290 
pass through the eye of a needle than 
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
Heaven; and the violated obligations 
of the rich to their fellow men was 
exemplified by the same high authority, 
when a rich man was told, that, to qua- 
lify himself for the kingdom of Heaven, 
he must sell all he had, and give it to 
the poor! 
If, therefore, the rich shield their 
monopolies by laws made by them- 
selves ; and these monopolies are per- 
mitted, for other social advantages, to 
entrench on the general right to di- 
vide the fruits of the earth; an obliga- 
tion arises in the rich not to combine 
oppression with deprivation ; but to con- 
cede other laws, which shall secure for 
willingness to labour, a natural subsis- 
tence ; and, if these laws do not include 
superfluities, then the obligation extends 
to provisions for sickness and old age. 
The only resource and capital of 
those who, by their own labour, or that 
of their forefathers, have not accumu- 
lated, being their strength and skill to 
labour, the competition among em- 
ployers ought to be rendered as exten- 
sive as possible ; and the market for the 
poor man’s strength and skill ought to 
be unrestrained by any municipal re- 
strictions ; otherwise poverty would be 
rendered a state of interminable and 
hopeless slavery. 
But, as the examples of idleness and 
luxury set by the wealthy lead to the 
desire of similar induigences in those 
who are not wealthy ; and as the despair 
of hopeless labour leads the poor to 
seek oblivious antidotes in fermented 
liquors, some social security is neces- 
sary to guard against the claims of 
those who indulge in improvident ex- 
penditure and idle habits, and whose 
labour or personal skill do not yield 
a competent surplus. 
In the reconcilement of the condi- 
tions contained in the two last para- 
graphs, and in accommodating the 
assumptions and monopolies of the 
wealthy to the rights and privations of 
the not wealthy, lie the difficulties of 
just legislation on these subjects. 
Laws made by the wealthy ought to 
be just, and always have reference to 
first principles; because wealth is a 
~ mere relative condition, consisting of 
nothing more than the power of appro- 
priating the labour and abstracting the 
means of others; and, if such laws are 
not just, they will be inefficient, or soon 
cease to be so; for, as the poor reason 
2 
A new System of Poor-Laws proposed. 
[May 1, 
like the rich, and as sentiments of gene- 
ral humanity influence the social prac- 
tices of mankind in general, so all will 
conspire from interest and feelingto frus- 
trate laws which are not founded on the 
common rights and wants ofevery class. 
“The whole business of the poor 
(says Mr. Burke, in his Natural So- 
ciety,) is to administer to the idleness, 
folly, and luxury of the rich ; and that 
of the rich, in return, is to find the best 
methods of confirming the slavery and 
increasing the burthens of the poor.. 
In a state of nature it is an invariable 
law, that a man’s acquisitions are. in 
proportion to his labours. In a state of 
artificial society, it is a law as constant 
and as invariable, that those who la- 
bour most, enjoy the fewest things; and 
those who labour not at all, have the 
greatest number of enjoyments.” 
Upon these Machiavelian principles 
“appears to be founded the insulting — 
Bill which the House of Commons re- 
cently permitted to be read before it,— 
a Bill whose provisions, if enacted into 
Law, would carry back the English 
people six centuries, and reduce them 
to the condition of Russian serfs, Ger- 
man boors, and almost of West-Indian 
slaves. In imminent danger of being 
flogged and imprisoned if found beyond 
the boundaries of their parish, and 
therefore obliged to work for a limited 
number of local masters, competition 
would be destroyed, and their remune- 
ration would become a minimum; while, 
all hope of emancipation or improve- 
ment being extinguished, they would 
sink into the condition of brutes. 
Instead of a system whose malignity 
defeats itself by exciting a moral and 
social re-action,—which deprives po- 
verty of the pride of independence, by 
involving its exertions in criminal re- 
sponsibility,—which causes the very 
effect that it seeks to prevent, by per- 
petuating indigence ;—and which, it is 
proved, by the experience of two centu- 
ries and a half, has caused a progressive 
increase of poor-rates, by deteriorating 
the character and morals of the indus- 
trious population: it is proposed to 
enact, in due form:— 
1. That vestries, or guardians of the 
poor, shall be empoweredin every parish to . 
build as many cottages, of four rooms, 
with at least a rood of garden-ground, 
held as parish estates, as shall accommo- 
date, at easy rents, the married labourers 
and artizans of the parish, as free te- 
nants; the money to be raised on the 
security 
OO 
