RELIEF OP THE POOR. 321 



ward multitudes to avail themselves of it, claimants pos- 

 sessing no real title to such relief. Whereas, if these 

 humane persons could be brought to systematize their 

 liberality, to make arrangements for giving only where 

 relief was really needed, they would at once learn to hus- 

 band their own funds, and avoid giving encouragement 

 to the daily increasing body of unprincipled vagrants who 

 are kept from habits of industry by their mistaken gene- 

 rosity. Now the administration of public money granted 

 in aid of voluntary contributions would procure for a 

 Central Board the most favourable opportunities of en- 

 lightening the public mind on the subject of relieving the 

 poor. It would place them at once in friendly and in- 

 fluential communication with a great number of benevo- 

 lent and respectable persons, and thus enable them widely 

 to diffuse through all ranks of society (and particularly 

 through that rank of society which needs it most) interest- 

 ing information and wholesome principles on the subject ; 

 and from the diffusion of such information, and the gene- 

 ral adoption of such principles, the very best results might 

 be confidently expected. 



VIII. Because the example of an organized system of 

 relief for the poor by voluntary contribution is afforded in 

 Scotland, where it has been eminently successful. 



Scotland is distinguished from Ireland in having a pub- 

 lic system of relief, administered by overseers recognised 

 by the law, to whom applicants for alms can be referred ; 

 and it is distinguished from England in that its system 

 of relief is founded upon the voluntary contributions of 

 the people. The effect is, that there is not in that part of 

 the United Kingdom, as there is in Ireland, an extensive, 

 exhausting, demoralizing mendicancy ; nor, as in England, 



