better! that is, whatever he tremely dangerous, to make the attempt. is taught he will feel; he will not have Insurrections of the most sanguinary abstract propositions of duty coldly pre- and ferocious nature would be the imented to his mind; but precept and prac-mediate consequence of any very sudtice will be conjoined; what he is told it is den change in the system of the Poorright to do will be instantly done. SomeLaws; not partial, like those which proceed from an impeded or decaying state of manufactures, but as universal as the Poor-Laws themselves, and as ferocious as insurrections always are which are led on by hunger and despair.

times the operative principle on the child's mind will be love, sometimes fear, sometimes habitual sense of obedience; it is always something that will impress, always something that will be remembered."

There are two points which we consider as now admitted by all men of These observations may serve as an sense, 1st, That the Poor-Laws must answer to those angry and impatient be abolished; 2dly, That they must be gentlemen who are always crying out, very gradually abolished. We hardly What has the Committee of the House think it worth while to throw away pen of Commons done?-What have they and ink upon any one who is still in- to show for their labours? - Are the clined to dispute either of these pro-rates lessened? Are the evils repositions. moved? The Committee of the House With respect to the gradual aboli- of Commons would have shown themtion, it must be observed, that the pre-selves to be a set of the most contempsent redundant population of the coun- tible charlatans, if they had proceeded try has been entirely produced by the with any such indecent and perilous Poor-Laws: and nothing could be so haste, or paid the slightest regard to grossly unjust, as to encourage people the ignorant folly which required it at to such a vicious multiplication, and their hands. They have very properly then, when you happen to discover begun, by collecting all possible inyour folly, immediately to starve them formation upon the subject; by coninto annihilation. You have been call-sulting speculative and practical men; ing upon your population for two hun- by leaving time for the press to condred years to beget more children-tribute whatever it could of thought or furnished them with clothes, food, and houses-taught them to lay up nothing for matrimony, nothing for children, nothing for age-but to depend upon Justices of the Peace for every human want. The folly is now detected; but the people, who are the fruit of it,

knowledge to the subject; and by introducing measures, the effects of which will be, and are intended to be, gradual. The Lords seemed at first to have been surprised that the Poor-Laws were not abolished before the end of the first re-session of Parliament; and accordingly set up a little rival Committee of their I am not quite so wrong in this as I own, which did little or nothing, and seem to be, nor after all our experience am will not, we believe, be renewed. I satisfied that there has not been a good deal of rashness and precipitation in the are so much less sanguine than those conduct of this admirable measure. You noble legislators, that we shall think have not been able to carry the law into the improvement immense, and a submanufacturing counties. Parliament will compel you to soften some of the more se-Ject of very general congratulation, if vere clauses. It has been the nucleus of the Poor-rates are perceptibly dimigeneral insurrection and chartism. The nished, and if the system of pauperism Duke of Wellington wisely recommended is clearly going down in twenty or that the experiment should be first tried In a few counties round the metropolis. thirty years hence.

We

We think, upon the whole, that Go- | ing the industry and exertions of other vernment have been fortunate in the persons in the place where his settleselection of the gentleman who is ment falls. This privilege produces placed at the head of the Committee all the evil complained of in the Poorfor the revision of the Poor-Laws; or Laws; and instead therefore of being rather, we should say (for he is a gen- conferred with the liberality and protleman of very independent fortune), fusion which it is at present, it should who has consented that he should be be made of very difficult attainment, placed there. Mr. Sturges Bourne is and liable to the fewest possible changes. undoubtedly a man of business, and of The constant policy of our Courts of very good sense: he has made some Justice has been, to make settlements mistakes; but, upon the whole, sees the easily obtained. Since the period we subject as a philosopher and statesman have before alluded to, this has cerought to do. Above all, we are pleased tainly been a very mistaken policy. with his good nature and good sense It would be a far wiser course to abolish in adhering to his undertaking, after all other means of settlement that the Parliament has flung out two or those of Birth, Parentage, and Marthree of his favourite bills. Many riage, not for the limited reason men would have surrendered so un-stated in the Committee, that it would thankful and laborious an undertaking diminish the law expenses, (though in disgust; but Mr. Bourne knows that, too, is of importance,) but because better what appertains to his honour it would invest fewer residents with and character, and, above all, what he owes to his country. It is a great subject; and such as will secure to him the gratitude and favour of posterity, if he bring it to a successful issue.

We have stated our opinion, that all remedies, without gradual abolition, are of little importance. With a foundation laid for such gradual abolition, every auxiliary improvement of the Poor-Laws (while they do remain) is worthy the attention of Parliament: and, in suggesting a few alterations as fit to be immediately adopted, we wish it to be understood, that we have in view the gradual destruction of the system, as well as its amendment while it continues to operate.

