been obtained, as witness the reductions in the parish expenditure of Liverpool, Southwell, Maidenhead, and Hatfield. In Liverpool the following change was effected, though the population had increased 10,000 in the interval: in 1821, 4717 paupers cost 360,1367.; in 1827, only 2607 paupers cost 193,9561. -Evidence of Mr. Ellis before Poor-law Committee, 1828. See also Mr. Day's Inquiry, p. 22.

The settlement law and the tendency of the allowance system have been before noticed p. 89 & 390. I shall conclude with an abstract of the Hints on the Administration of the Poor-laws, contained in a tract published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

1. A permanent overseer should be chosen, acting under the control of the annual overseers; and if the parish be large, a select or managing vestry.

2. An efficient workhouse and poor-house should be established; they are often united, but are better separated for the purpose of classification.

3. The aged poor are mostly depraved and incorrigible; parish children should be kept separate from them, instructed in arts likely to be useful in after life, and educated upon the plan of the infant schools, where health, recreation, and tuition, adapted to their years, are promoted.

4. Parish officers should keep constantly before them the 43d Eliz. c. 2, s. 1 (see page 356), bearing in mind that the fundamental object of the poor-laws is setting to work all who are able, and not maintaining any in idleness; many even of the infirm poor may be able to do some work, and so much work should be required from each as is compatible with health.

5. Parishes are liable to much imposition, and careful inquiry should precede and accompany allowances to out-dwellers.

6. To every applicant the parish should have the option of

granting an allowance or a residence in the poor-house.* There is nothing the idle and disorderly dread so much as the strict discipline, scanty fare, and hard work, that ought to be enforced in every workhouse. Relief, however, may be sometimes granted to the infirm who reside with relatives or friends; so also that temporary assistance which the able-bodied poor occasionally require may be often most advantageously afforded at their own houses.

7. An offer of the poor-house will cause many applicants to shift for themselves, or if they accept an abode there, leave it after experiencing its regulations; so that the expense of the poor-house is not to be estimated by the cost of its inmates alone, but by the saving it effects in restricting the application of the parish rates solely to the necessitous.

8. The granting of allowances in aid of wages, and in consideration of children, tends to lower the price of labour and stimulate population by the encouragement it offers to marriage.

In conclusion I shall remark, that though it is unlikely "the poor will ever cease out of the land," yet a large portion of existing pauperism might have assuredly been averted by better habits in the people and more wisdom in the classes immediately above them. The poor are not wholly to blame for their vices. Without instruction in the principles which influence their condition, without examples of economy, order, and forethought in their early years, they have not

*The granting of allowances in place of an abode in the workhouse is reckoned in the Parliamentary Report of 1817 (p. 7) among the chief causes of the increase of pauperism. The allowance system began in 1795, under 36 Geo. III. c. 22, extended by 55 Geo. III. c. 22, and is unquestionably the hotbed of fraudulent pauperism. But by a reference to the statement, page 363, it will be remarked that pauperism had made rapid strides prior to the prevalence of the allowance system.

an opportunity to become in after life any thing more than children in understanding, and it not unfrequently happens that the most kind and generous hearts among them are those least gifted with the saving virtues by which the miseries of future penury and want may be averted. They are the orphans of society to whom every indulgence compatible with their own welfare should be extended. If they have been ignorant of their duties, the rich have neglected theirs. How can it be supposed the labouring man, doomed to unceasing toil, can discover those hidden causes of poverty which for thousands of years escaped even the scrutiny of the philosopher. It is not parish officers, clergymen, and magistrates only to whom the weal of the poor ought to be confided; upon every employer of workpeople is imposed a solemn duty next to that he owes his own family, to learn himself and explain to those dependant upon him, the origin of social distress arising from bad habits, excess of population, changes of the seasons, and periodical vicissitudes in trade. It is only in this manner popular education can be made universal, and knowledge really useful disseminated through the community.

PART III.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

СНАР. І.

INTRODUCTION.

Progress of Political Philosophy-General Principles-Rousseau, Godwin, Bentham, Mill, Paley, Burke, and PaineEffects of the French Revolution on the Practice of Governments-Misapplication of Abstract Propositions.

SOCIETY is now about five or six thousand years old. Its institutions, laws, manners, and usages, are the results of that lengthened term of experience. It is in human nature to seek to replace evil by good, to substitute something better in lieu of the worse which preceded it; what, then, we now possess, defective as it may be, is the fruit of all the generations that have gone before us.

I mention the age of society to contrast it with the age of an individual, and to show how mistaken that man must be who thinks that within the short

span of his own existence, within the contracted sphere of his own observance, and by the help of his own single faculties, he can devise any system, or propound any idea, that shall not supersede, but even materially alter the social fabric which is older than the pyramids, and nearly as aged as the hills; and which has descended to us as the product of all the wisdom that has successively appeared at Thebes, Athens, Rome, London, and Paris. Yet individuals have laboured under this delusion, who thought they were wiser than nature and all her works, though themselves but an atom—a short-lived atom-in the universe!

This retrospection is not introduced to imply that establishments of any kind derive authority from age, or to recommend mere antiquity in place of principle, but to suggest two useful considerations-one corrective, the other consolatory. First, it must show the error of those who think immediately, and by their individual efforts, to alter the moral and political institutions of mankind; those institutions that have been the growth of centuries, and the creation of successive races of men as far beyond their contemporaries in benevolence and science as they themselves can assume to be. Secondly, it、 must be consolatory and encouraging to future perseverance to think that every endeavour at social improvement may not be fruitless; that its apparent insignificance may only result from the greatness of the undertaking; and that the smallest additional amendment to the vast and complicated pile of