424 A WORD FOR THE TOOK TO LORD ALTHORP. 



Is he not a husband and a father, and will he bear with indifference 

 that his own death to-morrow may be the warrant for his wife and 

 children being immured in the hated places, which the callous policy 

 of these commissioners would appoint for them ? Depend upon it, 

 my Lord, that persons have been employed to make the legislature ac- 

 quainted with the poor, who know as little of human nature as of the 

 subject which they profess to elucidate. 



But if workhouses are objectionable in themselves, as a dangerously 

 ungracious mode of exclusively affording that relief, which law, usage, 

 and humanity have awarded to the indigent, what shall we say to the 

 system upon which the commissioners suggest that they shall be esta- 

 blished ? Nothing so monstrous was ever before proposed for the 

 adoption or the sufferance of a Christian community. 



I am aware that your lordship has avowed it as your wish, that 

 the subject of the Poor Laws should be approached by the legisla- 

 ture, not only with temper and care, but with a disposition, that in 

 rendering the poor less burthen some, nothing should be done to 

 render their condition less comfortable. If I have understood you 

 aright, credit is due to you not only for the benevolence of the sen- 

 timent, but for the reproof which its expression conveys upon the 

 less kindly views of the commissioners. In pursuance of their fun- 

 damental principle, that the condition of those receiving relief should 

 be rendered less eligible than that of the lowest class who do not, 

 they propose, not only that those who require relief shall find none 

 except as inmates of a workhouse, but that they shall be fc drafted into 

 separate workhouses in the following preposterous and barbarous 

 manner. They recommend, for instance, that four parishes having 

 workhouses, shall be incorporated ; that these workhouses shall be 

 used in common by the four parishes ; the men of all the four pa- 

 rishes being settled in one, the women in a second, the children in a 

 third, and the aged and impotent in the fourth ! Why, good God ! 

 there is nothing in the slavery which disgraces the southern states of 

 America so ignominious as this. tc It is no uncommon thing," says 

 an able writer,* speaking of the slaves in that country, " for hus- 

 bands and wives, mothers and children, to be separated from each 

 other, and the cruelties inflicted have frequently provoked the most 

 dreadful outrages." " But" says another writer, f " I am told, 

 and believe, that there is a general wish to keep relations together 

 where it can be done." And where is the difference in the heartless 

 proposition of the commissioners to break up the families of the poor, 

 except that the slave-masters of America plead necessity for the prac- 

 tice, and have the grace to palliate it by their regret ? My Lord, read 

 this touching scene the author;}: is speaking of a family of slaves on 

 the eve of separation at Charlton " There I saw the father looking 

 sullen contempt upon the crowd, and expressing indignation in his 

 countenance which he durst not speak, and the mother pressing her 

 infants closer to her bosom with an involuntary grasp, and exclaim- 

 ing in wild and simple earnestness, while the tears chased down her 

 cheeks in quick succession, 'I can't leave my children! I won't 



* Edinburgh Review, No. CXII. Pag. 472. 



-f- Stewart's Three Years in North America. $ Ibid. 



