besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the Church boxes, 200,000 people begging from door to 'door.' Let these statements be taken in connexion with the population of the Island at that time, and then we shall have a tolerable idea of the injury inflicted on the English people, and the unreasonable distrust of the national character implied, and the cruel reproach laid upon his Majesty's subjects, by that unfortunate aberration of the Legislature, which gave birth to the law of relief. The comfortable state of society under the system of unlicensed vagrancy,' must be obvious; and therefore the vagrant laws, not less than the poor laws, which were but a collatereal branch of the same system, must fall under the same condemnation, as hurtfully usurping the prerogatives of Nature.

Dr. Chalmers's account of the benevolent purpose' for which poor's rates were instituted in England, is as follows:

A fund is raised in each of the parishes, by a legal and compulsory operation; out of which a certain quantity of aliment is distributed among those residents who can substantiate the plea of their wants, to the satisfaction of its administrators..... . The invention of pauperism, had it been successful, would have gone to annihilate the state of poverty, as well as its sufferings.' pp. 52, 3.

It would be hard to say which this representation is wider of, the fact as regards the invention' or original institution of the poor's rate, or the fact as respects the modern practice. To both must this intelligent and benevolent Writer have shut his eyes, when he penned these paragraphs. The principle of the institution is thus correctly stated by the Author of the Letter to Mr. Canning.

The principle of the English poor system is, that necessary relief shall be given to the impotent, old, blind, and others who are poor and not able to work; and that those who are able to perform work, and cannot find any, shall neither necessarily starve nor be maintained in idleness, but have employment provided for them; and that a sufficient fund shall be levied by rate on the property of every parish, where the necessity of the case may require it, for effecting these joint purposes. This is the spirit and intent of the 43 Eliz. cap. 2. and it is still the law of the land. A variety of statutes have been subsequently passed on the same subject, professing to define the circumstances under which claims shall be made on the fund, and to regulate and control its administration, but leaving the original principle untouched.

A common complaint against this Act is, that it created a poor population, and laid the foundation of a burden from which no subsequent ingenuity has been able to relieve the country. We might, from what we historically know of Elizabeth and her ministers, have

suspected that they were not such infants in legislation, or such novices in political economy, though they dabbled in the one and talked of the other less than we do, as to tempt her subjects to prefer idleness and dependence to a creditable and useful course of industry, nor so abundant in riches as to invite a demand on the resources of the country for any cause less imperious than that of necessity.

If the policy of this Act had been originally bad, it must have yielded long ago to the hostility it has met with. It must have a principle of vitality in it, to have survived incessant attacks for upwards of two centuries, which will rescue its advocate from the imputation of wishing, for the sake of singularity, to maintain a paradox, or recommend by sophistry what is radically wrong.

The fact is, that for a century preceding the year in which the 43 Eliz. was passed, the country had been overwhelmed with beggars. During that period very severe laws had been passed against vagrancy and mendicity; and if enacting, that fines should be the reward for giving, and branding, chains, slavery and death, the punishment for receiving alms, would have suppressed the practice, the evil would have been remedied before Elizabeth's reign. Into the causes which produced this state of beggary and vagrancy, it is not my business at present to inquire. I refer to the preambles and the enactments of the statutes on this subject of the four reigns anterior to that of Elizabeth, to shew, that the evil was intolerable, and had been found irradicable by any measures that had been adopted prior to the 43d of that queen. The error of preceding statutes and the cause of their failure, was in their proceeding on the supposition that legislative restraints could master the natural desire of self-preservation. The parent statute of the present system wisely accompanied the prohibition to practise what it condemned, by a provision which took away its only plea, necessity.

Elizabeth's Act, as it established a local provision for impotent indigence, had a right, on equitable principles, to enforce the suppres sion of vagrancy and mendicity.

Whilst a large class of subjects were troublesome to the community and a nuisance to the government, a race of sturdy, insolent, and disorderly beggars, too apt to take what was never intended to be given to them, unproductive as to finance, and useless for defence, they were maintained upon funds accumulated from the labour and industry of others; but from this era every parish had the power, at least by law, to set to work all who were able to perform it, and thus compel them to contribute wholly or in part to maintain themselves. 'In many respects England has a reputation in common only with that of other countries, but in manufactures and commerce she enjoys a pre-eminent distinction. It would be difficult to guess in what proportion, conjointly with other means, her trade since 1601 has contributed to support her expenditure and maintain her credit; but it is evident, I think, if we inquire what has been the policy of other nations on this point, and what is their present condition, that if, during the last two centuries, she had contented herself with keeping up an ineffective legislative struggle with her poor population, these two in

dications of national prosperity would have been on a very diminished scale. Manufactures cannot be carried on to any great extent but by a concentrated and tranquil population. We have towns of immense extent, nine out of every ten of the inhabitants of which are labouring mechanics, unavoidably subject to alternations of super-abundance and want from the fluctuations of trade. Could any thing have per- › suaded so many families to congregate in one place, but the prospect of maintenance from labour, or, in case of its insufficiency, the known existence of a special substitute for it? When irritated by a sudden diminution of wages or a temporary suspension of employment, could any police or any army compel them to respect the rights of property, or submit to the artificial restraints of society, without an offer of the means of subsistence? It is the reasonableness of such an offer that causes even a constable's staff to be respected among the dense and informed masses which our manufacturing towns contain.

In defining the outline of the grounds on which parochial relief may be given, I think Elizabeth's Act unexceptionable. I am aware, however, that heavy charges have been brought against the principle which it has made the law of the land. It is specifically charged with tempting men to seek their own degradation, with removing the chief stimulus to industry, with generating improvident habits, with forcing population beyond the demand for it, with wasting the resources of the country, and with enforcing charity by legislative authority.

