l8c4« On the Poor Laws oj Scotland. 25 



dent, that the poor will be more niii'-»croii>. A combination 

 of other circumstances may also increase Lheir number ; and 

 it is owing to that unavoidable increase, that any tiling like 

 theE:iglish system -^i poor-Liws takes pi ice in Scotland. Tliere, 

 houses of various dimensions and descriptions are crecti'.i, and 

 endowed for their accommodation, where ihey are mai. tai'ied 

 at the public expence, with almost no care or concern of tLeir 

 own. These erections :;i*e soiretimes made and maintained 

 from funds individually appropriated to that purpose, and 

 others are made at the expence of the community at large, 

 being a tax laid upon the inhabitants for their support. From 

 one or other of these several establishments, the poor, in towns, 

 are entitled to claim a maintenance. 



The collections at the church, as in country parishes, being 

 by no means adequate to the support of these expensive esta- 

 blishments, when these are exhausted, a tax is imposed upon 

 the citizens, to supply the deliciency ; and in consequence of 

 this, the whole management, and all the regulations respecting 

 tlie poor, devolves upon the Magistrates, or persons au- 

 thorised by them for that purpose. One of these regulations 

 now generally adopted, is, that public begging or asking alms, 

 in towns, is strictly prohibited. Tlie poor are either received 

 into tile public establishments provided for them, or they re- 

 ceive a ^stipulated supply in their own houses, according as 

 their situation m:.y require. Tvlany of these poor in towns, 

 and large villages, who have been long inured to habits of pro- 

 fligacy and dissipation, not possessing that delicacy of senti- 

 ment above described, as peculiar to the poor in country pa- 

 rishes ; and being either dissatisfied with the provision allot- 

 ted to them, or uneasy, under the restraint of net being per- 

 mitted to beg in town, sally forth, in swarms, into the 

 country, and raise contributions, by their lies, their whining, 

 and clamorous importunity, upon the compassion and genero- 

 sity of the inhabitants. And what chiefly adds to this scene 

 of perpetual aggression and disgust, is, that it is not always 

 upon the most necessitous and pitiable objects of distress, that 

 these charitable contributions are bestowed ; but upon a par- 

 cel of idle vagrants and vagabonds, who commonly resort with 

 their plunder to gin shops and dry quarters, where they in- 

 dulge in all the filthy orgies, and low buffoonery and ob- 

 scenit}', so well described by Burns, in his poem of the Ta-, 

 tcrdcmalians. 



It is impossible to conceive a more disgusting nuisance, or 

 a more pernicious evil in society, than the permission of these 

 vagrant beggars, that every day pour upon the country, like 

 swarms of devouring locusts, from all the adjacent towns and 



villages. 



