politic nor possible, but to raise capital up to population. This is the problem to which every, but especially the British, government, should pay earnest and immediate attention. How to find productive employment for that portion of the population for whom no wages-fund exists. It is a question which cannot, will not be evaded. Before wages can be raised to any extent, the surplus laborers, whose competition keeps wages down, must in some way be taken from the labor market (tho not from the labor-field). It is also essential to any elevation of the great mass of laborers from the condition of mere appendages to the capital of the minority. The rapidly increasing amount of pauperism is attracting the attention of the most indifferent. Even the fact that every tenth person in England is a pauper gives no adequate idea of the deficiency of employment. Numbers of workmen will toil for the most inadequate wage, while others will share the pittance of their neighbors, relatives, and friends, before they will submit to the degration of the workhouse or the infliction of the stone-heap. Perhaps an eighth of our population might be fairly called 'surplus,' according to the rule of Political Economists, to whom they are a very troublesome 'surplus' indeed! What is to be done with them? Two or three plans have been suggested. The most original and ironical one is that by Thomas Carlyle :

"The old Spartans went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now, after the invention of fire arms and standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most thickly-peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the able bodied paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let Governments think of this; the expenses were trifling, nay, the very carcases would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep alive?"

Scarcely superior to this impracticable plan, is that of 'letting them alone,' 'leaving them to their own resources, etc.' French Political Economy triumphantly snapt its fingers at 'Red Republicanism,' and announced this as the cure for pauperism. But, alas! it was compelled to administer secret relief, and organize the surplus into an army. The economical creed of the bourgeoisie forbade them to organize industrially the surplus industry, and therefore it equipped them as warriors-an employment it justly supposed not liable to the slightest imputation of being useful. Another plan is, to ship them off, out of the road. A time will donbtless come, when the whole of the land in this country which can be cultivated, will be in complete cultivation. But that time is not yet. There are millions of acres in Great Britain untouched, and millions more in very imperfect cultivation. Nevertheless, as it is always desirable to leave a margin, it would be well that those with capital, a strong constitution fitted to encounter the hardships of a settler's life, and the requisite knowlege of agriculture, should have such advantages placed before them by means of systematic colonization, and a wise organization of their resources, as to make it worth their while to break the associations of home. It cannot, however, be expected that, as emigration is now conducted, such people, who are the only class fit to emigrate, will not rather

Bear the ills they have

Than fly to those they know not of.

If the government would arrange for large numbers of such to go together, so as to obviate the painful loneliness, and to remove immense obstacles which meet the solitary settler, during the first years, a much more extensive emigration of this class would follow.

Unfortunately however this is not the class, whom it behoves us to get rid of. The repeal of the laws affecting the inheritance of land in this country, would render enough of it available, to absorb all the surplus agriculturalists, whether with or without capital, for many years to come. Our most unmanageable surplus, is the half million able bodied paupers, and a vast number of manufac turing operatives all but paupers, whom successive improvements in machinery, have deprived of employment, Hand Loom Weavers, Bradford Woolcombers, Leicester Stocking Weavers, Nottingham Lace makers, and the like, who, to use the phrase of the economists, have never been absorbed '-and we fear never will be. Added to these, every trade can furnish a quantity of unemployed workmen more or less large, altogether making perhaps an eighth of the population of this country, who squeeze a bare subsistence out of the rest, diminish the profits of capital, and the possibility of future accumulation, by reducing the consumption of the wage-receivers. It is this class, who, as Fielding said," starve, and freeze, and rot, among themselves, but beg, and steal, and rob, among their betters." They inhabit the cellars and pigstyes, dignified with the name of dwellings, which from so large a part of our manufacturing towns. They suffer the evils of savage life, its hardships and uncertainty, without its freedom and its virtues, while of civilization they know nothing except its vices. To bid this class emigrate, in the present sense of that term, would, in many instances, be tantamount to a sentence of death, and with the greater part, be utterly impossible to carry out.

If therefore the remedy suggested by Carlyle, in happy ridicule of certain modern doctrines, be rejected-if 'letting the paupers alone' to die off quietly, or transporting them to meet a similar fate in another country, be equally impracticable, the fourth alternative is, that the state shall provide employment for

d Number of Paupers relieved in 592 Unions up to Lady-day 1847.

