Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
tents of this volume must , to many thousands , be as new and strange as they are grievous . Not the least striking part of them is the similarity which they show between the predatory operations of those who are aloft , and those who are below , in the social
fabric . As by means of corrupt institutions and establishments , sinecures , pensions , and taxation for the peculiar advantage of particular classes , we have , on the one hand , a set of idlers preying in splendour on the public ; so on the other , by means of workhouses and parish allowances , and public charities , and other pauper privileges , we have another set of idlers preying upon the public in sordidness . The dominion of industry is invaded at both extremities . The honest , independent , and industrious are like an unarmed band between two fires . Our candle is alight at both ends , and it burns away most wastefully . And the tax-eaters of both descriptions pursue a like course towards the tax-payers . These tell us of their vested interests in the public burdens , and those claim their rations as a right . If the lofty idlers fare more sumptuously than do those of the industrious with whom they are more immediately in contact , the same thing may be said of the lowly idlers also . It is demonstrated in this book that there are numbers paying rates who are restricted with their families to a fare which is meagre indeed , compared with theirs , who , in
the form of parish allowance and workhouse diet , receive those rates . If the professional man is lured from his straightforward course that he may partake of the wages of corruption , the independent labourer may better his condition by becoming a soldier , yet more by becoming a pauper , and more still by becoming a thief . There is a curious scale ( Extracts , fyc . p . 261 , ) by which it appears , and the particulars are all given , that the quantity of
solid food consumed by different classes rises in the following gradation : —1 . The independent agricultural labourer , whose consumption is the smallest of all . 2 . The soldier , 3 . The ablebodied pauper . 4 . The suspected thief . 5 , The convicted thief . 6 . The transported thief , who is at the top of the scale , and whose condition is to that of fhe labourer as 2 £ to 1 , or a
weekly consumption of solid food of 330 oz . K ) one of 122 oz » To increase the disparity of the higher and lower ranks in this scale , it must also be remembered that prison-work is only ten hours a day ; the agricultural labourer works on an average twelve hours a day . But to return , to our comparison . The Poor Law Reports' and the * Black Book' have a wonderful resemblance : the names and sums constitute the widest difference . The
analogy especially holds in one very amiable feature , viz ., that family fondness by which , as soon as an individual finds himself comfortably quartered upon the public , he puts forth a helping hand to draw all his consanguinities after him into the same gracious condition . Everybody must have remarked this in the pension list , There , each greater name , with its thousands , sheds
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 364, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/4/
