andholders in their vicinity are only so
indirectly and in a lesser degree. This is decisively demonstrated by
the colossal fortunes so frequently made in the commercial classes,
contrasted with the declining circumstances or actual insolvency of the
landholders by whom they are surrounded. Do these, the merchants and
manufacturers, pay the larger proportion of the poor tax, thus rendered
inevitable by the nature of their operations, which are in so high a
degree beneficial to themselves? Quite the reverse: they do not, in
proportion to their profits, pay a _tenth part_ of its amount. The
poor's rate, as at present levied, is on the rural proprietors an
_Income_, on burgh inhabitants a _House_ tax. The difference is
prodigious, and leads to results in practice of the grossest injustice.

A landowner has an estate of L2000 a-year in a parish of which the
poor's-rate is 1s. in the pound, or L100 a-year on his property. A
manufactory is established, or an iron-work set agoing, or a coal mine
opened upon it, from which the fortunate owner derives L50,000 a-year of
profit. The buildings on it, however, are only valued at L2000 a-year.
He pays for his _pauper creating_ work, yielding him L50,000 a-year,
L100 annually, the same as what the landowner in the same parish pays
for his _pauper-feeding_ estate of L2000 a-year. In other words, in
proportion to the respective incomes, the landholder, who had no hand in
bringing in the poor, and derives little or nothing from their labour,
pays just _five-and-twenty times_ as much as the manufacturer who
introduced them, and is daily making a colossal fortune by their
exertions! And this becomes the more unjust when it is recollected, that
under the present system of free trade in corn and easy communication
with distant quarters which railways and steam-boats afford, the little
benefit the neighbouring landholders formerly derived from the presence
of such manufacturing crowds, is fast disappearing. But further, the
manufacturer or mine-owner having got off thus easily during the time of
prosperous trade, when he was realising his fortune, stops his works,
and discharges his workmen when the adverse season arrives. The rateable
value of the manufactory or the mine has, for the present, almost or
wholly disappeared, and the poor starving workmen are handed over to be
supported by the land-owner.

Persons not practically acquainted with these matters may think this
statement is overcha