548 PROSPECTS OF INDUSTRY 



useful, and the hope of bettering his condition, are by him for em 

 lost and relinquished, from the hour that he has habituated his mind 

 to continue a resident among parish paupers. In pauperism, as in 

 slavery, the degradation of character deprives the individual of half 

 his value ; and it rarely occurs that the inmate of the workhouse is 

 ever restored to his native energy and power of exertion. The evil, 

 however, does not stop with him and his family. Pauperism and 

 mendicity are of the most infectious nature. The example of those 

 who have gradually reconciled themselves to the workhouse, too fre- 

 quently effects the other industrious poor. The value of domestic 

 comfort and of personal independence insensibly diminishes in their 

 estimation. Labour is no longer sweetened by the society of a wife 

 and children, which now seem a burden : and when the mind is thus 

 prepared to desire admission to among the parochial poor, the 

 useful and industrious cottager becomes a dead weight, and a noxious 

 burden to the community ! " This view of the influence of work- 

 houses has also been taken by Mr. Gaskell, and it is the view alone 

 consonant to sound sense and the welfare of the labouring classes. 

 Their improvement must be operated in their own homes : rob them 

 of personal respect, and they are robbed of all and every thing which 

 makes them valuable as men or as citizens. Among the remedial 

 agencies which appear to us available, we scout the panacea offered by 

 the new Poor Law Bill workhouses and the extinction of out-door 

 relief. Indeed this latter part of its enactment is one so grossly 

 cruel and unjust, that the Commissioners may well have paused in 

 putting it into extreme force. We are not insensible to the multi- 

 tude of evils which have followed upon an injudicious administration 

 of parochial funds to partial paupers ; but unless it can be demon- 

 strated that the passing of an Act of Parliament can at once create a 

 demand for labour and increase the amount of wage, we are at a loss 

 to conceive how the vast body of families who have for some years 

 been partially supported by out-door relief, and thus saved from ab- 

 solute pauperism, are to escape wholesale imprisonment, as the efforts 

 making to transplant them are at once most absurd and most cruel ; 

 and this leads us to make a few remarks on the fifty-second clause 

 of the Act. 



This relates to the granting of out-door relief to able-bodied 

 paupers; and it is one of the most important parts of the Bill. After 



