the limitation will be unnecessary; if they are retained, it will be impracticable.

The repeal of the local limitations has, in both instances, originated in and been justified by the encreased price of provisions; and if all the poor are at all times and prices to be supplied with bread, the new limitation must be repealed, or it must be enforced when its operation will be equally severe and partial.

Having cited Mr. Malthus's opinion, against the pecuniary limitation, I am now to add, that in his late additions*, he partly withdraws his dissent, though he retracts none of his objections. It is however evident that his consent is the result of despair; having long ago in vain proposed remedies, much more just, and founded upon sounder principles, his deep sense of the extensive and encreasing evils of the system, and deference (which he always shews) to the opinions of others, incline him to the adoption of any plan for getting rid of it.

But even under these circumstances, he qualifies his assent, as given to a limitation, not of the amount of the Poors' Rates, but of their proportion to the wealth and population of the country, a distinction, perhaps not easily reducible to practice, but most important in principle, and marking a fairer and more liberal view than that in which the original proposition was conceived.

Under a bare pecuniary limitation indeed, it might happen, and under circumstances such as those of the last 30 years, it would happen, that the pressure upon the poor would probably become heavier, as the bur

* P. 284-5.

then upon property were lighter. A real encrease of wealth, a nominal encrease of value, an enhancement of prices, would be accompanied by an encrease of while the assessment would poor, poverty, and of from the same circumstances become lower in próportion to the property.

Let it not be answered that this is the object of the measure; let it not appear that the relief of the payers is other than a secondary consideration; and let no measure be taken with that view, which shall not at the same time foster the moral feeling, the improvement of which is our first and highest duty.

It has been said that if the maximum were fixed at a high amount, there would at first be little or no pressure upon the people. When then will the pressure commence ? When corn rises. Would it not then be more natural to let the pressure be the avowed consequence of a scarcity, rather than of the transgression of an arbitrary limit?

If after the maximum has been established, the price should materially fall, there will be little or no pressure, the sum distributed would not be affected by the maximum. In that case, the measure will be inoperative, except perhaps in encreasing the difficulty of applying it hereafter.

Because the proposition for a maximum was first made without any modification, and some of its advocates consider, (quite correctly according to their view,) any qualification as subversive of its principle; I have treated it in the first instance without that modification which the Committee suggest. The Committee however conceive, that it would be no abandonment of the principle, to enact, by way of provision against "such an emergency as

"that of the year 1795, that in case of an urgent and unforeseen necessity far exceeding the average es"tablished," the Quarter Sessions might permit an additional sum to be levied, one moiety upon the parish, and, after proof upon oath that the expenditure was necessary and unavoidable, the other moiety upon the county. With respect to the latter moiety, there is an exception as to a parish" whose rate is be"low the average ratio of the county."

Most of the observations which I have made upon the unqualified maximum, will, I think, be found applicable to this suggestion.

The " emergency of 1795" was a rise in the price of corn; if the amount of parish relief continue to be regulated by that standard, the limitation must be overstepped, in the mode proposed, whenever the price shall appear materially to exceed the average at which it was fixed. Nor can it well be doubted but that the same relief would be afforded by the Sessions, if an encrease of the number of paupers, occasioned either by additions to the population, or by the "unforeseen" failure of any great branch of employment, should require a much larger expenditure for sustain'ing the same scale of relief. That scale would, in most instances have been fixed by the Justices themselves; their examination into the necessity of the expenditure could go little further than an enquiry whether that scale had been adhered to; they could not possibly enquire into the case of every person relieved.

To say, that the interposition of the Quarter Sessions, or of any other new authority, would not in any degree operate as a check upon expenditure, would be absurd; such an interposition, in my opinion, may in more ways than one, be usefully applied. But

my position is, that this suggestion of the Committee goes only to the exhibition of a formal mode of exceeding our maximum; which as I contend, must inevitably be exceeded, unless accompanied, not by "detailed regulations" and "particular enactments," but by a deliberate, complete, and avowed change of system.

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So much of the suggestion as goes to imposing a part of the burthen upon the county, may certainly have some effect in giving the Justices an interest in the reduction of the expenditure; but inasmuch as it limits the burthen upon the lands and houses of a particular parish, in which the original managers of the expenditure reside, it is partly liable to the objection which the Committee have elsewhere stated, to any extension of the funds, as encouraging a more lax expenditure.

Whether, if there is to be any departure from the system of mere parochial assessment, the present suggestion is the best that can be devised, is a question which will be considered under another head of enquiry.

But the qualification with which the Committee would establish a maximum, will greatly diminish, if not destroy, the hope of arriving ultimately at the annihilation of the Poor Rates, by means of a periodical restriction of the maximum within narrower limits. The only possible justification of that gradual diminution of the levy, must be found in a gradual limitation of the expenditure by the continual introduction of less liberal principles of relief; but if it be necessary to make provision for supplying the deficiency of the parochial maximum by an assessment upon the county, it can hardly be expected that the parochial assessment itself should be susceptible of

frequent reduction. The obligation to reduce, and the right to demand aid, can hardly exist together.

This gradual reduction admits of various modes; the Committee recommend only a succession of averages, by which the limit may be narrowed but cannot be extended. Mr. Townsend, in his Dissertation upon the Poor Laws, recommends that onetenth of the Poors' Rates should be annually taken off, so as to destroy the whole in a period of ten years. A proposition, justly condemned in the Preface to the republication of the Dissertation, said to be written by a Noble Lord, eminent as a statesman and political economist.

Others have proposed a decennial reduction of onetenth, so as to deliver us from the burthen in 100 years!

Every one of these schemes is liable to the general objections which have been urged. I have only one word to add: the maximum has been recommended for its simplicity. I admit that it has that character, but if it attains it at the expence of equity, it is simple, as all measures may be, which proceed upon a disregard of all extensive and complicated details. Whether such a measure is peculiarly applicable to the Poor Laws, a few moments of reflection will instruct us.