of nature. This pressure we should mitigate, but not attempt entirely to overcome.

In fixing the maximum of allowance, we should in the first instance lean rather to the side of munificence; it should be settled according to a price of corn, neither very high nor very low. Perhaps eighty shillings being the importation price of wheat, would furnish the fairest ground of calculation. It is possible, that one practical effect of this measure would be, to bring into use among the poor, in seasons of dearth, a cheap substitute for bread. There can be no doubt but that private benevolence would be active in providing such means of subsistence, and the poor, finding that their drafts upon the parish purse were no longer unlimited, would more willingly, if not more thankfully, avail themselves of these facilities.

I hope and believe that we shall be enabled to adhere to the engagements of the Poor Laws respecting children, and that no measure of great severity is required; but if Parliament should decide otherwise, they would probably act wisely in permitting the pressure to operate upon the Population, through the dearness of corn.

SECTION VI.

Of the maintenance or employment of able-bodied Persons.

The other great branch of expenditure, to which the great amount of the Poors' Rate is to be attributed, and which has more particularly swollen its amount within the last two years, consists in the obligation to find work or subsistence for all persons who, though able and willing to labour, cannot obtain employ

ment.

No part of the system has been more strongly reprobated than this, on the ground as well of expediency as of right. In point of right, the able-bodied man seems to stand upon a footing less favourable than the man who claims relief in sickness or impotence; because the able-bodied man, it may be said, has it in his power in some mode and in some part of the world to obtain a livelihood, although his labour may be superfluous in that part of the earth in which he was born. But in point of expediency, and moral feeling, perhaps no individual has a stronger claim upon the public than he who without any fault of his own, or improvidence in his parents, finds himself without the means of obtaining in his own country, the food which he is able and willing to earn by labour.

Among the persons, who are maintained or set to work by parishes in England, there are numerous gradations, but it can hardly be denied, that there are among them many to whom the preceding descrip

tion applies, and very many who, though not entirely guiltless of improvidence, would be too severely punished by utter abandonment. To these men, much of the eloquence which the Poor Laws have excited is entirely inapplicable; the impressive passage quoted by the Committee* from Mr. Townsend's Dissertation touches only the disciples of prodigality and vice; and the industrious and moral labourer, who finds himself classed with the profligate, and his pittance diminished by what is given to the vicious, has scarcely less reason than the honest farmer, to complain of the iniquity of the Poor Laws.

I have already shewn that the want of employment has not been recently introduced among the grounds of relief;t it is thus mentioned in the speech of King William, of which the Committee have quoted the passage immediately preceding:-"As it is an "indispensable duty, that the poor, who are not able "to help themselves, should be maintained; so I "cannot but think it extremely desireable, that such "as are able and willing, should not want employ"ment; and such as are obstinate and unwilling, "should be compelled to labour."

* Report, p. 20.—“ The cultivator of a small farm," of whom it has been said, forcibly and truly, that he "rises early, and it "is late before he can retire to rest; he works hard and fares "hard, yet with all his labour and his care, he can scarely provide "subsistence for his numerous family. He would feed them "better, but the prodigal must first be fed; he would purchase warmer clothing for his children, but the children of the pros❝titute must first be clothed."

See Sect. IV.

-Report, p. 5. See the speech in the Commons' Journal of 16 November, 1699, vol. xiii. p. 1.

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If, making a distinction between these two classes, we can safely and prudently adhere to the principle of securing to each man the fruits of honest industry, we must unquestionably be desirous of doing so. In this part of the system, the moral theory is with the Poor Laws; the political is against them.— Of no part is it more necessary to enquire, whether, in practice, the evil or the good preponderates.

The Commons' Committee have adopted, in their fullest extent, the doctrines of political economists on the subject of labour, and have come to a conclusion absolutely fatal to the provision of work by the State. They have treated the subject boldly and fairly, and it is impossible to form an opinion upon it without attending to their reasonings.

The Committee affirm, that the undertaking "to "find work for all who in the present and in all suc"ceeding times may require it, is a condition which

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no law can fulfil. What number of persons can "be employed in labour must depend absolutely upon "the amount of the funds which alone are applicable "to the maintenance of labour." Upon this principle, it is held, that "whoever is maintained by the law as a labouring pauper is maintained only instead "of some other individual who would otherwise have "earned by his own industry the money bestowed on the pauper. But the effect of a compulsory employment is not merely to employ one labourer instead of another; it tends, on the whole, "to place the "labouring classes in a much worse condition than that "in which they would otherwise be situated."-The wages of labour can only be raised by an encreased demand;-nothing can encrease the demand but an encrease of the wealth by which labour is supported; *

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but the compulsory application tends rather to diminish that wealth, by employing a portion of it less profitably; this diminution is injurious to the whole body of labourers. Again, from an encreased demand for labour, high wages result; the labourers provide better and more easily for their children, and rear more; and "in "this manner marriage and multiplication are encou❝raged, and an encreasing supply is enabled to follow "an encreased demand. If, on the contrary, the waste " or diminution of wealth should reduce the demand "for labour, wages must inevitably fall, and the com56 forts of the labourer will be diminished, the mar"riage and multiplication discouraged, until the supply is gradually adapted to the reduced demand." The process, under these latter circumstances, is necessarily painful, but more or less so according to the degree in which the labourer has prepared for a reverse, by prudence and frugality. By holding out to them that they shall at all times be provided with adequate employment, we induce them to neglect all such preparation. "The supply of labour, therefore, "which they alone have the power to regulate, is left "constantly to encrease, without any reference to "the demands, or to the funds on which it depends." When the reverse actually occurs, the Poor Laws, "in reality effect nothing but a mere wasteful ap"plication of the diminished capital, and thereby "materially reduce the real wages of free labour, and "thus essentially injure the labouring classes." Then, not only the hitherto independent labourers, but the smaller capitalists, are gradually reduced to the necessity of recurring to the rates. "The effect "of these compulsory distributions,"-conclude the Committee," is to pull down what is above, not to "raise what is low; and they depress high and low "together, beneath the level of what was originally "lowest." i