For we are not among those who mainly ascribe the opposition offered to the introduction of a legal system for relieving the Irish poor to the selfish cupidity of the landlords of Ireland. That the absentee owners of Irish estates are responsible for much of the misery and degradation visible among their tenants, is a fact which no person, Mr. Maculloch alone excepted, will undertake to deny. But we cannot doubt that their resistance to the introduction of poor laws into that ill-fated portion of the British dominions arises from delusion and prejudice, which calm reasoning may gradually extirpate-by no means from any real defect of charitable and benevolent feelings. Posterity will scarcely credit the extent to which the popular feeling of this country has been worked upon, and warped, by the incessant ravings of some of our modern economists. They, truly, have done all that in them lay to extinguish in the bosoms of the more opulent classes every spark of generous and benevolent compassion towards the destitute and needy pauper; in their eyes, pauperism is a crime for which nothing short of absolute starvation can form an adequate punishment. Hence, the poor laws of this country have been held up to the world as deserving of every reproach; as an infringement upon the laws of nature and of God!—which, according to their version of them, doom the destitute pauper to perish for want of food. They allege, that these laws injure the feelings and pervert the principles of the rich, whilst they degrade and demoralise the poor, for whose benefit they have been ostensibly established. This being the light in which the English poor laws are so constantly represented, it is not to be wondered at, nor, indeed, ought it to be made a ground of peculiar reproach, that the Irish landlords should dread the approach of what our Gallic neighbours, forming their opinion upon this subject from the lectures and lucubrations of our own long-winded, if not long-headed philosophers, have been pleased to denominate la plaie politique de l'Angleterre la plus dévorante;' and a greater evil than the national debt.' We are persuaded, that, in the whole history of human opinions, nothing will appear more unaccountable than the clamour which has been raised against the English poor laws; which is repeated, as a thing of course, by the pamphleteers, and the journalistique,' as they call it, of all Europe; and which seems, from this endless repetition, to have scared from their propriety the wits and intellects of the occupiers and owners of land and houses in this country. Constantly dinned with the cry that the poor increase so rapidly in number as to threaten, at no very distant period, to swallow up the whole surplus produce of the land-is it surprising that the hapless terrarum domini VOL. XXXVIII. NO. LXXV. F domini should retire from these scientific lectures to moan over the melancholy prospect which opens upon them, and stand appalled at the gradually, but steadily increasing wave of popu lation, which, as they are assured, must, in its progress, inevitably overwhelm them? These alarms are, we conceive, excited by representations grossly exaggerated, if not utterly unfounded. That the parochial expenditure, denominated poor-rates, is greater than it was fifty years ago, we readily admit; it is, however, notorious that the whole of what is thus levied upon parishes is not expended on the maintenance of the poor. A large proportion of the increase which scares our economists will be found to arrange itself under the various other items of parochial expenditure, which are now jumbled together under the term poor-rates, but which have no more connexion with the fund really set aside for the relief of indigence than they have with the building of London Bridge. The increase of what is called the county-stock, arising from the increasing number of prisoners committed for trial, and the better accommodation provided for them; the expenses incurred in suppressing vagrancy, and in conveying to their different places of destination the hordes of Irish emigrants who infest every district of this country, and the costs incurred in settling the various legal questions unavoidably springing out of the administration of a large parochial expenditure, constitute, together, no insignificant proportion of the gross sum which it has become the custom to term poor-rates. And, in addition to these heads of expenditure, another item of considerable magnitude must not be overlooked. All our readers are, we apprehend, but too well aware, that in various and extensive districts of this country, an illegal and pernicious practice prevails of paying out of the parish funds a regular allowance to able-bodied labourers in constant employment. Such a payment ought to be regarded, and, indeed, by the parties who sanction the abuse, it is generally considered as forming, to all intents and purposes, a part of the just wages of the working-labourer. The