ances made to paupers to such miserable pittances as were scarcely 
sufficient to sustain life ; while the courts of law had but an imperfect 
jurisdiction to redress the evil. By the new law, a remedy is pro- 
vided in the Board of Supervision, which practically has the power 
of seeing that adequate allowances are given to paupers by the 
local boards. 
The Scotch Poor Laws had denied relief to the able-bodied poor ; 
and it cannot be doubted that this question is one of a most delicate 
kind, as the right of the able-bodied poor to demand support might, 
if pushed to an extreme, lead to little less than a community of 
goods. The new Act still disallows any legal right in the able- 
bodied, but permits parochial boards to give them occasional relief, 
as a precautionary measure ; and it is thought that this middle 
course effects a prudent compromise of the dispute. 
The blessings, direct and indirect, which are likely to flow from 
this improved system of the Poor Laws, and from the increased at- 
tention thus given to the condition of the poor, may, in a great 
degree, be ascribed to Dr Alison’s exertions ; and his country owes 
to him, in this way, a debt of gratitude which even now it is difficult 
to estimate. The misery of the poor was alleviated, the tendencies 
to disease were diminished, the bonds of society were strengthened, 
and all were taught the important lesson that their own safety and 
happiness were indissolubly linked with those of other men. 
It is curious to compare the early dawn and promise of Dr Ali- 
son’s life with the character of its ultimate progress and develop- 
ment. The tastes and pursuits of his accomplished father were chiefly 
those that belonged to a man of elegant and pious contemplation. His 
own youthful aspirations are said to have tended towards a military 
life. The employments of his maturer years were certainly of a very 
different kind, though bearing still a strange moral analogy to these 
influences. Pie became engaged in a warfare, but it was with social 
misery and maladministration, and he carried it on in the pure and 
self-denying spirit of that great Exemplar who came into the world 
to heal our diseases and bear our infirmities, and who went about 
continually doing good. In the words of a distinguished friend, who 
knew him and loved him well, “ it is not too much to say, that Scot- 
land will mourn in him for one of the best of the Christian sons who 
have adorned her soil ; — one who devoted himself, body and soul, to 
what he believed to be the good of his fellow-creatures, with a wisdom 
