the conclusion may be at variance with the opinions that have recently been current on the subject, that from their institution down to a late period, the effect of the poor-laws was not to increase, but to diminish population!!!"—E. R. vol. xlvii. p. 314.
Here are most palpable contradictions! "Who shall decide," not "when doctors disagree," but when the doctor disagrees with himself?
Having fairly stated the contradictory opinions of the leading journal hostile to the poor-laws, it is but right to state the views of their advocate.
"The experience of more than two centuries has only confirmed the wisdom of the measure. The evils that have been attributed to the poor-law are justly chargeable only to the abuses that have been locally permitted to creep into its administration. There are few, if any persons, practically acquainted with the subject, that do not now recognise this truth."—Q. R. vol. xliv. 512.
"The mischief which the poor-laws produce has arisen wholly from their mal-administration or perversion. The system itself is humane, just, necessary, befitting a Christian state, and honourable to the English nation."—Q. R. vol. xxxvii. p. 544.
"Reflection and experience have produced a general conviction, that the principles of the poor-law of Elizabeth are consistent with the sound policy of that important reign, and cannot in the present state of things be safely departed from: and that a compulsory provision for the poor—as it originated not in abstract theory and speculation, but was resorted to from necessity, and after other measures had been repeatedly tried in vain—continues to be an indispensable obligation upon such a system of government as ours."—Q. R. vol. xxviii. p. 349.
It is incredible, but nevertheless true, that the Edinburgh Review, after having distinctly admitted that for 190 years the poor-laws had not "increased pauperism, or population, or the poor rates," to any perceivable extent, has carried its blind opposition to them to such an extreme length as to advocate the substitution of mendicity, with all its immoralities, its frauds, its impositions, its degradation! So much for a bigoted devotion to theory, in utter disregard of fact or experience.
"Those who are destitute must be relieved somehow, and must have some way of making their wants known: and therefore we see no alternative between the allowance of mendicity, under some modification or other, and the establishment of the very system which is now bearing so oppressively down upon the country. And we do confess, that rather than have such a system, we would sit down under mendicity in its very worst form! we would let it roam unrestricted and at large, as it does in France!!! We would suffer it to rise, without any control, to the height of unlicensed vagrancy, and are most thoroughly persuaded that even under such an economy, the whole poverty of the land would be disposed of at less expense to the higher orders, and with vastly less both of suffering and depravity to the lower orders of society!"—E. R. vol. xxix. p. 286.
What! mendicity with all its loathsomeness, and depravity, and corruption, preferable for "the lame, the impotent, the old, the blind, and the poor unable to work," to having them comfortably supported at a moderate expense in poor-houses!! What next?
Philadelphia, July 8, 1833.
ESSAY VIII.
I trust that it fully appears from the above evidence, even that of the Edinburgh Review, the great opponent of the poor-laws of England, that those laws, so generally reprobated at present, were not for 190 years attended with any of the oppressive and disastrous consequences which have of late years attended their administration. The cause of those evils must then be sought for in something extraneous to the laws themselves, some essential difference in the mode of administration, which I shall endeavour to point out. The evils may be traced to three sources.