iniquity of this practice towards the little tradesman and mechanic who employ no labourers, and the little farmer who performs his own work, and who are thus made to pay a portion of the wages of the labourers employed by their more opulent neighbours, and the impolicy of degrading the industrious labourer, who, on every principle of equity, is entitled to obtain from his employer the full market value of the work performed by him, into an eleemosynary pensioner, can never be reprobated either too frequently or too strongly. This is a crying and gross abuse of the poor laws, for which the system itself is not in the slightest degree responsible. When When all these items, the county-stock, the costs of legal pro ceedings, and the allowances made to able-bodied labourers are fairly deducted from the sums now raised by parochial assessments, the amount of what now appears to be expended on the indigent poor will become greatly reduced.* poor We will venture to assert, not only that the number and expense of the English poor, when contrasted with the population and resources of the country, are greatly below what they were in the reign of Elizabeth, but that pauperism has actually declined, almost in the exact ratio that the funds regularly assessed for the relief of indigence have increased. As we may appear somewhat paradoxical, we must crave the indulgence of our readers while we state the grounds on which we venture to advance this proposition. Suppose we admit that the whole of the seven millions sterling now levied upon parishes under the term " rates,' is actually expended in the maintenance of paupers, and that the amount so levied and expended in 1750 did not exceed two millions. Does not this prove that pauperism has increased in this country since the middle of the last century in the proportion of two to five? We think not; and for the following reason. The framers of the English poor laws had two leading objects in view; the relief of impotent poverty, and the suppression of sturdy and idle vagrancy. The former was easily attained, but the latter was a great national evil, with which the legislature long grappled in vain. The number of paupers regularly relieved by parish allowances was, no doubt, smaller in the last than in the present century; and these consisted almost exclusively of the aged and infant poor, who were incapacitated from obtaining a subsistence by begging; but it should be recollected that, in addition to the aged and infant poor thus regularly relieved, every district of England then swarmed with a wandering horde of able The poor-rates are not nearly so high as one would be led to suppose from the Parliamentary returns: first, because much of the expense returns to the farmers in the labour which is performed upon their farms: secondly, because much is expended upon roads, and, therefore, does not properly come under the head of poor-rates. I have never known any instance where gravel-digging or stone-picking was paid for by gentlemen, but it was always paid by the overseers: again, a great part of the allowance which the labourers receive returns to the farmers and landowners, in the shape of exorbitant rents for cottages: I have known many instances where the amount paid by the labourer for a cottage was greater than the amount of relief which he received from the overseer: the rent of cottages is so high, that it is one of the chief causes of the agricultural labourers being in a worse state now than they ever were: before the war, the average rent of cottages with good gardens, was thirty shillings a year: it is now in our own neighbourhood commonly as high as five, seven, or even ten pounds per aunum; and where cottages are in the hands of farmers, they always prohibit the labourers from keeping a pig, and claim the produce of the apple-trees and of the vine which usually covers the house.'-Evidence of Henry Drummond, Esq. Report of Committee on Labourers Wages, p. 47. F 2 bodied bodied mendicants, who extorted from the charity, or, as it sometimes happened, from the fears of the peasantry, a more ample subsistence than they could have earned by industry, or obtained from the parishes to which they belonged. These vagrants did not willingly fall upon the poor-rates; they did not resort to this fund until the police of the country, after a long struggle of more than a century, got the mastery over them, and succeeded in suppressing the trade of begging. To the restraints necessarily imposed upon the stationary pauper, this class of mendicants submitted with great reluctance; their former mode of life was more agreeable to their habits than the steady labour which they are now compelled to perform; and there is no reason to doubt the produce of a day's begging was at least equal to the wages of a day's labour, or the allowance daily doled out to the pauper out of the parish funds. The misery and mendicancy which prevailed in this country before the provisions of the 43d of Elizabeth became duly enforced, might be proved by a host of witnesses: we shall, however, content ourselves with one extract from a curious old phlet, which describes, in very forcible language, the poverty and idleness which prevailed in one of the fairest and most fertile districts of the kingdom; viz. pam The Golden Vale in Herefordshire, (being ye pride of al that country,) being the richest yet (for want of imployment) the plentifullest place of poore in the kingdom-yielding two or three hundred folde the number so increasing (idleness having gotten the upper hand ;) if trades bee not raised-beggery will carry such reputation in my quarter of the country, as if it had the whole to halves.'