92 Of Poor-Laws, continued. Bk. iii. 



failed, and the stock and materials hav^e been 

 wasted. In those few parishes which, by better 

 management or larger funds, have been enabled 

 to persevere in this system, the effect of these 

 new manufactures in the market must have been 

 to throw out of employment many independent 

 workmen, who were before engaged in fabrica- 

 tions of a similar nature. This effect has been 

 placed in a strong point of view by Daniel de Foe, 

 in an address to parliament, entitled. Giving Alms 

 no Charity. Speaking of the employment of pa- 

 rish children in manufactures, he says, " For 

 every skein of worsted these poor children spin, 

 there must be a skein the less spun by some poor 

 family that spun it before ; and for every piece of 

 baize so made in London, there must be a piece 

 the less made at Colchester, or somewhere else."* 

 Sir F. M. Eden, on the same subject, observes, 

 that " whether mops and brooms are made by 

 parish children or by private workmen, no more 

 <jan be sold than the public is in want of."'}' 



* See Extracts from Daniel de Foe, in Sir F. M. Eden's valu- 

 able Work on tbe poor, vol. i. p. 261. 



"^ Sir F. M. Eden, speaking of the supposed right of the poor 

 to be supplied with employment while able to work, and with a 

 Tuaintenance when incapacited from labour, very justly remarks, 

 " It may however be doubted, whether any right, the gratification 

 " of which seems to be impracticable, can be said to exist," vol. i. 

 p. 447. No man has collected sO many materials for forming a judg- 

 ment on tbe effects of the poor-laws as Sir F. M. Eden, and the 

 result be thus expresses : " Upon tbe whole therefore there seems 

 " to be just grounds for concluding, that the sum of good, to be 



