136. Improvidence is directly encouraged, for you can't get people to save when their maintenance is already assured. Provident habits are directly discouraged, for the poor man who saves is practically deprived of the gratuity offered to the improvident man who spends all. The action of friendly societies and other means of selfhelp involving an effort to lay by, is to a great extent paralysed by a system of compulsory relief.

137. Neglect of children by parents, and parents by children, is directly encouraged, for if neglected, both will often be better cared for than if supported by each other.

138. Desertion of wives, often by collusion in order to obtain support, and often in the wellassured confidence that the parish will provide. Frauds of all kinds practised on the relieving officer to get an allowance when in work or in receipt of ample charity. But this is far from all.

139. Drink and gluttony are directly encouraged. Mutual benevolence and private charity, where such might act wholesomely and naturally,

are checked, whilst the oppressive poor-rate itself is constantly thrusting the poorer ratepayers into the ranks of the pauper recipients of poor relief.

140. All this time the greatest discontent amongst the poor prevails, the honest and industrious are soured and discouraged at seeing the tramp and thief cared for. The tramp and thief are never satisfied, where most relief is given there is always most grumbling—“ Quo plus sunt potæ plus sitiuntur aquæ.”

141. Lastly, the poor-law habitually misses the very class most deserving, i.e., the class not quite down, or too proud to accept the pauper conditions; and is proved to be totally inadequate to meet a real emergency, like the Lancashire famine of 1863, whereupon the most ancient and sound usage of private benevolence has to be resorted to wholesale before the plague is stayed.

142. The remedy for all this, as far as the law is concerned, was clearly seen by Sidney Smith, so far back as 1819. It is the gradual abolition

of the poor-law altogether.

Meanwhile we want a stricter veto upon outdoor relief as long as the workhouse lasts, a more rigid enforcement of labour, a system of sound loans, and an extended organisation of private and personal charity, to meet the cases now so disastrously the subjects of outdoor relief. What I mean will be more clearly developed further on; I glance now at the history, and proceed to define the position, of the present poor-law.

143. The poor-law was a "Tudor" device, invented to save from starvation the host of mendicants thrown suddenly on the highways through the suppression of the Religious Houses, those wholesale feeders of the poor in the reign of Henry VIII. It was a bad system supplanting a worse, for in my opinion it is a wrong thing for people to feel that they have a legal claim on public charity. Still, that is the state of affairs in England, and until we have a better one we must try and see that the poor-law, whilst it lasts, does what it professes to do, and with just as little injury and discouragement as possible to the honest and industrious portion of the community. Its certain

failure to do this adequately will be its best and quickest condemnation. Meanwhile your course

is clear.

144. All hopelessly destitute cases that come before you, if you cannot undertake to give them adequate support, or refer them to persons who will be chargeable for their permanent maintenance by pension or almshouse, &c., then you must not give doles, but say, "These are cases for legal charity," and you should hand them over to the poor-law; and one of the cases to be so handed over most unflinchingly is the incorrigibly intemperate person who has reduced his family to beggary. You may be sure that nothing can be done. with a pauper family until the drunkard is removed. His removal may not be his cure, but it may be, and often has been, theirs.

145. The second great cause of pauperism is over-population. No doubt the poor bring into the world large numbers of human beings whom they are utterly unable to support. This is one of the great difficulties that the legislature, and people who want to effect social improvement,

have to contend with. Sooner or later I suppose people will see that they are responsible for the number of children they bring into the world, but that is not a point I can go fully into at present. The redundant population, however, whilst a cause of pauperism, is held in check by a redundant infant mortality. Hundreds and thousands die in early childhood and infancy.

The fittest alone survive. This may seem a cruel law, but on the whole it works beneficially, for it removes useless mouths, whilst it fills hungry ones.

146. Another outlet is emigration. There is the natural method, death, and the artificial method, emigration; both are fighting on our side against the redundant population of our poor. But the fact is, we ought to be able to make room for them all. Our waste lands should be cultivated, our unproductive labourers put to productive labour, the resources of the land, together with the sense of thrift and the grace of sobriety, developed. We could then well afford to save our infant population, and stem the current of emigration.