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society, we cannot always intrust those unhappy persons to kinsmen who may be unjust and cruel, and whom custom has long released from a natural obligation.

But of those whose claim for public support is founded on their inability to procure a return for that industry which they are able to exert, every reasonable claim will be satisfied, if they are presented with an object for their industry, and a return for its exercise. It were well that they themselves were forced to seek for the one, and, like the inhabitants of every other country, to take the market value of the other. But the greatness of our manufacturing population, the sudden variations of commerce, the increase of our numbers, long use, and the dismissal from the service of the state of thousands who were formerly maintained by it,—render a return to this natural state impracticable for the present, and will probably render it so for as long a time as any of this generation has to live. Necessity, therefore, will impose on the community the burden of affording support to those who are destitute of the means of obtaining employment; but neither necessity nor humanity call upon the public to minister, as hitherto, to habits of vice and excess, and to cherish idleness by an indiscreet profusion. It were idle to descant on the evils of such a course. Our present system has, for more than a century, been a source of vexation and abuse. The laws of settlement, to which it has given birth, are, perhaps, beyond all laws that ever were devised, perplexed and confused,—are the source of innumerable frauds and never-ending litigation, and subject the poor of England to a tyranny and control unsuitable to the spirit of a free people. Our fatal desire to promote the comfort of the poor has rendered every eighth person a beggar, in a country where the demand and reward for industry have been greater than in any other in Europe; has removed from many hundred thousand souls the shame of dependence on a public charity; and, in rendering the old degraded and depraved, has contaminated the young to future times.

I presume to think, that if a method could be devised, cheap, simple, and of easy execution, to afford to every person, of either sex and of every age, who was capable of labour, the means of finding employment, we should go far to lay the axe to the root of all this monstrous system of abuse and error. 'Tis then the two classes of poor would be entirely separated; no one whom nature had not unfitted for toil could be held to have a claim for public support; and the whole object of the laws would be confined to a part of the poor which does not perhaps exceed one-fifth of those to whom assistance is now afforded.

These things are necessary, if we would accomplish this great work: the labouring poor must be contented to receive the market value of their labour, as they would be forced to do in every country but their own; and if the community shall supply them with objects of industry, they must look for no better return for it than will afford them food and raiment, which we may consider as the minimum rate of labour in a prosperous country. The community, again, in affording the materials of industry, and in placing them within the reach of every person, must be careful to hold out no boon for the people to labour for the public rather than for themselves, or for those who can employ them.

By adopting a plan founded on these principles, we should enable every person to procure to himself a maintenance, without being beholden to any species of degrading charity; we should not interfere injuriously with the price of labour, but should suffer it to rise or fall, as it ever ought, with the demand for it, and the profits of it; we should teach the labouring classes to resort to the frugal habits becoming their condition in life, and most suited to their own happiness and virtue; and we should wonderfully simplify the business of legislating for the poor, by rendering none but the really helpless the objects of parish support. All but these unfortunate persons might have employment, if they chose to accept of such an equivalent as the profits of it could afford: if they would not—if they would renounce none of their luxuries when the rate of labour was low—not even the dear delights of the gin shop—the folly and the punishment would be all their own. If the poor of England shall be able to indulge in habits unknown to the poor of any nation in Europe, it will be