* "The poor-rate year terminated at Easter, until Easter 1814; since which time, it has terminated on the 25th day of March, in pursuance of Act 54th Geo. III., c. 91. Hence the price of wheat (according to which inversely the pressure of the poor-rate is calculable, rather than by the absolute sum levied and expended), relies on the average price of the preceding year, rather than on that of the year in which it terminates. Thus, the price of the Winchester Quarter being 57s. and 55s. in the years 1826 and 1827 respectively, the price of wheat must be reckoned at 57s. during about nine months of the poor-rate year ending 25th March 1827, and for about three months of such year at 55s.; so that 56s. 6d. per quarter is the truest average of that poor-rate year deducible from annual averages."

From this table it will be seen, that there is not a great difference between the average of 1775-6 and that of 1783-4-5. But, in the year 1795, the tide of pauperism was let loose, which has swelled and kept up these rates ever since; and from this period is to be traced the origin from which the calamitous evils of the system sprung. In this year the price of wheat rose to '74s. the quarter, being 20s. above the average of the three preceding years. By this instantaneous rise in the price of wheat, many able-bodied labourers, who only received the same rate of wages as formerly, were compelled to apply for parish relief. The kind of relief granted, though it might at first view appear to be an equitable one, has been attended with the worst consequences, and is to this time a continually increasing evil. In some of the southern counties, tables, showing a scale of wages which labourers ought to receive, were issued by the magistrates; and should the labourers not receive from their employers such wages as had been fixed by the magistrates, then the difference was to be paid out of the poor-rates. These tables, as from time to time issued by the magistrates, are gene rally based upon the assumption that a labourer shall each week have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten-bread for each of his family, and one over. This system will be best shown in the following table, in which we shall assume the rate of wages in a district to be 6s. a-week, and the price of the gallon-loaf to be 1s. 3d.

This scale of wages is intended, it would appear, to be a measure for man's demands for food,-a stimulus to improvident marriages, and not a reward in proportion to the intrinsic value of man's labour:-For, suppose that the first-mentioned

person in the above table is a decent and frugal unmarried labourer, however valuable his services may be, he can only receive 6s. a-week. While the labourer with a wife and eight children will receive 6s. a-week from his employer, and 7s. 9d. from the poor-rates, making in all 13s. 9d. a-week; suppose, farther that this same individual is such a worthless and abandoned character that he will not work, or that nobody will employ him, still he receives 13s. 9d. a-week out of the poor-rates, and in that case merely for doing nothing. The same parallel might be drawn with any of the others; and yet it might happen that the services of the unmarried person were worth treble those of him who received so much higher wages. The manner of employing these pauper-labourers, too, is highly objectionable. They are sent about amongst the farmers to obtain work; and while thus employed, in place of receiving the current rate of wages, they receive sometimes the whole of their wages, and often the greater part, out of the poor-rates. Nay, sometimes when farmers have no means of employing them, they are put upon the roads to break stones, and other inadequate occupations, or are shut up in a gravel-pit to dig, or cooped up in pounds, like wild animals, to prevent them from travelling over the country to do mischief.

Such is the practical operation of this pernicious system, which has now existed upwards of thirty-five years, and has spread over nearly the southern half of England. There can never be any incentive to diligence, industry, and frugality, under a state of things such as this. Man is here valued as a mere machine; there is no stimulus to exertion-no inducement to enterprize. Here the vagabond and the honest man, the spendthrift and the frugal labourer, are all treated on equal terms.

When the contract between the employer and the labourer is such, that the latter is to receive the market value for the services which he performs, he knows and feels the importance of doing the work to the satisfaction of his employer, and he therefore has an interest, and takes a pride, in doing so. But if the labourer is to receive a specified sum, without relation to how he works or when he works, he can have little, and it almost universally happens that he has little, regard either for employer or work. Under this system, a labourer is quite certain of ob

taining an allowance from the parish sufficient to support his family; hence it is a matter of indifference to him whether he earns a small sum or a large one. It is obvious, indeed, that a disinclination to work must be the consequence of so vicious a system. And frequently the work done by four or five such labourers does not amount to what might easily be performed by a single labourer at task-work.

This system, too, degrades the character of the labouring class. The motives which ought to induce men to work are the hope of bettering the condition-of themselves and their families. This produces industry, frugality, sobriety, family affection, and puts the labouring class on a friendly relation with the rest of the community. But the system as it exists produces idleness, imprudence, vice, dissension, and places the master and the labourer in a perpetual state of jealousy and mistrust. Subsistence is secure to all-to the idle as well as the industrious→→→→ to the profligate as well as the sober; and, as far as human interests are concerned, all inducement to obtain a good character is taken away. And hence, able-bodied men are found slovenly at their work, and dissolute in their hours of relaxation a father is negligent of his children; the children do not think it necessary to contribute to the support of their parents; the employer and the employed are engaged in perpetual quarrels, and the pauper, always relieved, is always discontented; crime advances with increasing boldness, and the parts of the country where this system prevails, are, in spite of our jails and our laws, filled with poachers and thieves *.

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How different is the character of the labouring class in most of those districts, which have not yet been contaminated by the baneful effects of this allowance-system? How very different is the state of the labouring class at this moment in the Lothians, and in the eastern border counties both of England and Scotland? There the farm servant remains with one master often for ten, twenty and thirty years together. He becomes wedded to his situation, and takes a deep interest in all the operations of the farm, and a solicitude about all his master's concerns. He

See the Report of the Select Committe of the House of Commons on Labourers' Wages, printed in 1824, in which this state of things is fully pointed out.

receives all his food in kind from his master, which puts him beyond want. The fluctuations in the price of the necessaries of life have no effect upon him. He lives decently and comfortably, though not luxuriously; he obtains for his children an education respectable for their station in life; and it not unfrequently happens that he maintains his aged and infirm parents, by which they never need parochial relief. An infringement by him of the laws of his country is a rare thing: and he maintains both a respectable moral and religious character.

But we need not take such extreme points of the country, to illustrate the evils of the allowance-system, and a superabundance of labourers. If we look into the evidence taken by a Commitee of the House of Lords, appointed about the middle of December last, to consider of the Poors' Laws, we shall find how differently the labourers are circumstanced. The following evidence is given by the Reverend James Beard, a clergyman and magistrate of the county of Bedford, and resident at Cranfield. "Have you many persons out of employment during the winter? About one-fourth in the dead time of the winter.In what manner are the poor employed during the winter time by the parish? In digging gravel, and taking care of the roads.Can you state what rate of wages they receive when so employed by the parish? Eight shillings per week the married men, with families; a single man, until this last week, 3s., 3s. 6d., and possibly 4s.-What proportion of your able-bodied labourers in your parish were out of employment last year? I should think from the month of November to the end of January nearer 30 than 20 out of 130."—" Can you state any particulars as to the employment of labourers on the roads in the parish of Kempston? The last year on the mere gravel digging, that parish expended L. 750; and I am sure I am not saying too much when I state I could get the same gravel dug for L. 50.-Can you state what the wages paid to the labourers were in that parish for that work? The married men 8s. per week, making up their families to a specified amount." "You state that many of the men are employed on the road in some of the parishes in your neighbourhood? There are.— Are they so employed for the purpose of giving them employment, or because the roads require that number to repair