improving the condition of the poor.

worked to save us from the misery and mortality resulting from our conduct in the one case, than in the other.

The object of those who really wish to better the condition of the lower classes of society, must be to raise the relative proportion between the price of labor and the price of provisions, so as to enable the laborer to command a larger share of the necessaries and comforts of life. We have hitherto principally attempted to attain this end by encouraging the married poor, and consequently increasing the number of laborers, and overstocking the market with a commodity which we still say that we wish to be dear. It would seem to have required no great spirit of divination to foretell the certain failure of such a plan of proceeding

There is nothing however like experience. It has been tried in many different countries, and for many hundred years, and the success has always been answerable to the nature of the scheme. It is really time now to try something else.

When it was found that oxygene, or pure vital air, would not cure consumptions, as was expected, but rather aggravated their symptoms; a trial was made of an air of the most opposite kind. I

Of the only effectual mode of

wish we had acted with the same philosophical spi rit in our attempts to cure the disease of poverty; and having found that the pouring in of fresh supplies of labor only tended to aggravate the symp. toms, had tried what would be the effect of withholding a little these supplies.

In all old and fully-peopled states it is from this method, and this alone, that we can rationally expect any essential and permanent melioration in the condition of the lower classes of people.

In an endeavor to raise the proportion of the quantity of provisions to the number of consumers in any country, our attention would naturally be first directed to the increasing of the absolute quantity of provisions; but finding that as fast as we did this, the number of consumers more than kept pace with it, and that with all our exertions we were still as far as ever behind, we should be convinced that our efforts directed only in this way would never succeed. It would appear to be setting the tortoise to catch the hare. Finding therefore, that from the laws of nature we could not proportion the food to the population, our next attempt should naturally be to proportion the population to the food. If we can persuade the hare to go to sleep

improving the condition of the poor.

the tortoise may have some chance of overtaking her.

We are not however to relax our efforts in increasing the quantity of provisions; but to combine another effort with it, that of keeping the population when once it has been overtaken, at such a distance behind as to effect the relative proportion which we desire; and thus unite the two grand desiderata, a great actual population and a state of society, in which squalid poverty and dependence are comparatively but little known; two objects which are far from being incompatible.

If we be really serious in what appears to be the object of such general research, the mode of essentially and permanently bettering the condition of the poor, we must explain to them the true nature of their situation, and show them that the withholding of the supplies of labor is the only possible way of really rising its price; and that they themselves being the possessors of this commodity have alone the power to do this.

I cannot but consider this mode of diminishing poverty, as so perfectly clear in theory, and so invariably confirmed by the analogy of every other

Of the only effectual mode of, &c.

commodity that is brought to market, that nothing but its being shown to be calculated to produce greater evils than it proposes to remedy, can justify us in not making the attempt to put it into execution.

CHAPTER IV.

Objections to this mode considered.

ONE objection which perhaps will be made to this plan, is that from which alone it derives its value-a market rather understocked with labor. This must undoubtedly take place in a certain degree; but by no means in such a degree as to affect the wealth and prosperity of the country. The way in which we are going on at present, and the enormous increase in the price of provisions, which seems to threaten us, will tend much more effectually to enable foreigners to undersell us in the markets of Europe than the plan now proposed. If the population of this country were better proportioned to its food, the nominal price of labor might be lower than it is now, and yet be sufficient to maintain a wife and six children.But putting this subject of a market understocked with labor, in the most unfavorable point of view, if the rich will not submit to a slight inconvenience necessarily attendant on the attainment of what they profess to desire, they cannot really be in