A WORD FOR THE POOR TO LORD ALTHORP- 427 



afford to employ their proportion of labour ; none will employ more 

 than they can help ; and, therefore, by a sort of tacit convention, they 

 have fallen into the practice of paying for labour out of the rates, 

 that thus the burden of it may, in some degree at least, fall fairly 

 upon all. This, my lord, will account for the heaviness of their 

 rates, without having recourse to the imputations cast upon them by 

 the commissioners. 



Do the commissioners dream that we are blind ? that we are 

 such moles as not to perceive that their attack upon the poor, and 

 their insinuations against the rate-payers, are merely the means to an 

 end ? that they had their end in view, and that the means were in- 

 vented to accomplish it ? If a man were to tell me that my servants 

 were defrauding me, that they might be managed more profitably, 

 but that, as I was utterly incompetent to their management myself, 

 he would recommend some friends of his to take the trouble off my 

 hands, presuming on my own sanity I should instantly suspect him 

 of some selfish design. I should suspect that my servants were 

 slandered, and my own capacity impugned, for some sinister and 

 premeditated job. And precisely thus have the commissioners acted. 

 They have acted as if their commission was one de lunaiico inquirendo 

 upon the country at large, and have passed upon us an arbitrary 

 judgment that we are not fit for the conduct of our own business, in 

 order to arrive at the conclusion that it should be vested, with all 

 the power and influence therefrom arising, in the hands of the go- 

 vernment which employed them ! 



Let us see, my Lord, what the commissioners have been driving at. 



In the first place, " they recommend the appointment of a CENTRAL 

 BOARD to control the administration of the Poor Laws, with such 

 assistant commissioners as may be found requisite ; and that the 

 commissioners be empowered and directed to frame and enforce re- 

 gulation for the government of workhouses, and as to the nature 

 and amount of the relief to be given, and the labour to be exacted in 

 them." They recommend, moreover, that in establishing this agency, 

 the legislature should proceed in the same manner as it did in esta- 

 blishing an agency for the control of friendly societies, &c., where it 

 was vested in a barrister, Mr. Tidd Pratt. There is nothing like 

 parchment ! 



Secondly They conceive that three will be a sufficient number of 

 commissioners to form the central board ; and that the number of 

 assistant commissioners, to travel about and see how things are 

 going on, may be eight or ten. 



Thirdly They recommend that the central board be empowered 

 to incorporate parishes for the purpose of appointing and paying 

 permanent officers to manage them. 



And fourthly That the assistant commissioners and all subor- 

 dinate officers shall be appointed, and be removeable, by the central 

 board ; submitting, at the same time, that (to " make its interest co- 

 incident with its duty !") the central board itself shall be appointed, 

 and be removeable, by the crown. 



Let us do the commissioners justice. They have not done the 

 work of the government sparingly. Commissioners, assistant com- 

 missioners, three thousand district superintendents, and ten or twelve 



