deficiency very different from the worst failures of the present moment. Never since I have known England, (a period of 50 years,) have I known more than a comparative scarcity. The price of wheat, taking a number of years together, has had no very considerable fluctuation. Even now, (in 1795-6,) I do not know of one man, woman, or child, that has perished from famine; fewer, if any, I believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by accident. This is owing to a care and superintendance of the poor, far greater than any I re member." In the year 1808 some apprehensions were entertained in Britain respecting the supply of corn, on account of the ports of continental Europe and of the United States being then shut against British commerce. But these apprehensions were proved by the event to be groundless, and one of the chief effects of the general conspiracy against trade was to prove how much more independent of foreign nations for the supply of grain Britain is than her enemies desire. In the year ending 5th of January, 1809, the whole importation of grain and flour into Britain, amounted in real money-value to £1,878,521; and in the year ending the 5th of January, 1810, only to £330,958; considerably less than one fifth part of the import of the preceeding year; and yet the British markets showed no symptom of want, although in addition to her own home consumption Britain then exported large quantities of corn and flour to her armies serving in Spain and Portugal, and to the natives of the Peninsula. In the report of Mr. Curwen to the Workington Agricultural Society, in May, 1810, it is stated, that "the increase of agricultural produce in grain is augmented four millions (of quarters), within the last five years; namely, 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808, and 1809. While the whole of Europe is distressed, and many of its most fertile districts destroyed, Great Britain is rapidly improv ing. As a proof I should instance the passing in the last session of parliament (in 1809-10) of one hundred and forty inclosure acts, nearly double the number of any former year. Improvements in agriculture are not confined to the reclaiming of wasteground. A better and more productive system of husbandry is every where extending itself, by which the land already in tillage will soon double its produce." See "Hints," pp. 45. 58, for more facts on British Agriculture. As a necessary consequence of the great increase in the agriculture, manufactures, and commerce of Britain, her poor, the great mass of her people, must be greatly improved in their condition; must be better fed, clothed, and lodged, owing to the increased demand for labor; the greater abundance of food, and the more general diffusion of wealth. In the work of Mr. Comber, pp. 274, 325; and of Mr. M'Arthur, pp. 214, 267; a number of facts are contained in proof that the present state of the British poor is in every respect, of food, clothing, lodging, and other necessaries and comforts, considerably better than at any former period of their national history, and far superior to the condition of the lower order of society in every other country in Europe. To which we may add the important testimony of Mr. Walsh in pp. 179, 188, 195, of his "Letter," &c. where he has given a splendid eye-glance of the condition of all orders of the community in Britain, opulent' and felicitous in itself; but doubly felicitous and opulent as contrasted to the dark ground of that picture which the writer has sketched, in ever enduring colors, of the forlorn and beggarly condition of the entire population of the French Empire. In the time of Henry the eighth the Legislature itself acknowledged that many of the lower orders of the English died from absolute want in times remarkable for the regularity of the seasons. And in the reign of Elizabeth almost every parish furnished three or four hundred vagrants. Nay, even in the reign of Charles the second when industry began to take root in Britain, the poor-rates amounted to £665,000, and were still higher at the revolution; at which time, according to Gregory King, the cotta gers, paupers, and vagrants, amounted to one million three hundred and thirty thousand; amongst whom neither laborers nor out-servants were included, but were numbered distinctly and of themselves amounted to, one million two hundred and seventy-five thousand. These cottagers, paupers, and vagrants, therefore may be considered as of the same description with those who now receive alms in the shape of poor-rates, and composed nearly one fourth of the whole population of England, which was then estimated at five millions five hundred thousand. According to Mr. Playfair's "Statistical Tables" the number of English poor receiving relief in the year 1804, amounted to nine hundred thousand, less than one tenth of the present population of England. In the "Report of Dr. M. Garthshore and Patrick Colquhoun, Esq. to the Society for bettering the condition of the poor," &c. &c. published in March, 1809, we are told that according to the parliamentary returns of 1803, it appears that the number of poor persons relieved during that year in London, (where the poor are more numerous than in any other part of Britain,) comprehending all the parishes within the bills of mortality, besides Marylebone, St. Pancras, Paddington, Kensington, Chelsea, and Islington, including a population, by the Parliamentary returns of 1801, amounting in the whole to 846,845 persons, was 86,120; a little more than one tenth. The modes of relief were these, £14 8s. 3 d. 2 15 0 14,746, were maintained in sixty workhouses, at the yearly expense of per head each, 21,877, relieved out of work houses, 33,187, occasionally relieved, 16,310, relieved, not parishioners, supposed vagrants, 86,120, Total, relieved at a yearly expense of about, 1 5 0 £0 2s. Od. £310,240 0 0 The number of children under fourteen years of age, is nearly equal to the adults who receive aid. These statements, therefore, exhibit a considerable decrease in the number of persons, poor and mendicant in England, in proportion to the population, since the Revolution in 1688; notwithstanding the increase of the poor-rates nominally; that is to say, in the amount of the money annually expended, owing to the necessary and constant depreciation in the value of money, in consequence of the vast and perpetual influx of wealth. And it will be found on examination, that not only the number of poor, proportional to the increased population, but also the amount of money in propor tion to the increased wealth of Britain applied to the relief of those poor, is also less than it was in former times. This will appear, from an inspection of the following table, taken from Mr. Colquhoun's "Treatise on Indigence; exhibiting a general view of the national resources for productive labor," &c, London, 1806. Table showing the progressive rise of the poor's rate, public revenue, exports and population of England, from 1673 to 1803, inclusive; being 132 years. 1700 700,000 819,000 1,000,000 2,001,855 4,086,087 5,000,000 3,815,285 6,045,432 5,475,000 1751 2,500,000 8,523,540 12,599,112 6,467,000 1776 2,920,316 10,265,405 14,755,699 7,600,000 1783 1784 1785 1803 5,348,205 37,996,088 34,953,000 9,000,000 3,467,749 15,096,112 | 16,300,725 | 8,010,000 | N. B. The official was the real value of the exports, down to the year 1700; after which it fell behind, until in 1803 it was nearly one hundred per cent. less. This must be kept in mind, when looking at the proportion which the poor's rate bears to the public revenue, and exports of England, in the different periods exhibited in the following table; which will show the gradual decrease of money annually expended for the relief of the English poor, in proportion to the increased means of the nation, by the augmentation of its exports and public revenue; the increase of the revenue implying an augmentation of national wealth, because it is altogether, or nearly altogether, drawn from imposts on consumption. Thus in the course of less than the last 150 years has the number of paupers,i.e. of poor receiving relief |