tenance of the poor: and as they commence with punishments for mendicity, they end with establishments for relief; and they domiciliate the poor in those places where they were born or where they have lived a year*.

The spirit of these ordonnances has been followed by the Provinces, which forming one kingdom under Charles V., and divided into two distinct governments for two centuries, are now again united as the kingdom of the Netherlands. The great difference between the religions of the two kingdoms has varied the mode of administration; but the spirit of the settled provision for the poor still remains, and the principle was expressly recognised in the 228th article of the New Constitution, established in 1814.

"The poor, (says the Count van Hogendorp, one of the framers of that Constitution,) such as must always continue to be found, are divided into, old persons, the maimed, the sick, and children who are helpless. For all these who have no friends or relations able to assist them, civil society must provide, either by means of local, provincial, or national fundst."

The administration in the Northern or Protestant Provinces bears a great resemblance to that of the Kirk Session in Scotland.

* Ordinancie von Vlandrien: 1639. p. 751.

+ Bijdragen tot de Huishouding van Staat in het Roningrik der Nederlanden. vol. iii. p. 379.

In the Southern or Catholic Provinces it partakes more of the French system, as the destruction of the ecclesiastical establishments has transferred it to the municipality.

But both in the Northern and Southern provinces the means of support are derived principally from the local divisions, and aids from the province or the state bear but a small proportion to those procured either by indirect taxation or voluntary donation in the communities.

From the Report on the State of the Poor for 1825, it appears that there were advanced for relief to the poor in their own houses (Huiszittende Armen), exclusive of foundlings and deserted children, 5,311,088 florins.

Of this sum

2,719,079 florins was derived from fixed property. 1,369,776 from indirect taxation.

1,217,049 from voluntary gifts.

5,164 from the Province or the State.

This sum of 5,164 florins was apportioned principally to Liege (a manufacturing district), North Holland (including Amsterdam); North Brabant (including Brussels); and the proportion of all persons of this description receiving relief to the total population of the kingdom, was as 117 to 1000.

Referring again to Italy, it is most probable that the importation of slaves for the culture of the soil ceased very soon after the decline of the

Empire. The descendants of the ancient colonists degenerated into a state of prædial servitude; which has been changed, rather than alleviated, by the system of cultivation at present general in Italy. In consequence of this system, the population is very considerable, not inferior in proportion to that of England. The land is divided into small portions: its extreme fertility, the delightful climate in which it is placed, and the minuteness of its culture, produce abundance of food. The cultivator divides the produce in certain settled proportions with the owner of the soil. In unfavourable seasons the owner advances food to the cultivator, the consumption of whose family is more than equal to his share of the produce: this is repaid in kind in favourable years; but the cultivator is almost always in debt, and in this manner the owner of the soil is taxed to the relief of indigence. In most parts of Italy this takes place between the owner and the tenant, without the intervention of the State. But in Lucca the required advances in times of difficulty are made by the public bank of the State*. This is the case in the most fertile soils: the uncertainty of some of the crops, the vines for instance, renders the peasant still more dependent than the inhabitant of the mountains,

* Sismondi de l'Agriculture Toscane, p. 112.

whose ordinary food being the chesnut, which requires little more than the labour of gathering, leaves him at leisure to travel in the harvest to the fertile and insalubrious plains of the Tuscan maremma or the Campagna of Rome, and by the wages of labour to gain a more secure and constant income. But the failure of the crop of chesnuts, and unproductive seasons, drive the inhabitants of the mountains into the cities, which are then filled with mendicity in its most disgust+ ing features. The general sale of the ecclesias tical property has not changed the condition of the cultivators of the soil: they are tenants to lay-owners, under the same terms that they were originally to the clergy. But the State is now compelled to take on itself the charge of the poor, and its administration is perhaps subject to equal abuses. The Congregazione di Carita at Milan has under its superintendance a variety of charitable establishments, and the disposal of large revenues. The Government of Florence, about 1817, commenced a systematic manufacturing establishment for the employment of the poor, which, in a country where it has not to compete with capital and machinery, may not perhaps entirely fail, although this is doubted by intelligent persons residing on the spot. Add to this, voluntary collections in the churches and

from house to house, applied to domiciliary relief, which are customary in every city and large town in Italy.

From Dr. Bright's Travels in Lower Hungary*, we learn that Maria Theresa, wishing to ameliorate the condition of the peasants, by rendering their services definite instead of indefinite, promulgated a law, called the "Urbarium." The leading principle of this arrangement is, that for a certain quantity of land, supposed to be equal to the maintenance of the peasant and his family, the average of which is about thirty-eight English acres, sixteen to twenty of which must be arable, the peasant is compelled to perform a hundred and four days labour; but owing to the remnant of feudal manners, the controul the lords still retain, and the necessity of performing some other indefinite services still unabolished, the real number of days labour which they obtain from their tenants is not less than two hundred. Under this arrangement the peasants possess, in some estates, half the cultivated land. They are ignorant and barbarous to an extreme, and in times of famine are reduced to the most urgent distress.

The only amelioration really effected has been in some particular districts, particularly in one called the Muriäkos, where the feudal services, * Pages 113, 114, 434, 474.

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