It seems to us, then, that one of the first and greatest improvements of this unhappy system would be a complete revision of the Law of Settlement. Since Mr. East's act for preventing the removal of the poor till they are actually chargeable, any man may live where he pleases, till he becomes a beggar, and ask alms of the place where he resides. To gain a settlement, then, is nothing more than to gain a right of begging it is not, as it used to be before Mr. East's act, a power of residing where, in the judgment of the resident, his industry and exertion will be best rewarded; but a power of tax- |

the fatal privilege of turning beggars,
exempt a greater number of labourers
from the moral corruption of the
Poor-Laws, and stimulate them to.
exertion and economy, by the fear
of removal if they are extravagant
and idle. Of ten men who leave the
place of their birth, four, probably, get
a settlement by yearly hiring, and four
others by renting a small tenement;
while two or three may return to the
place of their nativity, and settle there.
Now, under the present system, here
are eight men settled where they have
a right to beg without being removed.
The probability is, that they will all beg;
and that their virtue will give way to
the incessant temptation of the Poor-
Laws: but if these men had felt from
the very beginning, that removal from
the place where they wished most to
live would be the sure consequence of
their idleness and extravagance, the
probability is, that they would have
escaped the contagion of pauperism,
and been much more useful members
of society than they now are. The
best labourers in a village are com
monly those who are living where they
are legally settled, and have therefore
no right to ask charity-for the plain
reason, that they have nothing to de-
pend upon but their own exertions: in
short, for them the Poor-Laws hardly

exist; and they are such as the great mass of English peasantry would be if we had escaped the curse of these laws altogether.

It is incorrect to say, that no labourer would settle out of the place of his birth, if the means of acquiring a settlement were so limited. Many men begin the world with strong hope and much confidence in their own fortune, and without any intention of subsisting by charity; but they see others subsisting in greater ease, without their toil and their spirit gradually sinks to the meanness of mendicity.

quite sufficient to answer, that any given parish would probably send away as many useless old men as it received; and after all, little inequalities must bo borne for the general good. But, in truth, it is rather ridiculous to talk of a parish not having benefited by the labour of the man who is returned upon their hands in his old age. If such parish resemble most of those in England, the absence of a man for thirty or forty years has been a great good instead of an evil; they have had many more labourers than they could employ; and the very man whom they An affecting picture is sometimes are complaining of supporting for his drawn of a man falling into want in few last years, would, in all probabithe decline of life, and compelled to lity, have been a beggar forty years remove from the place where he has before, if he had remained among spent the greatest part of his days. them; or, by pushing him out of work, These things are certainly painful would have made some other man a enough to him who has the misfortune beggar. Are the benefits derived from to witness them. But they must be prosperous manufactures limited to the taken upon a large scale; and the parishes which contain them? The whole good and evil which they pro-industry of Halifax, Huddersfield, or duce diligently weighed and consi- Leeds is felt across the kingdom as far dered. The question then will be, as the Eastern Sea. The prices of whether any thing can be more really humane, than to restrain a system which relaxes the sinews of industry, and places the dependence of laborious men upon any thing but themselves. We must not think only of the wretched sufferer who is removed, and, at the sight of his misfortunes, call out for fresh facilities to beg. We must remember the industry, the vigour, and the care which the dread of removal has excited, and the number of persons who owe their happiness and their wealth to that salutary feeling. The very person who, in the decline of life, is removed from the spot where he has spent so great a part of his time, would perhaps have been a pauper half a century before, if he had been afflicted with the right of asking alms in the place where he lived,

It has been objected that this plan of abolishing all settlements but those of birth, would send a man, the labour of whose youth had benefited some other parish, to pass the useless part of his life in a place for which he existed only as a burthen. Supposing that this were the case, it would be

meat and corn at the markets of York
and Malton are instantly affected by
any increase of demand and rise of
wages in the manufacturing districts
to the west. They have benefited these
distant places, and found labour for
their superfluous hands by the prospe-
rity of their manufactures. Where
then would be the injustice, if the ma-
nufacturers, in the time of stagnation
and poverty, were returned to their
birth settlements? But as the law now
stands, population tumours, of the most
dangerous nature, may spring up in
any parish:
:- a manufacturer, con-
cealing his intention, may settle there,
take 200 or 300 apprentices, fail, and
half ruin the parish which has been the
scene of his operations. For these
reasons, we strongly recommend to
Mr. Bourne to narrow as much as pos
sible, in all his future bills, the means
of acquiring settlements*, and to re-
duce them ultimately to parentage,
birth, and marriage-convinced that,
by so doing, he will, in furtherance of
the great object of abolishing the Poor-
Laws, be only limiting the right of beg-
This has been done,

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