158 Actual State of the British Empire, 



reason to infer, from past experience, that the poor-laws ope- 

 rate as a bounty on pauperism ; that the prospect of reUef 

 creates the necessity for it ; or that our support of the poor 

 furnishes the supply of poor to be supported. Is it not per- 

 fectly astonishing that enlightened men can found such infer- 

 ences as these, and a thousand others, on an inattention to two 

 circumstances so well known, as the change in the value of 

 money, and the amount and character of our population. 



If these opinions were purely theoretical, and, like a new 

 system of geology or cosmogony, framed merely to occupy the 

 speculations of retired philosophers, they might be safely com- 

 mitted to the lapse of that dull oblivious stream which swal- 

 lows up, in turn, the errors of successive ages. But such 

 tenets as these are neither intended nor calculated to lie idle. 

 Mr. Malthus boldly proposes to found upon them the most 

 important innovation that was ever attempted in civilized 

 society, and it is plain that the House of Commons are fast 

 arriving at that state of mind which can contemplate it with- 

 out horror. He would instantly commence a gradual, but 

 complete, abolition of the whole system of poor-laws, by a 

 public declaration, that no child, born after a given period, 

 should be entitled to parish relief, in any case whatever. He 

 thinks this would strike at the root of all the existing evils. 

 By recreating a spirit of self-dependence, and by deterring the> 

 indigent from improvident marriages, it would bring his pre- 

 ventive check into full activity. The prevalence of moral 

 restraint would then diminish so materially the existing stock 

 of poverty and misery, that private benevolence would easily 

 supercede the necessity of public relief. 



But before we determine upon this desperate project, we 

 must prepare our minds and our senses for such trials as they 

 have never yet undergone, even in contemplation. We must 

 prepare to see our fellow-creatures perish befoje our eyes, by 

 thousands, of famine and disease. The idea, that the prospect 

 of parish relief operates as an incentive to marriage, or that 

 the removal of all such hopes would act as a restraint upon it, 

 are, in my opinion, equally fallacious. It would be quite as 

 vain, I believe, to ex|:)ect from that source any considerable 

 improvement in the moral conduct of the poor, or in their 