Total amount received for the relief of the Poor £7,117,352

them. One might suppose, that this would naturally have presented itself as the very first alternative, with the evident and equitable proviso, that the state, undertaking to provide subsistence for the unemployed laborer, should, at the same time, adopt practical methods of causing him to return an equivalent by his labor. But contrary to this very natural presumption, the legislative assemblies of two of the most enlightened nations of Europe, France and England, have decided that the pauper has a right to subsistence from the state, but no right to labor as the means of subsistence. To those, who, in strict logical consistency with the laissez faire principle, deny both these rights—who would have the pauper to perish unless maintained by private charity,—we have not a word to say. Their iron theory would either decimate society, or involve a perpetually recurring contest between those who have and those who have not wealth. So long as the deficiency of employment is comparatively small, this let-alone doctrine is useless; and when that deficiency is large, who would have the hardihood to carry it out? With those who admit the principle of state interference for rescuing the unemployed laborer from the fate which would otherwise await him, the case is different. The question is narrowed here, as to what kind of interference is expedient, or possible. Those who deny the duty of the state to provide labor, do so mainly on the ground that the state cannot provide employment without substituting greater evils than it removes. Such a conclusion, however, is not warranted by the premisses from which it is deduced; and, on the contrary, we shall exhibit the grounds for a very different conclusion.

The most important part of the History of the English poor laws dates from the year 1601, when the celebrated act of the 43rd of Elizabeth was passed. This law had two objects; 1st, the relief of the impotent poor, and, 2nd, the employment of the able-bodied and idle. To the relief by the state of the first of these classes, the objectors are few. Among those few, however, is the late Dr. Chalmers, who objects that the law cannot create the moral feeling of charity by compelling the individual to part with so much material wealth. It would be equally just to object to the employment of soldiers, that 6d. per day cannot purchase patriotism; or to the physician's medicine, that the fee rather than benevolence, was the condition of his applying curative agents. The main end of poor relief is to abate suffering, not to arouse charity, and for this object, the organized machinery of a public tax is obviously superior to private voluntary contributions. It is fairer, because it compels the mean and selfish, equally with the benevolent, to bear their share of a common burden. It is more humane, because it prevents the dreadful risk of any human creature perishing for want. It is more discriminating, because it makes it the special business of some parties to sift true from false claimants. And it is more economical, both as regards time and money, on the well under

The 43rd Elizabeth remained for many years a dead letter, no assessments being made, but the height to which vagrancy attained caused the 13 Car. 2. cap 12. to be passed in 1662. This law provided, that any person who should reside in a parish forty days should thereby obtain a settlement, and thus would become chargeable to it, in the event of his becoming destitute. It became an important portion of the duties of an overseer to prevent the laborer from obtaining a settlement. For a picture, said to be exaggerated, of the atrocious treatment to which the poor were subjected in consequence, see an interesting extract from Dr. Burns' History of the Poor laws (1764), quoted in the Poor law Report 1843, 101.

stood principle of division of labor, to which the relief of the poor is no exception. These advantages have led to most forms of local relief having become organized, even where the law has made no provision.

