produced by the Poor Laws. 445 
The conclusions to which I have been led, 
are not, I am well aware, those which pro- 
mise to become most popular. The tide of 
general opinion has long shewed a tendency 
to set against the expediency of any fund, 
drawn by compulsion from the higher classes 
of society, for the support of the poor; and 
both argument and eloquence have been em- 
ployed ta prove such a provision to be a 
bounty held out to idleness and indiscretion. 
But I trustit is a conclusion, borne out by the 
facts which have been stated, that when pro- 
perly administered, (for 1 am fully aware that 
great abuses have grown out of the system,) 
the poor laws, while they afford a refuge to 
the indigent from unavoidable misery, benefit 
the higher classes of the community by in- 
suring a permanent supply of active labour- 
ers ;—that they operate as checks to mendi- 
city and vagrancy ;—that they do not encou- 
rage an unnatural increase of population; 
and that the funds, which they supply, are in 
truth to be considered as derived from the in- 
dustry of those, for whose benefit they are 
destined. 
