It is, therefore, with perfect propriety and justice that the Board
have determined to retain the balance in their hands, in the mean
time, as a sacred deposit for the relief of that continued distress,
which both the reports of their own inspectors, and the information of
the government officers, establish to be still prevalent. On this
point the late report of Sir John F. Burgoyne as to Ireland applies in
a smaller degree to a very great part of the Highlands and Islands.

In continuing the system of relief, however, the board must keep in
view more closely and constantly than ever the leading principles
which originally guided them, and which we believe to be founded on
the most solid grounds of humanity and social policy.

1. Nothing must be done to relieve of their legal obligations those
who are bound by law to support the infirm poor. Wherever a poor law
is established, it must, we conceive, be fully and fairly enforced
against those liable in relief, to the extent of what is imposed upon
them. In no other way will selfish or thoughtless men be taught a due
interest in the social condition of their neighbours, and make the
necessary exertion to raise or preserve them from a state of
pauperism, the effects of which they are themselves to feel in their
only sensitive part.

2. It must be a rule, all but inflexible, that the able-bodied,
receiving relief, shall give, at the time, or engage to give
afterwards, a corresponding amount of labour in return; and that
engagement must be strictly enforced. This rule is not necessary
merely for the purpose of economising the fund, and benefiting the
public by useful employment. It is essential for preserving the
destitute both from the feeling, and from the reality, of that
degradation which attends on eating the bread of idleness. We believe
that much mischief was done, in 1837, by exonerating those who had
obtained aid from the obligations of labour which they had undertaken,
and which we know, in some districts, broke down all the restraints of
self-respect, and implanted a spirit of dependence and mendicity, even
in persons of a decent station. The evils of famine itself are
great,--its moral no less than its physical effects are fearfully
destructive. But the injury done is hardly less when the poor are
deprived, by gratuitous and reckless largesses, of those habits of
industry, independence, and self-respect, which are their best
possessions, and their only means o