Ch. vi. Of Poor-Laws, continued. 93 



It will be said, perhaps, that the same reason-, 

 ing might be applied to any new capital brought 

 into competition in a particular trade or manufac- 

 ture, which can rarely be done without injuring, in 

 some degree, those that were engaged in it before. 

 But there is a material difference in the two cases. 

 In this the competition is perfectly fair, and what 

 every man on entering into business must lay his 

 account to. He may rest secure that he will not 

 be supplanted, unless his competitor possess su- 

 perior skill and industry. In the other case the 

 competition is supported by a great bounty ; by 

 which means, notwithstanding very inferior skill 

 and industry on the part of his competitors, the 

 independent workman may be undersold, and 

 unjustly excluded from the market. He himself 

 perhaps is made to contribute to this competition 

 against his own earnings ; and the funds for the 

 maintenance of labour are thus turned from the 

 support of a trade which yields a proper profit, to 

 one which cannot maintain itself without a bounty. 

 It should be observed in general, that when a fund 

 for the maintenance of labour is raised by assess- 

 ment, the greatest part of it is not a new capital 

 brought into trade, but an old one, which before 

 was much more profitably employed, turned into 

 a new channel. The farmer pays to the poor's 

 rates, for the encouragement of a bad and unpro- 



" expected from a compulsory maintenance of the poor will be far 

 " outbalanced by the sum of evil which it will inevitably create," 

 vol. i. p. 467. — I am happy to have the sanction of so practical an 

 inquirer to my opinion of the poor-laws. 



