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more agriculturists, than can be usefully, or profitably, under the existing circumstances, kept in activity by the funds destined for their maintenance. And as labour is the only claim to support which the lowest classes can urge, to be without employ is to be without support; and to multiply beyond the demand for labour, is to multiply beyond the available supply of subsistence:" and after propounding the undeniable truth, "that there will always be in every inhabited country as many persons existing as it will support at all, and always more than it can support well," he infers from it, first, the division of property, and then the division of ranks*." And surely the continuance of the same principle must, as a necessary consequence, produce indigence without attaching guilt to the indigent; and it appears to follow, that indigence without guilt, necessarily arising from the division of property, has that right to relief which it is the object of the whole of the present Essay to

prove.

Another argument in favour of the theory is deduced from authority, but it is authority of the highest nature.

Sir Frederick Eden, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Cour

* Sumner's Records of the Creation. vol. ii. p. + History of the Poor, vol. i. p. 413.

127.

Collections relative to the Systematic Relief of the Poor : 1815. p. 177.

tenay*, Mr. Davison†, and Mr. Bodkin†, writers who have taken the latest and most comprehensive view of the subject, may be said to defend the principle, and argue only for a modification of the Poor Laws. The framers of the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons seem to have admitted into that report opinions varying from each other, perhaps from a wish to express the sentiments of all its members; but the legislative enactments which they introduced into the Act passed under their sanction, tend only to produce a more efficient administration. For the last three years since the passing of this Act, the writer of this Essay has taken an active part in the administration of the poor laws, under the powers granted by it, in an extensive agricultural parish. The result of his experience will be detailed in the next chapter. But before entering upon it, there may be applied to this momentous question one more test,

-that of civilization; by which word is understood the general diffusion of the greatest national opulence and private comfort.

"Aurengzebe," says Montesquieu, "when he was asked why he did not erect charitable esta

* Treatise. p. 161.

+ Considerations on the Poor Laws. p. 123, 124.

Brief Observations on the Bill, &c. By W. H. Bodkin, Esq. page 4.

F

blishments for the relief of the indigent, replied, I will render my empire so rich, that there shall be no need for such establishments." He ought to have said, "I will commence by rendering my empire rich, and then I will found establishments of this kind." They are the consequence of riches.

It would be almost possible to reduce into diagrammatic scale the following state of facts relating to those European nations whose customs and manners, as far as they have reference to their indigent population, have been cursorily reviewed in the former part of this Essay. It need scarcely be observed, that the order in which they are arranged is assumed as that of their civilization respectively.

England commenced with prædial servitude, progressed into charitable establishments which degenerated into superstitious uses, and settled, after their violent abolition, into compulsory

assessments.

Scotland has gone through all these gradations; but, owing to the longer continuance of feudal and prædial servitude, and licensed mendicity and emigration, has been later in the adoption of compulsory assessment, which is, however, the law of the land.

The Netherlands, where the principle of the right to relief is acknowledged, and where local *Esprit des Loix, 1. xxiii. c. 19.

taxation and establishments for relief have long existed.

France, where compulsory local assessments have not yet been established by law; but the revenues of the State are applied directly, although insufficiently, to the relief of indigence; and consequently mendicity is permitted and licensed.

Italy, where the ecclesiastical establishments are combined with the municipal regulations to relieve indigence; and where the modified prædial servitude, like actual slavery, encourages celibacy, but leaves the country poor, incapable of progressive amendment, and in times of scarcity subject to great distress.

Hungary, Poland, Russia,-In various degrees of prædial servitude, or imperfect emancipation from it; and where the charitable establishments are rather of a municipal than a religious nature.

Ireland!!! where there exists neither prædial servitude, nor licensed beggary, nor voluntary association, nor compulsory assessment, nor municipal charitable establishments to any great extent, and where those of a religious kind are prohibited by law; where only is that minute division of the occupation of land which has reduced the indigent class to the most depressed and miserable state; where men are born in numbers to perish by "the diseases occasioned by squalid poverty, by damp and wretched cabins,

by bad and insufficient clothing, by the filth of their persons, and occasional want."-Malthus, book ii. c. 12. Do these evils arise from the want of religious establishments? from the want of systematic colonization? from the want of the compulsory local assessment? But where the Church is not allowed to support the indigent, and the State will not sanction their claims upon property, can we be surprised, if the strong law of self-preservation disavows those creatures of artificial society, which have emanated from property only, whether in the hands of ecclesiastics or the laity; and that even the right of property itself is protected only by the faint traces of humanity, which the occasional view of civilization has prevented from being eradicated from minds almost reduced to their pristine barbarity*? How strong, too, must be the feelings which incite to a contest, of which those who engage in it know that the success is impossible!

* Captain Rock's summary of this doctrine is shorter: "No Proctors, no Peelers, no Tithes, no Taxes; small rents, and Erin go bragh."—Cork Intelligencer, December.

"The character of the outrages in Ireland was not political. They were stimulated by poverty, and directed against property generally. Tithes and taxes were no more the objects of the popular fury than rents. Taxes indeed had little to do with the question. The moving impulse was a dire famine, and the immediate cause was a failure of that produce by which the peasantry are sustained."—Administration of the Affairs of Great Britain, &c. at the Commencement of 1823. p. 180.

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