178 REPORT— 1873. 



coimtry tLe loss of life is very sad ; but even more sorrowful, to iny miud, are the 

 numbers of our fellow creatures (fellow countrj'men and women) who are doomed 

 to struggle and fight the battle of life under the most severe conditions because of 

 the wounds they have received from preveutible diseases. And on a matter like 

 this you will at once see the advantages of this Section. It is most desirable that 

 all those projects for sanitary improvement which are proposed by political thinkers 

 or by practical politicians should be at once tested by scientific laws, and by men 

 who are accustomed to make these laws their special subject. I will not say any 

 thing more about my own particular Section ; I would merely refer to what I 

 ventured to say after the able address of your President on Wednesday evening. 

 I would, however, refer to the discussion yesterday on the papers read by my 

 friends Mr. Morris and Professor Leone Levi with reference to our expecting in the 

 increased well-being of the community a greater diminution in the pauperism of 

 the coimtry than we yet see. I believe there is a diminution, and I am hopeful 

 that it will be shown to a greater extent in a short period. But I am rather 

 anxious (I may be thought bj' some rather heretical in what I am going to say) 

 that in our objection to the evils that accompany a poor law we should not carry 

 that objection to the extent of imagining that we could do without any poor law. 

 The objections to the poor law lie upon the surface. I fear it is true that it does 

 encourage a want of thrift, and to some extent does deaden or weaken and make 

 less likely the performance of domestic duties. And there ought to be very great 

 reason for the poor law if it be possible to make this charge. I think there is great 

 reason. I do not believe that in the present state of civilization it is safe or right 

 not to acknowledge the principle of the poor law — namely, that a man shall have a 

 right to live, and that absolute destitution shall be prevented. Very few of us are 

 aware of the advantage that the acknowledgment of this principle lias been to us. 

 In comparing our social struggles (our political convulsions) in England with those 

 of the Continent, I believe that the one great reason why we have got through 

 them with comparative safety, and have had reform instead of revolution, has been 

 that the large Dody of our people have known that this right is acknowledged — 

 the right to live. 



Going back to the progress to which I have referred, we must bear in mind two 

 facts. Those of you who have studied political economy and are familiar with the 

 writers on that subject of twenty, thirty, and forty years ago, will remember that 

 they almost all supposed that there would be no great improvement without an 

 increase in the population, or at any rate without a great decrease in its in- 

 crease, if I may so put it. ]\Ir. Malthus, Mr. Mill, and many other most able and 

 excellent political economists, advocated very strongly what they called a pru- 

 dential check on population as the only means, or the most probable means, of 

 making progress in prosperity. Well, but our progress has been made without this 

 check and in spite of the great increase in population. I am a bad statistician, but 

 I believe the increase during the last forty years has been greater than in almost 

 any other previous term of forty years. The increase in the population of England 

 and Wales, in round numbers, has been from sixteen and a half millions in 1831 to 

 twenty-one and a half millions in 1871, and yet the population is more prosperous. 

 Again, if there has been great progress on the whole in the well-being of the 

 labourer, there has also been progress in the well-being of the capitalist. I am not 

 going to speak of the special profits of special trades, but I believe it would be easy 

 to prove that the increase of capital in this country has been much more than has 

 kept pace with the increase of population. Well, if both classes, capitalists and 

 labourers, have on the whole bettered their condition, I am not at all surprised to 

 find that there is, as I believe, a better feeling between the two. I hope my friend 

 Mr. Morris, if he is here, will let me make some allusion to his able paper of yester- 

 day. I do not agree with all his views ; but I wish to treat them in the same 

 spirit with which he treated the views of others — a spirit of fairness and wilHng- 

 ness to appreciate what could he said on the other side. I am aware it is by no 

 means a rare feeling, but a very common feeling at this time, that the disputes 

 between labour and capital are more dangerous and more fierce than they were at 

 former periods. I must demur to this statement. I think it may be true that 

 these disputes are sometimes carried on upon a larger scale than formerly, because 



