The number of persons parish relief in England is beyond example in. any country or any age, being fully one person in eleven, if we compute by the above enumeration; and many more (not less than one in eight), if we comprise the children of the 400,000 or 500,000 persona who receive permanent relief at their homes. The workhouse plan is adopt. ed in the case of nearly 100,000 individuals. Its ex. tension was in a great measure owing to an act pas sed in 1782, commonly called Mr Gilbert's Act, which, to obtain the advantages arising from a col lective assemblage of the poor, from a joint manage ment of disbursement and a considerable division of labour, empowered the magistrates to consider any large workhouse as a common receptacle for the poor throughout a diameter of 20 miles. As yet this plan has by no means been successful. Proper care has seldom been taken to separate the inmates of the workhouses according to their age or their habits; nor has the division of employment been car ried to the necessary length. The four shillings a week, which each pauper generally costs in a work house, is much more than would have been requisite at their own habitations.
Scotland was originally subjected to a similar sys tem for the poor, but fortunately escaped its perver, aim, from the execution of the law being vested, not in temporary officers, such as church-wardens and over seers, but in the landholders, ministers, and elders, whose personal acquaintance with the poor enabled them to act with discrimination. It would be no small improvement in England to appoint, as overseer, a per manent officer with a salary, to act, if necessary, for more than one parish, a practice already adopted in some cases with success. The landed interest complain that the burden of the poor's-rate falls exclusively ou them and the.owners of houses. But there are strong objections to imposing any part of this burden on the income of the stockholders or the profit of traders. (Report on the Poor Law:, 4th July 1817, p. 6.) There would be no check to a perpetually increasing disbursement were the burden to be ren dered national instead of parochial. Nor is it true that the trading and manufacturing districts have in. creased their paupers in a greater proportion than the agricultural. In Bedfordshire and Herefordshire, the two counties which employ the largest proportion of their inhabitants in agriculture, the same p sive augmentation of assessment has taken=. (See Report on the Poor Lam, 1817, p. The consideration of most importance, as connect ed with the landed interest, is the reciprocal effect of the ...r and the corn-laws ; if the latter afford the lan .1. olden an indemnity for the extra burden of the former, the public may fairly claim a proportional reduction of the importation limit of corn in return for such alleviation as may be made in the pressure of the poor-rates on the land. This idea, at which our limits permit us only to hint, might, in our opi nion, be made the basis of the most beneficial regu lations. A great proportion of the present poor's
rate has arisen from the voluntary conduct of the more affluent classes, who, during the war, preferred paying an extra charge to raising the wages of country labour. This was shown by the remarkable fact of such labour being considerably cheaper in England than in Scotland. An effectual reduction, therefore, can take place only in two ways; either by raising wages as parish relief is withdrawn, or by mating the personal expellees of our poor to that of the poor of the rest of Europe, by a progressive abrogration of the corn-laws.
Friendly Societies.—These associations are spoken of with much commendation in the Reports of the Committee on the Poor Lams. We extract the num ber of members.
The establishments both for the Navy and Army have, in the present age, been carried to an extent of which no country has exhibited an example. Greater efforts, perhaps, have been made on sudden emergencies, both in ancient and modern times; but neither Prussia, ' ia, the most military state on the Con tinent, nor France in the reign of Buonaparte could stand a comparison during last war with England in the proportion borne by her armed force to the po pulation at large. The difficulty lay, not in levying every tenth, or even every eighth man in a courageous population, but in finding, thepublic credit and the productive industry of the rest of the community, the means of supporting so vast a number " in arms and idleness" during a succession of years.
Total during I 12 ran of war, The navy expenditure increased very gradually; that of the army took a sudden rise in 1812 and 1818, owing, in part, to our increased scale of exer tion in Spain, but more to the unfortunate fall of the exchanges, which, in these years, were nearly 30 per us. These returns refer, of course, not to England alone, but to the United Kingdomat large. The numbers maintained in the latter years were, in the navy, 140,000 seamen and marines ; in the army about 300,000; viz. in regulars and in foreign corps, exclusive of our troops in India, 207,000; in regu lar militia, 93,000 ; the whole effective, and without reckoning a very numerous force of local militia, wo. casionally embodied. In 1814, a great reduction took place, particularly in the navy. In 1815, the alarm caused by Buonaparte's return suspended for a Establish time the reduction of the army, bet, in•1816, there _,__mtr for were nearly 87,000 • exclusive of 10,000 deaths and desertions. S we had, in 1817, a force abroad and at home, of nearly 20,000 amity, 6000 — T foot guards, and 115,000 infintry. The expence of nearly 50,000 of these troops was defrayed by France and the East India Company; for the remainder the following sums were voted by Parliament: Abstract of the Army Estimates for 1817, exclusive of the Extraordinaries of the Army.