" Do you conceive, that the system of removals at ona adds considerably to the expense of the rates, and is a great grievance to the morals of the poor ? —That it degrades the poor to a very great degree is certain ; and that it adds to the rates, but mostly in the metropolis. The managers of the poor are very willing, thinking to get rid of them in a short time, to maintain them, rather than send them to a remote quarter ; if it is within 20 or 30 miles, they will remove them, but if it is 200 miles off they do not go to the expence.
" Then they must have the paupers perpetually upon them ?—They are in hopes of soon getting rid of them ; they often go into the house from the sickness of the head of the family, or from various casualties; they are in hopes things may come round." Of the existing i system of extraordinary laws con cerning the poor in England, that part which relates to the whipping and imprisoning of persons found soliciting alms, is represented by the witnesses as one of the grand sources of evil ; because it is a law which the present state of humanity will not allow, in ordinary cases, to be executed. The whipping is • regularly and totally disused. The putting a wretch ed being into an English prison is not a way to ele vate his mind, and place him above the base thoughts of beggary. It is likely to make him more regardless of all moral, very often of all legal restraints ; and where he went in a beggar, to come out a thief. Upon the atrocious cruelty of driving a wretched creature to beggary, in the way explained above, refusing prompt assistance, and then whipping or imprison ing for an act of such necessity, no comment is re quired.
Into the mischievous tendency of the principle upon which the system of the English poor laws is built, holding out a premium for worthlessness, and for that excessive multiplication of the people, to which a state of general wretchedness is attached, we shall not at present enter. It will come to be considered, where THE POOR, and the policy regard ing them, become the subjects of discussion. What, in this place, chiefly calls for attention, is the course of procedure and detail, in the hands of the parish officers ; not as a system of waste and of oppression upon the contribution, nor as a system of tyranny and vexation to the paupers, but as a mode of mak ing beggars. This they do, by their modes both of giving and withholding relief. They give it under such circumstances as to make people fly from it to beggary ; they withhold it in such a manner as both to compel and seduce them into beggary. Mr
Gurney was asked,—" What is the police establish ment of your parish ?—We have four beadles and six constables, besides special constables occasion ally ; but there is a great terror and alarm on the minds of the parish officers of all the parishes, lest the work-house should be overstocked, and lest the parish should be burthened ; and, as long as persons !get their livelihood without looking to them, though at is by pilfering, unless they actually know ;hat they are pilfering, they take no notice. I have often thought that if many of our poor laws were impera instead of permissive, it would be useful ; and I am afraid many of the parish officers are ignorant of their duty, as well as the beadles and constables.
" Do you know whether persons confined in the work-houses, and relieved there, are ever let out of those work-houses for the purpose of begging, in the course of the day ?—They go out on the Sunday generally, and I believe many of them beg, indeed I am pretty sure of it." As a cause of beggary, it is necessary here to men tien early and improvident marriages, and all those other proceedings which tend to increase procreation beyond the measure of subsistence, and thus to keep . the great mass of the people sunk near to the level of mendicity,—a proximity from which, by the slight est accident, many of them are continually falling down to it altogether. That this is the grand me dium through which beggary is produced, it is need less to offer any proof. The mode in which. the principle of population, when injudiciously encou raged, instead of being wisely restrained, operates to the degradation of the people, has been already, in part, explained ; and it will be still farther elucidated in a subsequent article of this work.
Among the causes of beggary in England, one may be regarded as pretty remarkable, that is, Ire land. Ireland Is one of the greatest of all the causes of beggary in England. Considerably more than one-third of all the beggars in the metropolis appear to be Irish. Of all human beings in any part of the globe, the mass of the Irish appear to be in the most deplorable circumstances, whether their moral or phy sical situation be considered ; and that under a go vernment regarded as the best in the world. The art of making governments efficient to the purposes of government is, therefore, still but imperfectly un derstood.