sidence or his occupation-and if he once becomes the inmate of a workhouse, he incurs the risk of imprisonment for life. When such are the terms offered by the public, it is easy to understand that none but the really destitute will accept them.

5. The prevalence of habits productive of pauperism is repressed by subjecting the whole labouring population to superintendence and restrictions, which we should consider vexatious. As they are in a great measure interwoven with the laws for the relief of the unemployed, and have been in general already stated, it is not necessary to repeat them.

6. In almost all the countries which have been mentioned, endeavours are made to prevent the existence of a redundant population, by throwing obstacles in the way of improvident marriages. Marriage on the part of persons in the actual receipt of relief, appears to be every where prohibited, and the marriage of those who are not likely to possess the means of independent support, is allowed by very few.

Thus we are told that in Norway no one can marry without "showing, to the satisfaction of the clergyman, that he is permanently settled in such a manner as to offer a fair prospect that he can maintain a family."-(P. 697.)

In Mecklenburg, that "marriages are delayed by conscription in the twenty-second year, and military service for six years; besides, the parties must have a dwelling, without which a clergyman is not permitted to marry them. The men marry at from twenty-five to thirty, the women not much earlier, as both must first gain by service enough to establish themselves."-(P. 423.)

In Saxony, that a man may not marry before he is twenty-one years old, if liable to serve in the army. In Dresden, professionists (by which word artisans are probably meant) may not marry until they become masters in their trade.”—(P. 482.)

In Wurtemberg, that "no man is allowed to marry till his twentyfifth year, on account of his military duties, unless permission be especially obtained or purchased. At that age he must also obtain permission, which is granted on proving that he and his wife would have together sufficient to maintain a family, or to establish themselves; in large towns, say from 800 to 1000 florins, (from £66: 13: 4 to £84:3: 4 ;) in smaller, from 400 to 500 florins; in villages, 200 florins, (£16:13:4.) They must not be persons of disorderly or dissolute lives, drunkards, or under suspicion of crime, and they must not have received any assistance from their parish within the last three years."-(P. 511.)

These are the conditions on which a compulsory Poor-Law has worked well in Northern Europe. That is to say, it has worked well where the bulk of the population possess property; where every motion of the labourer is watched by an inquisitive police and controlled by an arbitrary government; where marriage is forbidden to the indigent; and where the relief itself is a sort of punishment.

Mr Scrope's 'Letters' appear to have been written very rapidly. This has led him to cite authorities by hearsay. If he had read

Dr Doyle's Pamphlet on a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor,* he would not have asserted that his views were those of "Dr Doyle.

There is no man whose opinions on Irish questions deserve more to be studied than 'Dr Doyle. His acquaintance with the character and the wants of the people was intimate. His sympathy with their sufferings was intense; his indignation against their misgovernment, vehement. He was always an honest, but, it must be admitted, frequently an unsafe adviser. As is generally the case with men of strong feelings and vivid imaginations, both his opinions and his reasonings both the premises which he assumed, and the inferences which he drewwere often influenced by his passions; and they were sometimes tinctured by the ascetic peculiarities of his creed. 'His great defect was the want of political science. He believed it to 'be unspeakably wicked in the rulers of a people to throw obstacles in the way of marriage; and that the state is at war ' with heaven when it seeks to check the multiplication of the human kind.'t He believed that the accumulation of wealth ' in large masses, is one of the chief causes of the disorganization of society in these kingdoms.' That the English PoorLaw has been beneficial by checking luxury and arresting wealth.' § That the advance of capital, knowledge, skill, and industry, produce an accumulation of wealth and a diffusion of luxury, of which the certain result is a revolution, that is, a 'dissolution of society into its original elements, when men were 'all equal, and property and social laws had no fixed and settled existence.' I would therefore,' he says, adopt a sumptu"ary law, or a law of Ostracism, or, if not those laws, I would "surely seek a poor-law to check the progress of society on its • road to ruin.'

6

6

But from his Poor-Law, he carefully excludes the right to relief. To the objection, that a legal provision for the poor in'vites to idleness, and renders the poor improvident,' he answers, Why is this objection brought forward? why are we to be employed in combating an error which does not concern us ? Who has thought of introducing into Ireland a system of poor'laws which would vest in the improvident a right to subsistence ' at the public cost? The objection is applicable only to such a system as would entitle every man, poor and without employment, to claim from the magistrate as a matter of right, sub

* Ridgway, 1831. § P. 48.

† P. 27.

P. 15.

|| P. 60.*

sistence for himself and his family. Such a system exists in England, but is not proposed by any person as adapted to the present state of Ireland* No friend to the Irish poor contemplates the introduction into Ireland of the English poor-laws. It is proposed to withhold all recognition of a right to relief, and thus to shut out unworthy claimants. Such were the opinions of Mr Scrope's third authority, Dr Doyle.

Before we finally part from Mr Scrope, we must add some remarks on the few argumentative parts of his Pamphlet, and some on its general tone.

.

