the poor-laws, parishes will be allowed to apply a portion of their rates, under certain restrictions, to aid the emigration of their redundant labourers.

But since emigration can scarcely be expected to remove the whole surplus within a considerable period, it remains to devise means for employing them in the interim in the most profitable manner, or rather with the least pecuniary loss to their parishes, and the least injury to their own moral and industrious character. For this purpose the chief requisites are system and organization. Parish labourers should no longer be left, as now, to the sham employment of the overseer, who, serving the office grudgingly, and being himself fully engaged in general with his own business, is neither competent nor willing to take the trouble to find profitable employment for them, and contents himself with ordering them into the quarry or the gravel-pit-the parish pound or the market-place-in order that he may be satisfied that, though they do no work for the parish, they do none for themselves or any other party. An immense waste of labour is in this way continually taking place in country parishes, where it might be usefully employed, but for the total absence of judgment, system, and a proper scheme of management and superintendence-things which cannot proceed from the discordant elements of a parish vestry. Moreover, the overseers and vestrymen of agricultural parishes are, for the most part, tenants at will, having but a temporary interest in their occupations, and therefore indisposed to bestir themselves in finding out means for employing labour in permanent improvements, the benefits of which will not be sensible for a considerable time.

The landowners (who after all are the real rate-payers) would, from their superior intelligence and deeper interest, be more fitly entrusted with the task of setting on foot such works of general or local utility as may give employment to the surplus labour of the parishes in which their estates lie. If in every county, or rather, perhaps, in every petty sessions' division, a committee or board of works were formed out of the magistracy and a certain number of landowners of the district, elected for the purpose by the parish vestries such a body might, we think, be able to devise means of employment for the parish paupers within their district, on a broad scale of general utility, and of such a nature as not to interfere with the ordinary demand for routine labour. The board might receive tenders from individuals desirous of having works of this character performed; and such undertakings being conducted under paid superintendents, by large gangs of parish labourers, it would not be difficult to obtain full work from them. Arrangements might easily be established by which the board, acting

through

through its secretary or surveyor, should charge against each parish the maintenance or necessary pay of its pauper labourers while employed, and place to its credit the proceeds of their labour. New roads, or alterations in the old, railroads, canals, drainage levels, inclosures, or plantations of wastes, and other improvements of a public or private nature, would probably be undertaken for this purpose; and the result would be, if not a return to the full amount of the sums expended, at least the creation of many useful and valuable works, by an expenditure which is now absolutely thrown away; at the same time that a check would be given to the demoralization and habitual idleness that are now stamped into the character of such labourers as are unfortunately driven to apply to their parishes for temporary employment. The pay of these surplus parish labourers should be kept perfectly distinct from that of the infirm paupers.

And

it is questionable whether much benefit would not arise from levying one-half, if not the whole of it (under the name of labourrate as distinguished from poor-rate) upon the owners instead of the occupiers of rateable property. All rates, we are aware, ultimately come out of rent; but landlords themselves appear scarcely to be sensible of this, and to need the stimulus of direct taxation to make them take the requisite steps, which none can so well take as themselves, for relieving their estates from the burthen of a redundant population.

Indeed, so little exertion seems to be made by the generality of land-owners to check the rapid growth of the poor-rate, that we can hardly suppose them alive to the fact, that of the total sum of eight millions and upwards annually levied under that name, seven-tenths, or more than five millions and a half, are a deduction from the rental of their estates, (only three-tenths being levied from the vast mass of property of other kinds,)—that the paupers have by law a prior claim to the remainder, if their necessities require it; and that the process by which that remainder is daily encroached upon as pauperism increases, must, from its very nature-unchecked by vigorous exertions on their part-proceed in an accelerated ratio. There are parishes in England whose whole rental has been already swallowed up by the poor-rate, and whose lands, being no longer capable of defraying the cost of cultivating them, and of supporting the settled poor, are thrown out of cultivation, and their entire labouring population out of work; in which case the whole charge of their maintenance is transferred to the neighbouring parishes as an addition to their own poor-rate. Should their rental, in turn, (as is highly probable,) prove insufficient to support this double burthen, their lands likewise must go out of cultivation, and their labourers out of work, and the combined and accumulated charge of poor-rate be transferred to others,

VOL. L. NO. C.

2 B

others, which can hardly fail to sink in the same manner under it. Once commenced, the tendency of this process evidently is to spread on all sides like a plague-sore, with accelerated rapidity, annihilating rent-extinguishing cultivation-throwing entire parishes out of tillage, and adding hundreds of farmers and thousands of labourers to the daily swelling lists of pauperism. Landlords must be up and stirring if they desire to avoid the same fate. Let not the land-owners, however, imagine that they can escape the catastrophe that awaits them, by a compounding with the present system after the manner of the labour-rate' scheme. We heartily agree in the reprobation with which the poor-law commissioners view the principle of the act now happily about to expire, which gave a temporary sanction to that iniquity. It went to legalize and encourage the worst parts of the allowance-system. Its tendency is to reduce the whole labouring population to the condition of serfs, adscript to the soil of their parishes-nay, even of particular farms; compelled to work for particular masters, who are in their turn compelled to employ particular labourers. Freedom of contract between master and man has been always justly considered the sine quá non of their industry and mutual benefit; and this the labour-rate entirely destroys. It is well known that the best, almost the only good, labourers now left in the country, are those who reside in parishes where they have no legal settlement, and consequently are aware that their employment depends entirely on their character and conduct. The immediate effect of the labour-rate, wherever adopted, is to cause the discharge of these men; their masters being practically fined in the amount of their wages for employing ex-parishioners. They are sent back to their parishes, there to unlearn their industrious habits upon the highways or in the gravel-pits. The general adoption of the scheme (and if permitted in any parishes, all must come into it in self-defence) can only be to destroy what industry and independence are left among labourers, and reduce the whole to one common level of servile sluggishness.

