SOS STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



population ! Thus in the thirty years from 1852 to 1882 the 

 number of indoor paupers in England and Wales has con- 

 tinuously increased, from 106,413 in the former year to 

 188,433 in the latter, an increase of 83 per cent., while in 

 the same period population -only increased 45 per cent. 

 The plain inference is, that confirmed pauperism — that 

 which includes all the most degraded and the most hopeless 

 of our poor — had been steadily increasing at a greater rate 

 than our population, during a period in which our aggre- 

 gate wealth had been doubled, and our commerce, of which 

 we are so proud, had increased three-fold. 



Before quitting this subject, it is well to point out that 

 the way in which the number of paupers is estimated is 

 most misleading, and gives no adequate idea of the real 

 numbers. The tables show only the numbers relieved on 

 the 1st January in each year, but it is estimated that the 

 actual number of persons receiving relief during the year 

 is nearly two and a half times this number, or about an 

 average of two millions ^ for England and Wales, or two 

 and a half millions for the United Kingdom. If we add 

 to this latter number those who receive relief 'in the casual 

 wards (which are not included in the official tables), and 

 the very large numbers who depend wholly or partially on 

 private charity for support, we shall perhaps bring the 

 figures up to three and a half millions. But beyond this 

 number of actual paupers loom a vast host of the poor 

 who ever live on the verge of pauperism, and from whom 

 the ranks of the actual paupers are constantly recruited, 

 including whole populations, like the cottiers of the west 

 of Ireland, and the crofters of the Highlands and Islands 

 of Scotland, living in such a condition of perennial want 

 that it only requires that most certain of periodical events 

 — a bad season — to produce actual famine. If we add 

 only one million for all these, we bring up the number of 

 actual or potential paupers in this civilized, Christian and 

 pre-eminently wealthy country to about four millions and 

 a half, or about one in seven of the whole population ! 



This dreadful failure to distribute among our workers 



^ For details of this estimate see the present writer's Land National- 

 ization, its Necessity and its Aims, p. 3. 