* 'There bee,' says this author, within a mile and a halfe from my house every waye, five hundred poore habitations; whose greatest meanes consist in spinning flaxe, hemp, and hurdes. They dispose the seasons of the yeare in this manner: I will begin with May, June, and July, (three of the merriest months for beggers,) which yield the best increase for their purpose, to raise multitudes: whey, curdes, butter-milk, and such belly provision, abounding in the neighbourhood, serves their turne. As wountes or moles hunt after wormes, the ground being dewable, so these idelers live intolerablie by other meanes, and neglect their painfull labours by oppressing the neighbourhood. August, September and October, with that permission which the Lord hath allowed the poorer sorte to gather the eares of corne, they do much harme. I have seen three hundred leazers or gleaners in one gentleman's corn-field at once; his servants gathering and stouking the bound sheaves, the sheaves lying on the ground like dead carcases in an overthrown battell, they following the spoyle, not Most approved and long experienced Water-workes : containing the manner of Winter and Summer Drowning of Meadow and Pasture. As also a demonstration of a project for the great benefit of the commonwealth generally, but of Herefordshire especially. By Rowland Vaughan, Esquire. Imprinted at Londen. 1610. like souldiers (which scorne to rifle) but like theeves desirous to steale; so this army holdes pillaging, wheate, rye, barly, pease, and oates: oates, a graine which never grew in Canaan, nor Egypt, and altogether out of the allowance of leazing. • Under colour of the last graine, oates, it being the latest harvest, they doe (without mercy in hotte bloud) steale, robbe orchards, gardens, hop-yards, and crab trees: so what with leazing and stealing, they doe poorly maintaine themselves November, December, and almost all January, with some healpes from the neighbourhood. Thus your lordship sees (before God and the world) the principall meanes of their maintenance. The last three moneths, February, March, and Aprill, little labour serves their turne, they hope by the heat of the sunne, (seasoning themselves, like snakes, under headges,) to recover the month of May with much poverty, long fasting, and little praying; and so make an end of their yeares travel in the Easter holy days.' The vagrant hordes who infested this country down to the middle of the last century, were unquestionably much more numerous than the paupers now subsisting on regular allowances from their parishes; and the expense of maintaining a vagrant must necessarily be greater than the cost of supporting a stationary pauper. We ourselves are old enough to remember when, in some districts, a set of beggars went their regular rounds, and obtained relief at the farm houses: this practice is now generally, if not entirely, suppressed. It is no doubt true that the farmers of those districts now pay heavier rates than they did at that time, but it should not be forgotten that, if they pay more to the rates, they give nothing to the vagrant beggar; and if the increase of what they pay be contrasted with the diminution of what they then gave in charity, we have no doubt that, in a calculation of the expense, the balance would incline in favour of the modern system; for viewing the subject merely as a question of comparative expense, it can make no difference to the community at large whether seven millions per annum be levied upon parishes to support the poor, under an organised system, or food to the same value be given as alms to the vagrant; but, looking upon the matter great question of national policy, no rational man can hesitate in his choice between the old and barbarous plan of vagrant relief, and the modern, and infinitely less burdensome, system of parochial charity. The vagrant poor of former times were mere drones upon the industry of the country; they added nothing to the common stock; and the whole of what they consumed was a dead loss to the community. And when we recollect that these vagrants formed, probably, one-eighth of the whole population, it is not difficult to perceive the amount of the loss thus occasioned, and the effect which it must have pro as a duced |