Ireland,' he repeats over and over, now supports her entire 'population; badly enough, but still somehow, and by somebody, they are now supported. My proposal is to put the burthen on the right shoulders." So, because the Irish labouring population are now supported, because by severe economy they get a maintenance so poor that he calls it starvation, he infers, that it is practicable to give them an adequate maintenance ;-such a maintenance as the state, if it undertake the business at all, must provide; and to give them that maintenance at the expense of a single portion of the community-the landlords. Because, with the foresight, the privations, the shifts, and the expedients by which an independent labourer earns and applies his pittance-getting sixpence a-day and living on it-he infers, that the landlords can, and therefore ought to be compelled, to give them as a matter of right, in return for labour which will not be remunerative, sufficient wages to support a family? As well might he say, England now supports 18,000,000 persons. Why should she not have a standing army of 1,500,000 of men ? She supports them as labourers; 'why should she not support them as soldiers?' But this comparison would be too favourable to Mr Scrope. First, because instead of costing more, it costs less to maintain an English soldier than an English labourer. To represent fairly the absurdity of Mr Scrope's proposal, we must suppose, that while an English labourer costs two shillings a-day, a soldier costs four shillings. And, secondly, because the expense would be thrown on the whole income of England, that is to say, on a fund amounting annually to about L.300,000,000, Mr Scrope's two million and a half of poor are to be maintained by a fund of about L.10,000,000 a-year.

Another ground on which Mr Serope rests the practicability of his scheme, is the export of food from Ireland. A country,

* P. 25, 26.

† P. 46, 47.

P. 33.

he says, which exports annually from fourteen to sixteen millions worth of food in corn, butter, pork, swine, sheep and 'cattle, can hardly be said to be deficient in food.'* As well might he have said, the hand-loom weavers of Dublin, who annually export many thousand yards of costly tabinets, cannot be said to be in want of clothing. There can be no want of food in the Highlands of Scotland, or they would not export their black cattle. The Poles must have an abundance of wheat, or the warehouses of Dantzic would not be filled with it. It is precisely because they want food, that the Scotch export their cattle, the Poles their wheat, and the Irish their swine and sheep. To export its raw produce may sometimes be the privilege of a rich country, which produces, like America, more than it wants, but is always the necessity of a poor country. Poland does not produce more wheat than her people could consume. She does not produce so much; but they cannot afford to eat it; they export it, and live on rye. So the occupier of a rood of land near a town may be miserably poor, yet send to the town every year L.10 worth of food. He may grow asparagus while he is starving. As long as Ireland continues to be agricultural, and to feed on potatoes, and as long as property in land is allowed to exist there, Ireland will export corn, butter, swine, sheep, and cattle. But this exportation shows not her riches, but her poverty. So far from showing her power to support the burthen which Mr Serope would throw on her, its shows her inability.

We said that we had some remarks to make on the general tone of Mr Scrope's Letters.' That tone we cannot avoid calling anarchical. If his advice be rejected, insurrection and revolution are not only predicted, but justified. We are told,

that,

But for the peculiar circumstance of her close geographical connexion with a country so powerful, tranquil, and, on the whole, well governed, as Britain, Ireland would long since have righted herself by a revolution. The peasantry of France were not half so much oppressed by their landlords and the law of the "Ancien Regime," as those of Ireland are now by her existing regime, which no one can doubt depends on English bayonets alone for its continuance. But this long. peace may not last much longer, and that a war would be followed by an insurrection in Ireland, who can doubt? and even now it only requires a word from Conciliation Hall, one hint from the Catholic altars of Ireland, to cause a passive resistance to rent from one end of the island to the other, which would make it as impossible to collect any rents,

* P. 15.

as it was to you to collect tithes in 1834, with all the police and troops you had at your disposal. Remember that the lands of France have been divided among four millions of proprietors in fee, since her revolution ;— while Ireland has but a few thousand, if so many, landowners--that Belgium, and Switzerland, and Norway belong to small proprietors-that, within our own memory, the peasantry of all the north of Europe, Prussia, and the greater portion of Germany, have been, by a revolution in their territorial law, made owners of the lands they before tilled as serfs. Even at this moment, the peasantry of Gallicia and Poland are in arms against their landlords with similar objects in view, and have murdered many, and burnt their chateaux. In Ireland, a signal only is wanting to commence something of the sort.

I repeat, it is no time for temporising expedients and half mea

sures.

The Irish people must be fed from the resources of Ireland, and employed in providing those very resources from her fertile, but neglected soil. The Irish landlords will not do this-cannot do it-at any rate, have not done it, or shown any disposition to do it. Then, the State must step in and compel them to do it, or do it for them at their expense.'

*

'Let the landlords of Ireland,' (he adds,) not force the friends of justice and humanity to inquire too closely into their title to unconditional sovereignty, over the fair fields and native population of Ireland. Let them remember that their claim rests in most cases upon confiscations, not very remote, for the benefit of the few. Let them beware of provoking a real confiscation for the benefit of the many. Salus POPULI suprema lex est. No vague declamation about the sacredness of titledeeds and grants will satisfy the public mind. Every day these "sacred" rights are invaded by parliamentary legislation, at the instance of speculating companies, pleading only a very remote public interest in their favour.

But we live in an age when interferences on a much larger scale have been frequent. Do you, does any intelligent Irish landlord, with a knowledge of the recent examples of violent, but ultimately most beneficial revolutions in the tenure of land through the greater part of Europe-with a knowledge of the still unforgotten and traditionary memories current among the Irish peasantry, of the forcible dispossessions, at no very remote historical periods, of former races of proprietors -with a knowledge of what is passing now in Ireland, of the tone of its most popular periodicals, the temper of its masses, the difficulty with which they are at present restrained by their cautious leaders, and still more active, unwearied, and influential priesthood, from actual insurrection, or a combined resistance to the law, the end of which none can foresee I ask, can you or any one expect to be able long to maintain the present state of the territorial law? If no milder means can be obtained from the prudence and sense of justice of the legislature, for

VOL. LXXXIV. NO. CLXX.

* P. 12.