Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Rejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood's fears:
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they!
The moping idiot, and the madman gay."
In the very year of the appearance of Crabbe's most touching poem of the Village, Mr. Pitt brought in a bill repealing the 9 Geo. I., c. 7, which prohibited relief to any not entering a workhouse, on the ground that this provision was "inconvenient and oppressive, inasmuch as it often prevented an industrious person from receiving such relief as is best suited to their peculiar case, and held out conditions of relief injurious to the comfort and domestic situation and happiness of such poor persons."
That the Act, known as 33 Geo. III., c. 23, proved one of the most disastrous bits of legislation ever perpetrated, was not so much the fault of its promoters as of that fatal English blindness to harmony, which does not see that you cannot bind together the Spirit of Christianity and the Practice of the World, that you cannot found an institution on the ground of human brotherhood and then work it in the spirit of competitive commerce.
In 1796 Mr. Pitt made a remarkable speech on the Poor Laws, in which, after referring to the great abuses of the System, he laid down the principles essential to a good Poor Law. One of the most important was—Relief according to number of children.
The following year Mr. Pitt brought in a bill in which he proposed to realise this principle. This bill and its failure — for it was withdrawn at the manifest repugnance of the House of Commons to make it law—show two things: first, that Mr. Pitt understood the meaning of the French Revolution better than his supporters; second, that they understood the condition to which the Agricultural Poor were reduced better than he did.
English Statesmen had had time to understand the great storm which had raged across the Channel, and had comprehended that it resulted from the mass of people suddenly discovering that they had been cheated, robbed, and trampled under foot for ages, in order that a small section of the community might live in pride and luxury; and knowing that the same conditions existed here,
