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pear, that, by all these enormous contributions for their relief, their condition has been in any degree improv

ed.

This view of the subject, then, suggests an important and seemingly practicable reformation in the present administration of the poor-laws. If the act of Queen Elizabeth were strictly confined to its only proper objects, namely, to such as are disabled by age, sickness, or bodily infirinity, a large class of paupers would be withdrawn from the operation of this system, and the expence would be proportionally retrenched. It is not meant, however, that any reformation of this nature should be attempted suddenly, or without due warning, more especially in the present circumstances of the country. But when trade and the demand for labour are somewhat revived, there could be no possible hardship in leaving the ablebodied labourer, in the full vigour of health and strength, to depend for subsistence on his own industry; and in warning him that he had no reason to expect relief on any future occasion, unless in the case of sickness or infirmity, from any system of public charity.

With respect to another class of objects comprehended in the act of Queen Elizabeth, namely, the children of the poor, and those who have no employment, and for this purpose to procure a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, &c., it seems obvious, as has been already stated, that the overseers cannot procure those materials on which to set the poor to work, without in so far encroaching on the general funds of productive industry, of which they form a part, and that the effect of these contrivances, therefore, is only to divert a portion of the capital of the community into a channel, in which it will be less beneficially employed than when it is allowed to remain under the management of the private manufacturer. These views are explained in the late Report of the Select Committee on this subject with great force and clearness. "An increased demand for labour (it is observed) is the only means by which the wages of labour can ever be raised; and there is nothing which can increase the demand, but the increase of the wealth by which

labour is supported; if, therefore, the compulsory application of any part of this wealth tends (as it always must tend) to employ the portion it distributes less profitably than it would have been, if left to the interested superintendence of its owners, it cannot fail, by thus diminishing the funds which would otherwise have been applicable to the maintenance of labour, to place the whole body of labourers in a worse situation than that in which they would otherwise have been placed.'

The Committee afterwards add the following judicious observations :"Under these circumstances, if the demand for labour suddenly decreases, the provisions of the poor law alone are looked to, to supply the place of all those circumstances which result only from vigilance and caution; the powers of law, whilst they profess to compel both labour and wages to be provided, under these circumstances, in reality effect nothing but a more wasteful application of the diminished capital than would otherwise take place; they tend thereby materially to reduce the real wages of free labour, and thus essentially to injure the la bouring classes. In this situation of things, not only the labourers, who have hitherto maintained themselves, are reduced, by the perversion of the funds of their employers, to seek assistance from the rate, but the smaller capitalists themselves are gradually reduced, by the burden of the assessments, to take refuge in the same re source. The effect of these compulsory distributions is to pull down what is above, not to raise what is low; and they depress high and low together, beneath the level of what was originally lowest."

The Committee then proceed to point out the following method for freeing the system from this unnecessary burden :-" If these views of the effect of undertaking to provide employment for all who want it are founded in truth, there results from them an obvious necessity of abandoning gradually the impossible condition, that all who require it shall be provided with work, which, whether or not it be the real object of the sta tute, has by many been held to be so. On this head, your Committee submit, that, if the provision which they have pointed out be made for children

whose parents cannot maintain them, and the provision also for such as are of the class of poor and impotent be continued, the labouring classes will continue to be relieved from the heaviest part of their necessities. But if any portion of the general and indiscriminate relief which is now given, must of necessity be withheld, your Committee think, it can be withheld from none by whom the privation could so well be borne, as by those who are in the full vigour of health and strength; it may therefore be worthy of consideration, whether, if, under favourable circumstances of the country, the demand for labour should again be materially enlarged, it might not be enacted, that no person should be provided with work by the parish, other than those who are already so provided, and who might be permitted to continue until they could provide for themselves; but if the change by this provision might be thought too rapid, limitations might still be provided, the effect of which would render it more gradual, as by enacting, that none shall be provided with employment who are between the ages of 18 and 30; and then, after a certain lapse of time, that none between 16 and 35, 40, and so on, until the object shall be gradually effected."

