to perish from hunger, because it has parents who cannot, from the scarcity of employment, work for it. This distinction evidently rests on the assumption, that every man who is able to work, is able constantly to maintain himself and his family by his labour; it stands upon falsehood, and it is at variance with every principle of justice and equity. In respect of wives and children, it is most cruel; for it makes them responsible for the misfortunes or misconduct of husbands and parents. We are saying nothing against reforms in the Poor Laws; on the contrary, we wish to recommend them. The administration of them is susceptible of great improvement. We will speak, in the first place, of the practice which prevails in some counties, of placing the whole labourers of a parish, including those who have employment, on the poor-rates. When this practice has been so loudly and generally reprobated, why has it not been abolished? Relief should be granted to such able-bodied labourers only as cannot procure work. In many villages the administration of the Poor Laws is almost as perfect as it could be rendered; no bad systems prevail; the overseer has the conduct of the poor constantly under his eyes, and their conduct and his own are constantly under the eyes of the whole village; he has the means for enabling him, and the stimulants for inciting him, to discharge his duty properly; therefore things are well managed. In towns the case is widely different. There, those who distribute parish relief neglect their duty very greatly; and the character and conduct of those who receive it are not properly inspected. Hence abuseshence it is, that excellent laws are made, by vicious administration, to befriend the idle and dissolute. In towns, the practice prevails largely of eking out bad wages with parish relief. But it is bad management in other things than the Poor Laws, which causes the southern counties to be so much oppressed with pauperism. In the northern counties, the unmarried servants of all ages have been, and still are, to a great extent, boarded and lodged in the farmer's house. Frequently he has sat at the head of the table with them, and at the same fire side. From such a system, the servant ceases to regard the dwellings of his parents as a home as soon as he enters into service; he has nothing to buy but a few clothes, therefore he can save a small part of his wages; his conduct is properly restrained; he is accustomed to a good standard of living, and he is instructed in good principles and habits. The female ser vant has the same advantages. From all this flows the preventive of improvident marriage the means of selfsupport under loss of employmentand the funds, the qualifications, and the incentives for travelling from one place to another in quest of employment. In the southern counties, the practice prevails of causing the servants of all ages to provide their own board and lodging. Boys and girls thus grow to maturity in the feeling that they have no other home than the dwellings of their parents: the single of all ages become as much fixtures in their respective parishes as the married people; the whole of their wages is absorbed by a miserable subsistence, and they are thrown on the poor-rates the moment they lose their employment; they are destitute of instruction; their conduct is not duly controlled, and they are without the means and hope of bettering their condition. In consequence, they vegetate in a kind of barbarism, morally chained to the same parish; and they marry and multiply like similar half-barbarians in Ireland. If these unmarried servants were treated as such servants are treated in the northern counties, they would rarely need parish relief, and London and other large places would constantly absorb a large proportion of them. The Bill now before Parliament for preventing settlements from being gained by service, will, we are pretty sure, produce exactly the reverse of what it is intended to produce. At present, if a single man think good to travel fifty, or one hundred, or two hundred miles from home in quest of employment, he has a certainty that good conduct will soon gain him a parish wherever he may be able to fix himself. If this Bill pass, he will know that, if he establish himself so far from home and be visited by loss of employment, sickness, &c., he must be sent the whole distance back again. That which at present forms the great encouragement to the single to travel to distant parts in search of workand it is the single only who can af ford to do so-will be destroyed. An other of the worst characteristics of this Bill is, it will give the town such a pernicious advantage over the village. In such a place as London, speaking generally, it is scarcely possible for labourers and mechanics to gain a settlement by occupation. When they marry, they find the cheapest houses above their reach, and they live in lodgings which they are continually changing; under this Bill, therefore, they would never gain a settlement in it. The mechanics, labourers, &c. and, of course, the paupers of large places, always consist, in a great degree, we may say, principally, of those who have removed to them from villages; in consequence, by this sagacious bill, London and other large places will be relieved in a great measure from paupers and poor-rates, while the