In the early days of English pauperism, notwithstanding the very clear distinction between the pauper incapable of working, and the pauper unable to obtain work, the two were placed on one footing. It is true that from 1601 to 1722, a period of 121 years, the law required, in every parish, the church-wardens and overseers, with the consent of the justices, not only to raise money for the impotent, but likewise a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, and other necessary ware and stuff, with which to set poor persons to work, having no means of maintenance. The act did not contemplate the bestowal of relief except in return for work, or give any power to hire or purchase workhouses. But as there was no organization for providing work, those whose business it was to distribute relief, frequently found it easier to give relief without work. As might have been foreseen, the most extensive abuses prevailed. The amount of poor rates increased very rapidly, and the sense of self-reliance and responsibility in the laborer declined. As the evil grew, the subject excited attention. Numberless were the proposals made for setting the able-bodied paupers to work. Among others, one Stanley, as early as 1646, proposed the establishment of workhouses. He complained that "the poor may be whipt to death and branded for rogues, and so become felons by the law, and the next time hanged for vagrancy, before any private man will set them to work, or provide houses for labor, and stock and materials for them." Other proposals were made in 1650, in a tract entitled "a clear and evident way for enriching the nation of England and Ireland, and setting very great numbers of poor to work." Again, Sir Josiah Child (before 1669), saw the radical error of the laws in leaving it to the care of every parish to maintain their own poor, and he proposed that London, Westminster, Southwark, and all the places within the bills of mortality, should be associated into one Province, and the relief and employment of the poor entrusted to a corporation specially chosen for the purpose. Sir F. Eden, whose work on the state of the poor contains a full and fair statement of these plans, mentions other proposals in 1673, 1677, and 1678. The latter was that of a Mr. Firmin, who practically and to some extent successfully carried out his view of the mode of preventing pauperism by providing employment. He was baffled by an obstacle which has been destructive to many later plans,-the want of a market for the commodity produced. A private individual of ordinary fortune could not reasonably be expected to attain an object which demands the most ample resources. In 1683 Sir Matthew Hale justly complained of the absence of any provision for the employment of paupers. Speaking of the relief of the poor, he says, "the plaster is not so large as the sore! There are many poor people, who are able to work if they had it, and had it at reasonable wages, by which they could support themselves and families. He proposed a plan for remedying the deficiencies

f The sums annually extorted from the citizens of Munich, by beggars alone, exclusive of private charities, amounted to more than three times the sums given to the support of the institution established by Count_Rumford, which by maintaining them all, entirely suppressed mendicancy. Rumford's Essays, Vol. i. page 121.

of the act of Elizabeth. Two of the main features of his proposal, were the combination of several parishes into one; and the collection of 4 or 5 years rates at once or twice, in order to raise capital for setting the poor to work. He anticipated many objections, of which one was, that "many idle people would rather beg than work." To this he replies, that the establishment of workhouses will render working more profitable than begging, and that the educating of children in industrions habits will remove their propensity to become beggars. The objection founded upon the smallness of the capital for employing the poor, when probably ten times the amount was required by single trades in the same line, Sir Matthew admitted the force of, but contends that it "would be a great help to the poor in time of scarcity of work." Sir M. Hale, like most who have attempted to remove pauperism since his time, treats it almost as if it were an accident, a temporary condition of affairs no way to be dreaded, and demanding but a temporary remedy. The idea of raising the labor fund very much above what was sufficient to satisfy the mere necessary wants of the laborer, seems scarcely ever to have occurred to them, still less that of the laborer being capable of creating and owning the capital which employed him. Another objection urged, was, "that private manufacturers, who endeavor, for their own interest, to make the most of their trade, often meet with great losses, which impair their stocks; and that a public concern, which cannot be expected to be managed with such prudence, must often be in the same condition." He admitted, that even the stock itself might be annihilated in five or six years, but the nation would be re-paid by the industrious education of the poor. But why, we ask, should a concern carried on for the benefit of the public, be less efficiently conducted than one for private advantage? Obviously, if the primary checks and conditions were the same, the same results would follow. That it is not possible to secure those conditions in the management of a public concern which ensure the success of a private one, is a mere assumption, very convenient we dare say, but not very correct.

If the stimulus of interest in the managers be an element, consult it. If skill, energy, and perseverance, be desirable qualities, are they not all obtainable by paying the proper price for them? That this is so, is evidenced by the Banks, Railways, and other vast associations, of the present day. It is also proved by the management of the Post Office, the grandest and most perfect organization hitherto accomplished, except for purposes of folly, fanaticism, or mischief. If it be said that public bodies are fallible, and may be deceived in the choice of agents, we reply that this charge appertains to every thing human; the same thing happens repeatedly to private capitalists, with whom the chances of failure are quite as great. What is wanting, is the feeling that the thing must be done; which once awakened, the obstacles to its accomplishment will disperse like the morning mists. The profitable employment of the poor, once felt to be as stern a necessity as the creation of a Railroad, ten thousand busy intellects will devote themselves to surmount all difficulties in the former as in the latter case. It is the bugbear of 'failure' which does so much mischief; for with faith only can men move mountains. Social experiments must fail before they can succeed, just as much as the child must often fall before he can walk well. Failure supplies the ashes out of which the glorious Phoenix of Success must