Such seem to be the only practicable expedients for circumscribing the operation of the poor-laws within their original limits; for, however other and milder plans may aid the effect of this radical reformation, it is certain that the poor will never be trained to habits of independence, until those profuse and indiscriminate donations which they are taught to depend on, be retrenched. No man who can live in idleness will ever practise industry, and, if the poor are taught to look to a certain provision, independent of their own exertions, we may be assured that all plans for their improvement will be for ever vain.

Among other projects for the improvement and happiness of the labouring classes, we may here notice the schemes of Mr Owen, which have of late attracted a considerable share of attention. Unlike all other reformers, Mr Owen proposes at once to banish vice and misery entirely out of the world. He is to place the labouring classes in such prosperity and plenty, that there will be no longer

any scope under this system for the hateful passions of envy, anger, or revenge, by which the world has been so long tormented. Mr Owen lays it down as a fundamental proposition, that land, labour, and capital, under more skilful management, might be made to support four times the number of people which are at present maintained by it, and, under this notion, he proposes collecting into workhouses, containing from 500 to 1500 persons, all the poor who cannot find employment; and in these workhouses they are to be furnished with work,-to labour in common,-and to form a sort of primitive society. It does not appear that such an esta blishment, however admirably it might be managed in its details, would differ from an ordinary work-house in this respect, that it must be supported by capital taken from the general fund, for maintaining productive industry. Mr Owen cannot create capital. He takes capital already accumulated, and, in so far, he diminishes the stock out of which labour is employed and supported. The effect of his plans, therefore, is merely to transfer the labourer to the work-house, and in this there is neither novelty nor ingenuity. As to the reformation which he proposes to accomplish in the habits and dispositions of mankind, this is chimerical in the extreme. The world, from time immemorial, has gone on in a course of strife, violence, and mischief. But a new era, we are told, is now to commence. These vices are to be superseded by gentleness, mildness, and peace. All is to be changed by the fiat of Mr Owen. He seems to imagine, that he has found out a recipe for producing whatever quantity of wisdom and virtue he chooses to call into action; and he expects the world to give him credit for the possession of this wonderful power. It is useless to enter farther into the details of a scheme which is so wild and absurd in principle. We know that the foundation for vice and misery is laid deep in the constitution of human society,-that these evils, though they may be palliated by wise and beneficial institutions, can never be removed; and the pompous pretensions, therefore, of those political projec tors, who, seeing no difficulties in the way of their schemes, undertake, without hesitation, to reverse the set

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tled plan of human society, are not for the poor beyond all reasonable calculated to stand their ground be- proportion. The assessments also fore the canvassing spirit of the pre- regularly and uniformly increased sent age. Mr Owen deals chiefly in from their commencement. Claimants that sort of declamation which springs soon arose to absorb all the provision from an ardent and overheated zeal. made, and hence new assessments He seems to belong to the school of were found necessary. This clearly large promise and little performance; shews the danger of the system which and with regard to his motives, we have necessarily tends to corruption. no doubt they are good, equally so with salutary jealousy still prevails in this those of the Knight of La Mancha, when country against the undue increase of he proceeded to demolish the windmills, public assessments for the poor, and or to indulge in any of the other ge- it is only, we may be well assured, by nerous fancies which sprung from his constant watchfulness and care, that disordered imagination. But we hold they can be restrained within due lithat all schemes which are thorough- mits, and prevented from degeneratly impracticable should be discouraging, as in England, into a source of ed as speedily as possible, because their general misery and corruption. tendency is to divert our attention from what is useful and practical, to what is idle and speculative, and therefore GENERAL VIEW OF THE CREDIT AND useless.

