impotent, and for setting to work the able, originated, without doubt, in motives of the purest humanity, and was directed to the equitable purpose of preventing this burthen falling exclusively upon the charitable. But such a compulsory contribution for the indigent, from the funds originally accumulated from the labour and industry of others, could not fail in process of time, with the increase of population which it was calculated to foster, to produce the unfortunate effect of abating those exertions on the part of the labouring classes, on which, according to the nature of things, the happiness and welfare of mankind has been made to rest. By diminishing this natural impulse by which men are instigated to industry and good conduct, by superseding the necessity of providing in the season of health and vigour for the wants of sickness and old age, and by making poverty and misery the conditions on which relief is to be obtained, your Committee cannot but fear, from a reference to the increased numbers of the poor, and increased and increasing amount of the sums raised for their relief, that this system is perpetually encouraging and increasing the amount of misery it was designed to alleviate, creating at the same time an unlimited demand on funds which it cannot augment; and as every system of relief founded on compulsory enactments must be divested of the character of benevolence, so it is without its beneficial effects; as it proceeds from no impulse of charity, it creates no feelings of gratitude, and not unfrequently engenders dispositions and habits calculated to separate rather than unite the interests of the higher and lower orders of the community; éven the obligations of natural affection are no longer left to their own impulse, but the mutual support of the nearest relations has been actually enjoined by a positive law, which the authority of magistrates is continually required to enforce.'-p. 4.

Having thus described the mode of operation, and the effect of the poor laws, with excellent brevity and precision, the committee proceed to examine the recent proposals (especially those which may be called parliamentary) for various modifications of the general principle of assessment on real property. The first in order is that which seeks to assess personal property also: this, no doubt, is within the intention of the law, as it is within that of the land tax act; but it has failed in both instances, and must for ever fail, unless the same powers of inquiry which have been so unpopular for the enforcement of the income tax, be accorded for this purpose.* This can scarcely be advisable; and the proposal for assessing the property invested in the public funds, exclusive of any other personal property, not only labours under the difficulty of determining in aid of what parishes such assessment ought to be applied; but it is not the opinion of the committee, nor can it be, we suppose, of any large portion of the public, that either justice or policy would permit a tax to be imposed on money lent to the state, while sums at interest on other securities remain practically exempt.' p. 7.

The crude proposal of assessing householders according to the number of persons they employ, is disposed of as impracticable in manufacturing districts, and likely to operate, in all districts, as an obstruction to employment generally.

In discussing the proposed alteration of the principle of assessment as it regards small tenements in populous towns, the committee seem disposed to yield to the instances and arguments which have been adduced, and to impose the assessment on the landlord instead of the tenant in such cases. As to the limitation (extent) of such an exception from the general rule of assessing the occupier, the bill lately introduced into parliament by the Poor Law Committee judiciously confines it to parishes where the rent of houses forms above three-fourths of the total rental.

The unsuccessful attempts at rating the HUNDRED in aid of any one of its parishes overburthened with poor have attracted the notice of the Committee. Nothing perhaps proves the inexperience of the legislators who have bequeathed to us the poor law system, more than such an enactment, which, if carried into effect, would place every parish and every parish officer in the situation of the magistrates, who are now by law empowered to give away the money of other people; and would add the temptation, that-in so far as the poor-rates can be made to lessen wages-the poor-rates levied on other parishes would go into the pockets of those assessed in the overburthened parish. We need not endeavour to specify the frauds to which this would give rise. The Committee are of opinion that such assistance, if granted at all, should be derived from the COUNTY; but this under regulations which we do not discuss, as thinking that no modification can render advisable a power to assess a county in aid of the negligence or mismanagement of a particular parish in it; besides that it would be highly impolitic to enact prospectively a sort of average desolation, which in the event might thus extend over a whole county at once, instead of giving warning by the failure of parish after parish. Even the maintenance of the poor by a NATIONAL ASSESSMENT has been proposed by some unreflecting innovators: the observation of the Committee on this subject is unanswerable, and it is also in a certain degree applicable to the foregoing proposal. They refer to the impossibility of devising any adequate means to check the demands upon such a fund, when every excess in parochial disbursements would be merged in the general expenditure of the empire.'

-p. 11.

The next object to which the Committee have turned their attention is surely most important, the means of affording special encouragement and facility to meritorious industry for rescuing itself from the evils of an habitual reliance upon parochial relief;' and they

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

$ 2

lic,)

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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 personal respectability, and in its extent the bond of every society in which property is well secured,—that is, of civilized nation earth.

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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 are, 1,371,948.