through his work, such as it is, with the reluctance of a slave. His pay, earned by importunity or fraud, or even violence, is not husbanded with the carefulness which would be given to the results of industry, but wasted in the intemperance to which his ample leisure invites him.'

Even this is not the worst.

In all ranks of society,' (say the Commissioners,) the great sources of happiness and virtue are the domestic affections, and this is particularly the case among those who have so few resources as the labouring classes. Now, pauperism seems to be an engine for the purpose of disconnecting each member of a family from all the others; of reducing all to the state of domesticated animals, fed, lodged, and provided for by the parish, without mutual dependence or mutual interest.

At the time of my journey,' says Mr Cowell, the acquaintance I had with the practical operation of the Poor-Laws led me to suppose that the pressure of the sum annually raised upon the rate-payers, and its progressive increase, constituted the main inconvenience of the PoorLaw system. The experience of a very few weeks served to convince me that this evil, however great, sinks into insignificance when compared with the dreadful effects which the system produces on the morals and happiness of the lower orders. It is as difficult to convey to the mind of the reader a true and faithful impression of the intensity and malignancy of the evil in this point of view, as it is by any description, however vivid, to give an adequate idea of the horrors of a shipwreck or a pestilence. A person must converse with paupers-must enter workhouses, and examine the inmates-must attend at the parish paytable-before he can form a just conception of the moral debasement which is the offspring of the present system; he must hear the pauper threaten to abandon his wife and family unless more money is allowed him-threaten to abandon an aged bed-ridden mother, to turn her out of his house and lay her down at the overseer's door, unless he is paid for giving her shelter-he must hear parents threatening to follow the same course with regard to their sick children—he must see mothers coming to receive the reward of their daughters' ignominy, and witness women in cottages quietly pointing out, without even the question being asked, which are their children by their husband, and which by other men previous to marriage-and when he finds that he can scarcely step into a town or parish in any county without meeting with some instance or other of this character, he will no longer consider the pecuniary pressure on the rate-payer as the first in the class of evils which the PoorLaws have entailed the community.' upon

*

It may be said, however, and so says Mr Scrope, that these calamities arose, not from out-door relief, but from the form in which much of it was given; and, that to prevent them it is only necessary to draw a broad line between parish or pauper

*App. (A.) Part I. p. 583.

' labourers, and independent labourers working for private employers, by prohibiting any relief to the able-bodied on any account, except in the shape of work on account of the public, which is in fact only returning to the true principle of the law of 'Elizabeth.' *

This is not returning to the law of Elizabeth; it is returning to the fourth, of the five modes of relief, enumerated by the English Commissioners of Inquiry, and termed by them Parish Employment.' Under this system, as the transaction is not voluntary on the part of the employer, the terms of the contract, if contract it can be called, must be fixed by some third party; that is to say, by an agent delegated by the Government, or, in other words, by a Magistrate. As the employment is eleemosynary, as it is a duty thrown on the rate-payers, not for their benefit, but for that of the labourer, the wages, or rather the allowance, must be regulated by principles totally different from those which regulate natural wages. The magistrate cannot permit less to be paid than the sum which he thinks necessary for the support of the applicants, and cannot require that they shall receive more. The weak must have as much as the strong, the ignorant as the skilful, the careless as the diligent, the dissolute as the well conducted. The only principle of distinction is the number of persons constituting the family. The unmarried receive the minimum; the man with only a wife somewhat more; and where there are children they are paid for by the head. As the ordinary motives to exertion and good conduct are wanting, as no parish or union labourer has any hopes or fears from his employer, the magistrate again must interfere. He cannot indeed reward diligence, but for that very reason he must punish indolence, since the fear of punishment is the only stimulus left. How he is to punish, it is not easy to say. The offender cannot lose his place, his allowance cannot be reduced, and public opinion would not allow him to be flogged. If a sufficient number of prisons can be built, the punishment will probably be imprisonment.

If the experiment had never been tried, we might infer from the known principles of human nature that such a moral regimen as this must be corruptive. It is obviously impossible that a man can be subjected to the hopelessness, and the irresponsibility of a slave, without incurring the vices of slavery. But unhappily the experiment has been tried, and tried for nearly half a century, on the widest scale, and under peculiarly favourable circumstances.

* Page 44.

It has been tried in a country possessing the most industrious peasantry; the largest and most intelligent middle class; and the ablest, the most active, and the most practical aristocracy in Europe. Its result was shown in the fires, riots, and outrages of 1830. It was on the parish roads, and in the parish gravelpit, that the almost treasonable robbery and devastation of that unhappy period were organized. It was in those ergastula that the labourer acquired his hatred of work, and his hatred of his employer. It was there that he found himself treated as a mere incumbrance-fed, lodged, and clothed, because the magistrate so ordered it; and kept to work, not because the work was profitable to his parish, but because it was painful to him. It was there that he learnt the revolutionary doctrine, that society is divided into the rich and the poor, and that it is the duty of the rich, out of their inexhaustible funds, to provide for the comfortable subsistence of the poor, however large their number, however reckless their improvidence, and however valueless their labour. It was there that he was taught to feel every task as a punishment, every privation as a robbery, and all the evils of life as wrongs inflicted by his superiors. The fourteen Folios of the English Commissioners are a small part of the evidence which shows that, corrupting and degrading as all pauperism is, the most corrupt and the most degraded of paupers is the man on parish employment. This is the state to which Mr Scrope would reduce the bulk of the Irish labourers; and he cites as an authority in his favour, the great denouncers of this system, the English Commissioners of Inquiry!