We may conclude with observing, that the laws in Scotland, for the support of the poor, are similar in their principle to those in England. But the manners of the people have, in a great measure, superseded any general system of parochial relief. In Scotland, dependent poverty is considered disgraceful, and even for the relief of the sick and infirm, there is in many parishes no stated fund except what is collected weekly at the church doors, the fruit of voluntary charity. In the larger towns, however, assessments are now imposed for the relief of the poor. The amount of the sum required is fixed at a joint meeting of the minister, elders, and heritors of the parish. It falls on the real rents of property, either in houses or lands, and is paid jointly by the heritors and tenants. In the administration of this charity, it is stated in the report of the General Assembly, that no relief is ever given to the able-bodied labourer. The money collected is considered to be a provision for the sick and the infirm; and the common labourer, who is relieved in consequence of sickness, immediately ceases to receive assistance when he returns to his former industry. In many parishes, however, where public assessments. for the poor were established, the ill effects of the system became very soon apparent. It was observed, that the introduction of regular assessments always produced an influx of paupers from other parishes, and thus swelled the demands

COMMERCE OF THE COUNTRY.

THERE can be no doubt that the commerce of this country, along with that of the world at large, has for some years past been exposed to serious derangement; and the consequences arising from this state of things have been severely felt by all those whose livelihood depended in any degree on the ancient state of commercial relations existing in Europe. The merchant has been ruined by the want of a market for his goods, and the mechanic has been exposed to suffer from the want of a market for his industry; while, in the course of this disastrous period, the price of provisions has fluctuated between the opposite extremes of extraordinary cheapness, and extraordinary dearth.

All the evils to which the labourer was formerly exposed were necessarily aggravated by the scarcity of subsistence, while returning plenty brought not with it all the alleviation of his unhappy condition which might have been expected, for the cheapness of provisions was of little avail to him while he was without employment, and without the means, therefore, of purchasing a sufficient quantity of subsistence, at however reduced a rate. For some time past, however, the country has been recovering from this extraordinary depression; some favourable symptoms in its condition are now perceptible. Its commerce now finds a reviving demand for its products; and the increasing plenty of money has begun to reanimate its languish

ing industry. Amid all these various and unlooked for changes; amid all the complicated principles of action which set in motion the vast and nicely regulated machine of modern society, it is a most curious, as well as an instructive, task, more especially where such precious interests are involved, to trace effects to their causes, and to endeavour precisely to ascertain the source of all those fatal disorders under which our commerce has been suffering, that, we may, if possible, prevent their recurrence, and that we may thus derive instruction for the future from the unerring experience of the past. Political economy differs from some other sciences in this, that we can make no experiments on the objects in which it is conversant. But the great map of society lies open to our inspection; and it is only by a diligent and close examination that we can distinctly trace out all its intricate relations, and that we can, in this manner, reconcile all apparent anomalies, by referring each particular fact to the operation of some general law.

In any inquiry of the nature proposed, there are three points which present themselves to our consideration; 1st, What were the immediate causes which produced the stagnation of our commerce? 2dly, Is it likely 'that it will revive, and to what extent? and, 3dly, What is the cause of the present increasing plenty of money, and what are likely to be its ef'fects?

1. The immediate causes which produced the decline of our commerce, appear to be sufficiently obvious. During the whole course of the last and former wars, the commerce and manufactures of Britain were in the most flourishing condition, and many causes concurred to give to this country a very large proportion of the trade of the world. The distractions of France, in consequence of the Revolution, and the wars which desolated the continent, the effect of which was, to dissipate and destroy the funds of productive industry, were both adverse to the progress of commerce. In the meantime, Great Britain, enjoying domestic prosperity and peace, was rapidly accumulating capital, and improving in manufacturing skill. The great and increasing demands, both of Europe and America, gave a new and

extraordinary stimulus to every species of industry. To supply this growing market, manufacturing establishments were extended,-labour was more and more subdivided,-new and ingenious machinery was erected,and, under this system, the industry of Britain, in place of directly producing a supply of commodities suited to her own particular wants, came at length to be gradually adapted to the general supply of the world. All her great manufacturing establishments produced a surplus of their particular commodity above what was required for home consumption. This surplus was necessarily exported, and foreign commodities, for which there was a demand at home, were imported in return. In these circumstances, our manufactures, evidently depending on the foreign market for an outlet to their produce, they are suddenly interdicted from the market of Europe by the hostile decrees of France, with a vast army to execute them, and from that of America by the war which unhappily broke out between the two countries. In the loss, therefore, of all our accustomed markets, we find a perfectly adequate cause for the decline of our commerce and manufactures, and for the general distress of all that numerous class who depended on trade for employment and subsistence.