'If these consequences, or any of them, have resulted from the system of parochial relief, as practised in this country, they cannot, with any colour of justice, be charged to that statute which recognizes no case, as entitled to assistance, which does not imply entire or partial helplessness, and which gives the power of compelling voluntary idleness to provide for itself by its own exertions. If subsequent statutes have sprung from this parent stock, which thwart its object, it may indignantly disown the bastard progeny. If ignorance or corruption have been allowed, in administering its provisions, to mistake or pervert its views, and the mischievous effects of a weak or vicious practice have inconsiderately been attributed to the principle, it may repel the obloquy by appealing to the utility and propriety of its object, the benevolence of its intention, and the simplicity and precision of its language.' pp. 22-27.

But, with regard to the application of the fund, the Dr.'s representation of English pauperism is still more at variance with accuracy. We are utterly astonished to find him taking no notice, throughout his present volume, of the main feature in the modern practice,-that abuse which presents the most serious obstacle to any remedial measure, and which has been so frequently adverted to in Parliamentary documents as calling for redress; the practice of mixing relief with wages, or, in the words of the Commons' Committee, the practice of ' defraying what should be part of the wages of labour, out of the poor's rate.' A large proportion of the sum raised by

assessment in England, is actually bestowed as the wages of labour. What an absurdity, then, is it to represent as misplaced benevolence, what is, in fact, selfish injustice! How idle to complain of an unfounded distrust' of the national character, in the face of facts so amply testifying that that character is not to be trusted! Dr. Chalmers may say, that, if there had been no poor's rates, the depression of wages which has led to this practice, could not have taken place. But this does not lessen the existing difficulty, nor alter the character of the fact. Besides, he has to shew that this practice is an essential part of the poor system, before he can fairly charge upon that system the consequences of this abuse; for it is plain, that the depression of wages has not resulted from the law of relief, but from the modern practice of perverting that relief to the use of the employer. The poor's rate, which was designed to relieve the distressed, and to support the impotent, has been extensively applied to the relief of the farmer or of the manufacturer, at the expense of the community, by enabling him to purchase a given quantity of labour at a lower price. And these are the men whom it will be necessary to conciliate and persuade into the plan of supporting or relieving the indigent by voluntary contributions.

With this previous difficulty, Dr. Chalmers does not attempt to grapple. He takes no notice of the effect of this practice, in giving to the application for relief the character and tone of a demand, and in destroying all that was once disgraceful in pauperism. What can the labourer feel, who is paid 5s. a week for labour which ought to fetch 10s., but that he is cheated of the difference by his employer, and that he has a right to claim compensation of the parish? Private charity, voluntary contributions, might possibly meet the case of the old and the impotent; but what is to meet the case of partial employment and half-paid labour? If it be said, the churchdoor collections and sacrament money, what security can we have that these will not be misapplied in the same manner as the assessments? The mode of raising the money would not secure its equitable appropriation. What is chiefly requisite, is, to provide, that neither parochial aid nor private charity should have the effect of abridging the labourer of his just wages, by coming to him in lieu of part of his earnings. This we do not consider as an impossible consummation under the system of assessment; but if it be, then such impossibility líes clearly in the way of abandoning that system for the one proposed, that of voluntary contribution. The evil to be remedied is, the transmutation of agricultural wages into poor's rate; and the only remedial process must involve the convert

ing back a portion of that rate into wages. But a rise of wages is the last measure to which the farmer will lend his concurrence. And yet, it is in order to this rise of wages, and after wages shall have risen to the fair market price of labour, that you are to call upon him at the church door for his voluntary contribution. Truly, in the present state of things, nothing could be more visionary, in reference to a very large proportion of the parishes in England, than Dr. Chalmers's scheme for dispensing with the assessment.

In manufacturing parishes, we do not deny that the case is somewhat different; inasmuch as the depression of wages is less systematic and less permanently implicated with the parochial administration. The payers of wages, that is to say the purchasers of manufacturing labour, are not identified with the payers of the rate. It would, therefore, be more practicable for a Vestry to oppose some check to the abuse in question, by refusing aid, except in extraordinary cases, to the labourer in full employment. We know not what has been the state of wages in Glasgow during the progress of Dr. Chalmers's experiment, nor how far the practice has obtained in Scotland, of mixing parochial relief with wages. We looked for information on this point from the Author, but have been disappointed. We find him incidentally admitting, however, that the diminution in the expenditure of the Town Hospital, was, in the main, referrible to the improved condition of our operative classes and the fall in the price of necessaries.' There had taken place, it seems, what is equivalent to a rise in wages, as well as an increase of employment; and under such circumstances, we conceive it to be very practicable to make an imníense reduction of the rate. If the improvement in the circumstances of the manufacturing labourers has had no share in reducing the amount of pauperism within the parish of St. John, Dr. Chalmers has omitted to bring forward a fact which would greatly enhance the value of the experiment. If, on the contrary; the times have been greatly in his favour, he was bound to state it. We are warranted in taking it for granted, that, at present, manufacturing labour in Glasgow fetches a living price. We should like to know how he would meet the supposable case of a depression of wages below that living price. For a case of temporary emergency,-the sudden failure of any branch of trade, he is prepared to recommend an appeal to public benevolence, which, he thinks, would promptly and infallibly supply the extra contribution to meet the extra distress. He contends that, in such circumstances, there is every reason to believe, that the total distress without a poor's rate, would fall short in its amount of the surplus distress with a poor's