As a further authority, Mr Scrope quotes the following passage: We have given a very brief outline of the institutions of those 'portions of the Continent which appear from the returns to have adopted the English principle of acknowledging in every person a right to be supported by the public. It will be observed, that in no country, except, perhaps, the Canton of Berne, has com 'pulsory relief produced evils resembling, either in intensity or 6 extent, those which we have experienced, and, that in the majority "of the nations which have adopted it, the existing system works well;" and he quotes the passage as if it formed part of the Report. It is a quotation, however, from a different work-the Preface to Foreign Communications on Poor- Laws; which was not publish ed till nearly a year after the Commission had been dissolved, and the Poor-Law Amendment Bill passed; and is signed only by its author, Mr Senior. If Mr Scrope had read this work, he would have perceived that it supports him as little as his other authorities. As the passage in question has been quoted for the

same purpose by others, we will extract, long as it is, Mr Senior's statement of the circumstances which have occasioned compulsory relief to work well in several nations of Europe.*

દ

1. Among some of the nations in question villeinage still exists. Now, where slavery in any of its forms prevails, the right of the slave or villein to support, is a necessary and a safe consequence. It is necessary, because a person who is not a free agent cannot provide for himself. It is safe, because one of the principal evils of pauperism, improvidence, can scarcely exist among slaves, and the power of the master enables him to prevent idleness and fraud. The poor-laws of Russia, therefore, if they can be called poor-laws, are merely parts of her system of slavery.

2. Among most of the other nations in question the compulsory system is in its infancy. Denmark has only lately got rid of slavery, and her poor-laws date from 1798. Those of Sweden, on their present form, of Mecklenburg, Saxony, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria, all bear the appearance of recency. In Wurtemberg assessments had been long obsolete, until they were resintroduced during the famine of 1817. only country in which the compulsory system appears to have continued as long as it has in England, is that in which it has produced effects resembling those which have followed it with us, namely, the Canton de Berne.

6

The

3. Another circumstance which renders compulsory relief less dangerous in the countries which we have been considering than in our own, is the economical situation of their labouring population. The class of persons without visible property, which constitutes the bulk of Englishsociety, forms the small minority of that of the north of Europe. The Norwegian return states, (698 and 699,) that at the last census in 1825, out of a population of 1,051,318 persons, there were 59,464 freeholders. As by 59,464 freeholders must be meant 59,464 heads of families, or about 300,000 individuals, the freeholders must form more than a fourth of the whole population. Mr Macgregor states, (p. 300,) that in Denmark, (by which Zealand and the adjoining islands are probably meant,) out of a population of 926, 110, the number of landed proprietors and farmers is 415,110, or nearly one-half. In Sleswick Holstein, out of a population of 604,085, it is. 196,017, or about one-third. The proportion of proprietors and farmers to the whole population is not given in Sweden; but the Stockholm return estimates the average quantity of land annexed to a labourer's habitation at from one to five acres (p. 375;) and though the Gottenburg return gives a lower estimate, it adds, that the peasants possess much of the land. (P. 387.) In Wurtem berg we are told that more than two-thirds of the labouring population are the proprietors of their own habitations,. and that almost all own at

*Preface to Foreign Communications on Poor-Laws, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 21st February, 1834 lxxxvii..

least a garden of from three-quarters of an acre to an acre and a-half.(P. 511.)

‹ And all the returns concur in stating the number of day-labourers to be very small.

The Norwegian report states, that "by law servants should never be hired for a shorter period than a twelvemonth. Employing labourers by the day, though often done in and about towns, is consequently illegal."-(P. 695.) Few day-labourers are to be met with. (P. 698.) The Gottenburg, that "strictly speaking there are in Sweden few labourers on the same footing as in England."—(P. 387.) The Russian, that "the labourers are almost all slaves," and that "the average quantity of land allowed by a proprietor to his slave is fifteen acres.”—(P. 334.) The Danish report, that "the day-labourers form in Zealand and the adjoining islands less than one-fifth, and in Sleswick Holstein less than one-third, of the agricultural population."-(P. 300.) The Wurtemberg report states the labourers to amount to 41,913 (meaning of course heads of families, or about 210,000) individuals out of a population of 1,518,147, being in fact less than one-seventh.-(P. 514.) The Bavarian, that "in the country there are very few day-labourers, as almost every person has some ground of his own, and few are rich enough to hire labour."-(P. 556.)

It is probable, therefore, that the class of persons who in the north of Europe and Germany would be exposed to the temptation of applying for public relief, if it were granted on the same terms as in England, would be a small minority instead of a large majority, and would be perhaps a seventh, a fifth, or at most a third instead of three-fourths, or even a larger proportion of the whole community.

4. But the conditions on which parochial assistance is afforded in the countries in question, form perhaps the principal difference between their systems and that which we have adopted. In England, where the scale and the allowance system prevail, no condition whatever can be said to be imposed on the pauper. What he receives is a mere gratuitous addition to his income. Even where work is required, the hours are in general fewer, and the labour less severe than those of the independent labourer; and the workhouse, the most powerful of our instruments of repression, affords in general food, lodging, clothing, and warmth better than can be found in the cottage, and may be quitted at a day's notice.

But in all the countries which we have been considering, except the Canton de Berne, and perhaps Denmark, the great object of pauper legislation, that of rendering the situation of the pauper less agreeable than that of the independent labourer, has been effectually attained.

'On recurring to the statements which we have extracted, it will be seen that he loses all right to property; that he becomes incapable of contracting marriage while receiving relief; and, in many countries, if he have once received relief, cannot marry until he has reimbursed the parish, or has procured security that his future family shall not become chargeable, or till three years have elapsed since he last received relief. If married, he loses control over his children-he cannot choose his re