97 



for I have received the thanks of a person, a stranger to me, 

 who, from having seen my plan of Labour Rate, and 

 thinking it preferable to all Others, got it established in a 

 parish in winch he occupied a large farm, before the Poor 

 Law Amendment Act came into operation, and thus, he 

 said, the amount of his poor-rates was lessened nearly one- 

 half. As his Grace the Duke of Richmond, and many 

 other noble lords of the Upper House, and Sir Charles 

 Merrick liurrell, and many honorable members of the 

 Lower House of Parliament, were most strenuous advocates 

 for the lawful establishment of the system, during certain 

 parts of the year, I cannot refrain from making these 

 remarks on the assertion, that the system of roundsmen was 

 a great nuisance, but that the Labour Rote system was 

 worse. 



None but those who have occupied land in populous 

 agricultural parishes, can be aware of the disagreeable 

 matters which used to be common at parish vestries ; there 

 being no uniformity of opinion, it was seldom that any 

 tiling elective was agreed on, and when there was, it was 

 only adhered to for a short time. Many years of such 

 vestry meetings have 1 attended, in the parish of IVloulton ; 

 often have I left th^rn, regretting that I had made a pur- 

 chase in the parish. Such disagreeable and ineffective 

 meetings are now happily at an end ; and, as few persons 

 have for a greater length of time, given themselve more 

 trouble about their parish poor, few have greater reason to 

 rejoice in the amendment of the Poor Laws. 



About twenty years ago, 1 wrote on tl e necessity of 

 having Poor Laws in Ireland, as not only being needful and 

 just for the poor of that country, but also in justice to the 

 labourers of this. Had there been Poor Laws in Ireland, 

 such hordes of Irish labourers would not have come over to 

 this country, and have got into those laborious employ- 

 ments, in all large towns, for which the surplus labourers of 

 our populous agricultural parishes were so well qualified^ 

 but from which they are cut off, being supplanted by the 

 Irish, who have done (and successfully too), all in their 

 power, to prevent the English labourers from working with 

 them. Had many of our young men left their parishes, 

 some of those early marriages would not have taken place, 