villages will be overwhelmed with both. As the surplus village population can only hope to find employment in large places, the Legislature ought to afford it every facility and temptation for removing to such places; but this bill does exactly the contrary. It is idle to speak of promoting the circulation of labour between one village and another, because every village has an excess of labourers. But if the pressure of supporting the poor is to be materially reduced, it must be done by other things than changes in the Poor Laws. The perfecting of these laws in letter and administration, will accomplish comparatively but little; and the abolition of them will make the pressure still greater. So long as there shall be a large surplus of population, so long will this surplus be a heavy burden upon the community, whether there be Poor Laws or none. Supported it must be, and supported it will be, either by voluntary bounty, or by its own depredations. Remove this surplus in so far as it is regular and permanent in its existence, and then able-bodied labourers will press but little on the poor-rates. Here is the great remedy. It seems to be pretty certain that were it not for the influx of Irish labourers, there would be no such sur plus of any moment in England and Scotland. We say not that this influx can be, or ought to be, prevented; but knowledge of the source of the evil is no small matter. Now, is it impos. sible to remove this surplus? No; all admit the possibility. It may be done by cultivating the waste lands at home, or by emigration. Why, then, is nothing attempted? As to cultiva ting the waste lands at home, it is alleged, that though it is practicable, it would not yield adequate profit. Because it would not remunerate a private individual, it is asserted that it would not remunerate the State. In such a matter, the interests of the State differ wholly from those of an individual; the latter must look for his return in the shape of rent; in so far as he cannot get sufficient rent, his expenditure is a dead loss to him. But if the State expend millions, for which it can get no return in the shape of rent, still, if the expenditure relieve it from a heavy burden, and add considerably to its revenue, trade, wealth, and power, it yields ample profits. Looked at in this point of view, we are confident that the cultivation of the waste lands at home would be highly profitable to the State. But if this cannot be thought of, why is not emigration resorted to in respect of Ireland? No answer can be given. Mr W. Horton has certainly been shamefully dealt with by his friends, official and unofficial. Will any man say, that the excess of popu lation, particularly that of Ireland, will be removed by natural causes, or that such causes will ever prevent it from increasing? No. All own, that this excess produces the most calamitous consequences in Ireland, and inflicts the most baleful evils on England and Scotland-and that, if no remedy be applied, it will continue to increase; yet not a finger is to be raised to apply a remedy! When we look at this, we are almost compelled to ask, Why do Ministers and Parliament exist? If any man wish to form a correct opinion of those swaggering, blustering people, who, in these days, call themselves the only philosophers and statesmen, he has only to look at the fact, that, amidst the wild, wholesale, multifarious experiments and innovations of late years, a stupendous national evil like this has never been touched. The Free-trade measures form an. other prolific source of pauperism. Not only have they deprived numbers wholly of employment, but they have so far cut down wages in various callings, that the labourer cannot earn what will support his family. They place before the manufacturer, or pro ducer, the alternative of selling his goods at a certain price or losing his market; and, in consequence, he must have labour at the lowest price, or he cannot employ it. It is foolishly ar gued by some, that if they bring no considerable quantity of foreign goods into the country, they do no mischief: the truth is, if they occasion no import of foreign goods whatever, they produce incalculable evil. To prevent the import, the workmen employed in a whole trade are kept constantly in penury. An exquisite specimen of the wisdom of modern legislation is presented in the fact, that, at the very moment when our legislators have enacted laws, which practically prohibit the labourer from obtaining such wages as are essential for the proper support of his family, they are protesting, that he ought to save as much when he has employment as will support him when he is destitute of it, and are endeavouring indirectly to compel him to do so by law. If the working classes generally have a sufficiency of employment at sufficient wages, there will be nothing to complain of in respect of poor-rates. This is obvious to all men. It must, however, never be forgotten, that the sufficiency must be in wages as well as in employment. It is clear, that a sufficiency like this is not to be created by changes in the Poor Laws. The quantity of employment must be increased, or the population must be reduced; and commercial laws must afford full scope to the master, for enabling him to give adequate wages to his workmen. Let no man hope to get rid of the burden of supporting the