er.

No scheme of equality, then, can overcome the population difficulty;
emigration is only a palliative, and poor-law relief only a nostrum
which eventually aggravates the evils of over-population.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the
poor in two ways. Their first obnoxious tendency is to increase
population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may
marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family
without parish assistance. The poor laws may be said, therefore, to
create the poor which they maintain, and as the provisions must be
distributed to the greater numbers in smaller proportions, the labours
of those who are not supported by parish assistance will purchase a
smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently more of
them will require assistance. Secondly, the quantity of provisions
consumed in workhouses by the least worthy members of the community
diminishes the food of the more worthy members, who are thus driven to
obtain relief.

Fortunately for England a spirit of independence still remains among the
peasantry. The poor laws, though calculated to eradicate this spirit,
have only partially succeeded. Hard as it may appear in individual
instances, dependent poverty ought to be deemed disgraceful. Such a
stigma seems necessary to promote the general happiness of mankind. If
men be induced to marry from the mere prospect of parish provision, they
are not only unjustly tempted to bring unhappiness and dependence upon
themselves and their children, but they are tempted unwittingly to
injure all in the same class as themselves. Further, the poor laws
discourage frugality, and diminish the power and the will of the common
people to save, and they live from hand to mouth without thought of the
future. A man who might not be deterred from going to the ale-house by
the knowledge that his death and sickness must throw his wife and family
upon the parish, might fear to waste his earnings if the only provisions
for his family were casual charity.

The mass of unhappiness among common people must be diminished when one
of the strongest checks to idleness and dissipation is thus removed; and
when institutions which render dependent poverty so lessen the disgrace
which should be attached to it. I feel persuaded that if the poor-laws
had never existed in this country, though there might have been a few
more instances of very severe distress