II. The more important question, however, remains to be considered, namely, whether commerce will speedily revive from its present depression? That it will ultimately revive we have no doubt. But considering the long continued annoyance to which it was exposed, some time must necessarily elapse before it can be restored to its former flourishing condition. Its progress during the late wars has already been pointed out, together with the various causes which, by increasing the demand, and extending the market for British goods, contributed to enlarge the different branches of our manufactures far beyond the scale of our own particular wants. Under this great extension of our commerce, the industry of the country was most skilfully managed, and its productive powers were greatly increased. But the manufactures produced were now in a great measure adapted, to the foreign market. There was a large surplus above what was wanted at

1817.]

General View of the Credit and Commerce of the Country.

home, and when the demand there fore ceased abroad, or when the intercourse was obstructed, the supply, in order to avoid the difficulties which followed, ought to have been proportionally retrenched. But various circumstances prevented this. An immense capital was now invested in the new and somewhat artificial state of things, which had grown up in eonsequence of the disorders which had prevailed throughout Europe, and it could not be suddenly diverted into another channel without the most prodigious loss. The habits of the mechanic, also, were thoroughly adapted to certain branches of industry, and these being abandoned, it was evident that he would be exposed to idleness and misery The manufacturers, besides, hoped for better times, and various causes concurred to induce them to exhaust their capitals in continuing their respective employments, and thus the supply of British manufactures was prevented from being reduced to the level of the demand. The intercourse both with America and Europe was obstructed, -the demand and the consumption had ceased, but it was long before the supply fell off in proportion, and the consequence was a continued accumulation of unsaleable produce. The market was completely overstocked, and when peace re-opened all the former channels of British commerce, an inundation of goods from the glutted warehouses of Britain were forced into the markets both of Europe and of America. Prices fell ruinously low, and little relief was afforded, because, although goods to a great amount were exported, they were sold to no profit, and they bore no proportion to the supply which was still left at home, and which had been accumulated during those years when there was little demand aad little consumption. The evil then by which the manufacturer is oppressed,-the weight which still clogs the movements of commerce, is a load of unsaleable produce, and until the market be cleared by the increase of consumption of what is superfluous, the industry of the country will not be restored to a state of soundness and vigour. But the supply and the demand naturally tend to suit themselves to each other, and a little time, therefore, will necessarily bring them

VOL. I.

41

to a level. When this takes place, the demand for British produce will revive, prices will rise,-wages will be increased,-and all classes of manufacturers will be enabled, as before, to draw a comfortable subsistence from their capital and from their industry. The commerce of the country, indeed, may not be enlarged to the same extent doubt, employ their capital in the as before. Other nations will, no prosecution of manufacturing industry, and the restrictions and duties which have been imposed upon the importation of British goods into Europe by those who, from allies in war, have become rivals in trade, will undoubtedly be unfavourable to the extension of British commerce. But, to trust, in some degree, to the greater overcome these obstacles, we must capital, and to the improved machinery with which the industry of Britain is aided, and to the superior skill and ingenuity also of the British mechanic. Hitherto, certainly, neither the newly established manufactures of Europe nor of America have been able to stand before the competition of British goods, and one effect favourable to our commerce has thus resulted from the great accumulation of British manufactures, namely, that the infant establishments both of Ame rica and Europe have, in many cases, been entirely ruined, and have, in all cases, received a serious check from the immense importation of goods which has taken place from this country at such low prices, that they have made their way through every opposing barrier, either of unfavour able laws, or of protecting duties.

capital has been accumulating in the III. Since the restoration of country;-money has become more peace, plentiful, and mercantile confidence has begun to revive. The obvious tion of the immense loans required by cause of this appears to be, the cessathe public service during the war. The contributions of capital which try were employed in supporting solthe war imposed on productive indusdiers or sailors; by whom capital is destroyed without any commercial equivalent being produced in return. This annual waste, therefore, necessarily retarded the accumulation of capital. It created a void in the money market, which productive industry was called upon to fill up. All

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