poor by the abolition of the Poor Laws. He may, indeed, get rid of poor-rates, and he may be deaf to every appeal to his charity-he may never contribute a farthing to the poor from legal compulsion, or in voluntary gifts -and all he will gain from this will be, the loss of infinitely more than his poor-rates amount to. The country at large may rest assured, that if it will not support its poor in one way, it must support them in another; and that, if it deprive them of parish relief, they will deprive it of something far more valuable. What we have said relates solely to England. If the people of Scotland find their present mode of administer ing their Poor Laws a beneficial one, let them adhere to it, and by us they shall not be censured. We will, how ever, observe, that the law now in progress through Parliament, for requiring seven years' residence as the qua lification for a settlement in Scotland, appears to us to be neither a wise nor a just one. If it be necessary that a labourer, when he loses employment in one place, should endeavour to procure it in another, it is certainly necessary to give him all proper inducements for doing so. A law like this is calculated to deter him from it; it must operate against the circulation of labour, and the equalization of parish burdens. A place derives all the benefit from a labourer, which flows from his expending his wages in it for three, or six years, while he is in employment; and then, when he is in distress, it sends him to some other place, which perhaps never received any be nefit from him whatever. This is highly unjust. As a means of getting rid of the evils which flow from the influx of Irish labourers, we imagine it will have small efficacy. With regard to Ireland, we are recommending nothing in respect of Poor Laws. In some parts of it such laws could not at present be introduced, and in other parts they would operate beneficially. That it is prac ticable to put the whole into the state necessary for enabling them to yield it incalculable benefits, is our decided conviction; and we are further convinced, that, not only for its own good, but for that of the empire at large, it ought to be put into this state, and to have Poor Laws. If the Irish writers and orators, instead of converting the question into a matter of party fury between Protestant and Catholic, would examine it impartially and dispassionately on its own merits, they would, we think, do much service to the distressed and starving part of their countrymen. If Ireland had possessed Poor Laws like England, it never would have suffered what it has suffered; the landlords would have been compelled to look after their estates, and the subletting, penury, and barbarism, would have been prevented. If it be now impossible to introduce Poor Laws into Ireland, we may at least be permitted to lament that they were not introduced when it was possible, if we may do no more. If the absence of them have materially contributed to bring on Ireland miseries alike horrible and irremediable, we pray Heaven, that the abolition of them may never bring similar miseries on England. INDEX TO VOLUME XXIII. Agriculture and Commerce, remarks on, Anatomy of Drunkenness, review of the, 481 Song II. 772-Song III. 773-Song Letter on, from a Bengal Engineer, 914 Blue Stockings over the Border, 500 ›› British Drama, the causes of its decline, 33 Mr M'Queen on, 63 to the Duke of Wellington on the, 891 raries, review of Leigh Hunt's publica Calendar, the Shepherd's, 214, 509 Change of Ministry, on the causes of the Christmas Dreams, 1 Christopher in Edinburgh, and Christopher Churchyards, Chapters on. Chap. XIII. Connor M'Glochlin, a Tale of the Lower Cookery, remarks on the systems of Ude, Country Banks, the, and the Bank of Eng- Danger of Catholic Emancipation, Letter Deaths, lists of, 270, 663 Deaths, military, 263, 265, 654, 659 Dream, a Midsummer Day's, 803 Drunkenness, review of the Anatomy of, Duel, Military, at the Isle of Wight, 440 Emigration, remarks on, 191, 615 Flagstaffe, Major, Passages in the Life of, Frithioff, a Swedish Poem, review of, 137 601 Haunted Churchyard, the, 55 Health and Longevity, review of Sure Illustrations of Zoology, review of Wil- Inclosure Bills, remarks on, 195 Irish Yeoman, the, a Tale of the Year Journey in the Kingdom of Kerry, notes Kerry, Kingdom of, Notes of a Journey Landscape, wintry, 293 A Letter from a Whig-hater, 178-Second... Letter from Senex, on the Danger of Ca- from the Ettrick Shepherd, relating from a Bengal Engineer, on the Liverpool, on the projected Cathedral at, Lockhart's Life of Burns, review of, 667 Lute, the broken, 291 M'Queen, Mr, letter from, on British Man with the Mouth, the, 597 Memoir of the late Henry Fuseli, Esq. Meteorological Tables, 259, 652 Mordaunt's translation of Peace, a Come- Narrative of the War in Spain and Portu- National Debt, Whig plan for its reduc- Nature's Farewell, 874 Noctes Ambrosianæ, No. XXXV. The North, Old, and Young North; or Chris- Notes of a Journey in the Kingdom of Nova Castro, a Tragedy, by Joam Bap- Ode on the distant prospect of a good din- ner, 796-Lines written on the back, Omnipresence of the Deity, review of Peace, a Comedy, by Aristophanes, review Minced Pie, a Christmas Carol, 252— Poor Laws, English, remarks on, 923— 256 Presents, Christmas, 7 Public Men and Parties, 520-The Liver- |