422 A WORD FOll THE POOR TO LORD ALTIIORF. 



MY LORD: The subject of the Poor Laws, now that you are 

 fairly on the eve of grappling with it, is of momentous importance ; 

 and the result will be proportionate for good or evil, according as the 

 principles upon which you proceed are correct or mistaken. The at- 

 tempt is no less than to rectify a derangement in our social structure, 

 which, originally caused by the shock of the Reformation, has for 

 three hundred years been growing more dangerous from tampering 

 and neglect. The undertaking is a hazardous one ; and, whether 

 you will ultimately make matters better or worse, will depend en- 

 tirely upon your having formed a sound judgment of the evils to be 

 remedied. 



In order to arrive at the clearest insight into the subject, you pro- 

 cured the appointment of commissioners to investigate it. Their 

 report embraces much argument and detail, but the main principle of 

 it may be compressed into a few lines that they have found out-door 

 relief to be the master-evil of the present system ; that such relief, there- 

 fore, should be prohibited ; and no relief granted whatever, except in the 

 workhouse. 



The reason which the commissioners assign for such an uncompro- 

 mising conclusion, is this: They assert that the grant of out- door 

 relief is the source of much imposition ; that persons obtain it with 

 facility, who are really earning wages adequate for their support, and 

 who would never present themselves as paupers, if, in that character, 

 they could obtain nothing but admission to the workhouse. 



The commissioners have here fallen into an error, which seems, 

 indeed, to have bewildered them throughout. What they assert 

 is true, and to a serious extent, in the larger parishes of towns; but 

 in rural parishes it neither is, nor could be so. In large parishes for 

 instance, like Shoreditch or Marylebone the poor are so numerous, 

 and their occupations so utterly impervious to the most vigilant super- 

 intendence, that it is only by accident that their frauds upon the 

 Board can be detected. In a rural parish, on the contrary, the poor 

 are nearly all of the agricultural class ; they work in the employment, 

 and under the eye, of some considerable rate-payer; and their wants 

 and wages are as well known to the vestry as their faces. 



The reason, therefore, which the commissioners give, for pro- 

 hibiting pecuniary relief namely, the door which it opens to fraud 

 is wholly inapplicable to parishes which are agricultural. But you 

 will perhaps ask whether the prohibition might not, nevertheless, 

 have a tendency to diminish the rates in such parishes ? whether, 

 for instance, the degradation of the workhouse would not induce 

 many to forego relief altogether, rather than accept it in that ob- 

 noxious shape ? The solution of this question depends upon whether 

 the measure implied by it, in the first instance, is practicable; and, in the 

 second, whether, if practicable, it would be productive of any benefit. 



My Lord, I have long studied the temper and character of the la- 

 bouring classes ; it has been my business to do so in more capacities 

 than one ; and, in common with all who have enjoyed the same op- 

 portunities of forming an opinion, I labour under a most ominous one 

 that no severity which the legislature may assume, no power which 

 the executive can command, will ever be able to carry such a measure 



