of the parish—every hope of returning to their own fireside extinguished. Who can view these mansions of misery without horror? This springs from that radical error in the administration of the poor laws which confounds vice and virtue, and equally entitles both to relief. To guard against the idle and the profligate the unfortunate are the victims. Every feeling heart must deplore that a fellow creature should be exposed to such a cruel alternative.
The best regulated poor houses present a dreadful state of existence—a society with no one common bond of feeling—every endearing relation destroyed. In its place a principle of savage selfishness pervading all classes—engendering mutual jealousy and hatred. Age, infirmity, youth, idleness, and profligacy indiscriminately huddled together. Can any mortal contemplate such a conclusion of life, and not bless the attempt to preserve him from it? I put it to every gentleman's feelings who hears me, if he can doubt the poor of England will hail any change of system which will in its operation secure to them the enjoyment of their peaceful habitations and domestic comforts? Yes, they will gratefully acknowledge to God and you the escape from this misery, which the poor laws now hang over their head.
Every motive of humanity as well as policy calls on us to endeavour to devise means for securing so large a portion of our fellow creatures from the degraded situation to which they are reduced. Eight millions expended, and that without promoting the happiness of one individual who participates in it. if the evil is suffered to proceed, the whole industry and revenue of the country will be inadequate to support the poor—not a comfortable, happy, but a dissatisfied and degraded poor, who discover when it is too late, that improvidence and want of economy, which makes them a burden to others, robs them of every comfort of life.
