Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 001.djvu/242
to increase the demand in a corresponding ratio. At this time, depressed and impoverished as the nations around us are, there is no such decay of our exports, as to justify an opinion, that we shall not be able to export as much of the products of our industry as ever. The most important of all our markets, that of the home consumer, will still be open to us; and, as before, we shall have the markets of colonies, which are themselves an empire. Surely, from the mere apprehension of an improbable event, it were a rash policy to establish amongst us a new and permanent system of dependence on public support, and instead of cherishing sentiments of independence amongst the poor, to invite them to live on alms and a common; to relinquish, on some hundred thousand acres, all the benefits we derive from the improvements in the arts of tillage; and to make it better for a man to live on a public provision, than to offer his services where they could be most useful. No political evil will more certainly work its own cure than that over-cheapness of labour, which we are advised to prevent by artificial regulations. The cheapness of labour, as of most things besides, increases the demand for it, by rendering the employment of it more profitable.—In our country, from 20 to 30 millions sterling have been annually lent by individuals to the state, and thence, by the purchase of warlike stores and the various expenditure of government, sent again, by innumerable ramifications, into the general circulation. A great part of this vast sum, by being now employed directly in objects of private or public utility,—in new manufactures, canals, harbours, railways, buildings, the embellishment or improvement of landed property, &c. &c.—will give employment to our population, and raise the rate of labour, in like manner, as the former expenditure of the state. Emigration, too, will relieve us of part of our unemployed poor, and that assuredly to no trivial extent, if the rate of labour shall be very low.
*****
You, sir, have had an opportunity of marking the effects of a public provision for the poor, in the fulness of the abuse of the system. I have had the means of marking its effects, at a time when it affords a hardly less instructive lesson—that is, in its origin, and before it has degenerated into abuse; for in this state it may still be said to be in most parts of Scotland: and I have observed, that nothing is more hurtful to the morals and usefulness of the poor, than removing from them, in the least, the shame of dependence. Even the slight provision which we make in Scotland, is universally admitted to produce, on the manners of the lower classes; a result that is to be deplored. This is manifested in many ways; but in nothing more than in the change of treatment to which it exposes the old and infirm, from those who are bound by the ties of nature to support them. Formerly, the poorest person who was blessed with health would have held it scandalous to have suffered a parent or a near friend to depend on the public for support. But every parish meeting, now, furnishes evidence that this honourable feeling decays with the increase of the public bounty.
In short, sir, it seems to me, that we cannot commit a greater error, in legislating on this subject, than to make it better for the poor to depend on the public than on themselves for the means of life, or in any way to train them to dependence by removing the shame of it. Mr Owen, however, by the tempting allurement of comforts, invites his poor to depend upon a public provision. He does indeed propose to make them work, and he hopes to make them virtuous; but their labour will be useless to the commonwealth; the manner of employing it will have all the effects of a charity; and their virtues will not be those of men trained to an honest reliance on their own industry.
Of the two classes of people who, by usage or the law, are the subjects of parish support, the one consists of those who are disabled by age or natural infirmity from earning to themselves a subsistence; the other, of those who possess the physical power, but who are supposed to be destitute of the means to obtain that return for their labour which will afford them a livelihood. The first deserves all the sympathy which is due to age and misfortune; and though it would be well that the task of relieving their wants were exercised by those on whom nature imposes it as a duty, yet, in the present corrupt state of this part of