Before concluding we would earnestly recommend to the consideration of the Poor-law Commissioners the proposal which several years since was made in this Review, for the substitution of a compulsory system of savings-banks for the poor-rate. The more we have examined the subject, the more thoroughly have we been persuaded of the practicability and inestimable advantages of some such commutation. One of the worst features of the poor-law-the worst, indeed, by far-is what Mr. Hale so strongly dwells upon, that the acceptance of parish relief, however necessary it may be rendered by unavoidable casualty, destroys that honest pride of independence which is the main stay of industry,

industry. But were relief to be obtained in distress, not from a public charitable provision like the poor-rate, but from a fund composed of a portion of the earnings of the labourer himself, laid up by the providence of the state for this very purpose-to accumulate at interest until it was needed-no more degradation would be felt in applying for it, under temporary calamity, than in the case of the members of a benefit society, or the subscribers to a health-insurance office. The poor man would retain his sense of self-respect, and with it his moral character and his pride of industrious independence. All the hateful effects of pauperism would cease, while the advantages of the present system would be preserved.

Many laudable attempts have been made of late to combine and extend the advantages of savings-banks and benefit societies. But experience has proved, what might have been foreseen, that while the poor-law holds out the certainty of relief under every casualty, it is hopeless to expect that the labouring class will voluntarily submit to privation, and pay for that which they are sure of obtaining gratuitously when they require it. In Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and several other counties, benefit societies were founded a few years since on a wide scale, and under judicious regulations, offering to the poor the means of insuring themselves against want in every shape, upon the most safe and equitable terms. But we believe in every instance these institutions have fallen still-born to the ground from the want of contributors; and we shall be very greatly mistaken if the advantages offered by the late Annuity Act are not equally disregarded. The benefit-clubs which do succeed in obtaining members are only, in truth, apologies for convivial meetings. The depositors in savings-banks belong to the class of domestic servants and artisans, rather than to the inferior class of labourers. The feeling is all but universal among the latter, Why should we sacrifice our money only to relieve the parish from the necessity of providing for us in sickness and infirmity?' So long as the poor-law exists, (and no one is so insane, it is to be hoped, as to desire its abolition without providing any substitute,) the only mode whereby the advantages of these excellent institutions can be extended to the labouring class, will be by enforcing their contributions-by a law which shall compulsorily take a portion of the earnings of every labourer during his years of health and vigour to provide for his season of exhaustion or sickness.

In employing these phrases, we are, however, putting the plan in its very worst aspect. A tax upon wages would, of course, be levied from, and paid by, the employers of labour; and would in reality be a poor-rate, under a better form and on a fairer and more equitable system. It would be a contribution from masters

to a fund for assuring their labourers from destitution; and would throw the expense of maintaining the aged, impotent, and sick poor, precisely where it ought in justice to fall-viz., on the persons who have profited by their labour, or that of their natural protectors, while capable of work. At present it happens, not unfrequently, that a capitalist-a manufacturer, for examplehires the services of a large number of labourers for a certain time, for the bare cost of maintaining them while in health and the prime of life; and, after reaping a profit from their exertions, shifts upon the landed property in his neighbourhood the burthen of maintaining them, so soon as accident, sickness, or the natural exhaustion of their strength in the course of a life of toil, deprive them of their value as instruments of gain. The plan proposed, in addition to its other advantages, accomplishes the desirable object of charging the support of the aged and infirm part of the labouring population on the employers of labour, exactly in proportion to the amount of labour they purchase from the ablebodied. It adjusts the burthen with perfect precision upon the parties who are in equity liable to it, and seems to be an improvement of the poor-laws completely in harmony with their spirit and intention.

The amount of contribution required for the purpose of insuring sufficient relief, under every casualty, to supersede the necessity of parish assistance, is so trifling that, whether it would really fall to be paid by the master or the labourer, (and we are aware that political arithmeticians will differ upon this point,) can matter little. It is clear from Mr. Becher's tables, that a weekly payment of sixpence, or but one penny for every working day, commencing from the age of twenty, will assure to every labourer a weekly allowance, in sickness, of ten shillings bed-lying, and five shillings walking, pay, an annuity of five shillings weekly after the age of sixty-five, and a payment of ten pounds to his relatives on his death! Were every labourer in the kingdom assured of relief to this extent in case of need, the poor-rate would well-nigh be extinguished. And how little would the payment required for this object be felt by the parties themselves! *

A contribution of this kind might very properly be required from every householder in the kingdom, for every member of *Were the adoption of this scheme confined only to those labourers who are now under the age of twenty, it would begin immediately to lessen the poor-rate, and extinguish it wholly after the lapse of a single generation. But it might be applied to labourers of all ages, and the amount of relief insured to them on the occurrence of casualty lessened in due proportion to the age of each; by which the parish-pay to them when in want of it would be diminished pro tanto or finally, the payments made on account of every labourer above twenty might be kept separate, as in the savings-banks, and the sum accumulated in his name disbursed to him when the necessity arises, which to that extent would relieve his parish from the burthen of his maintenance.