On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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
to five years . " 2 The effect of this limitation would be to encourage all who are either prejudiced or interested in favour of the old system , to thwart the operation of the measure ; since it affords them a hope , that if they can contrive , during the five years , to make out a plausible case of failure against the Bill , they will be permitted to revert to the old system , and mismanage the poor as before . There is nothing whatever gained by the limitation ; it will not buy off a single opponent ; and in
principle it is absurd for Parliament to enact that something shall terminate in five years , which Parliament may put an end to in one month if it see cause . The proviso will only operate in one way ; as a declaration to the country , that Ministers and Parliament are not sure they are doing right ; that they are preparing for a possible change of opinion , which is tantamount to a warning to the friends of Ministers , not to confide in them , not to suppose that they have duly considered the subject ; and an invitation to the enemies of the measure , by no means to relax their opposition .
The idea of limiting the duration of the Central Board is , we conceive , erroneous in principle . The expression , ' a temporary dictatorship , ' unguardedly used by some of the advocates of the Bill , was singularly infelicitous in Us application . In the first p ) ace , ( as the * Chronicle / we think , observed , ) who ever heard of a dictatorship under the control of Parliament ? But the Central Board maybe and ought to be defended * not as an expedient for a temporary purpose , but as in itself the best and only proper principle of administration for a system of Poor Laws .
Assume that the Board will continue until the existing evils arej remedied , and the management of the poor thoroughly reformed : what , except the prolongation of the same superintendence , is to prevent affairs from relapsing by degrees into as bad a state as before ? Acts of Parliament ? Declarations of the Legislature that the abuses BhalL hereafter be illegal ? But they have always been illegal . They have crept in gradually in spite ' of the law , because the local functionaries had strong immediate motives to introduce them , none of which motives an Act of
Parliament will or can take away ; and because there was no authority to which they were forced to submit their proceedings , and whose duty it was to keep them within the law . And this very state of things will be restored from the first moment that the Central Board shall be discontinued ; and will be attended of course with the same consequences . The diffusion of sound principles , which will be the natural effect of the present temporary reform , will retard , no doubt , this inevitable progression , but the inroads of abuse , if more slow , will not be less sure .
The opposition to the Bill has been feeble beyond example . We never remember a public measure in the discus&ion of which every rational argument was so completely confined to one side . We may add , that we remember none in which the party in the wrong has been more strangely reckless of its own reputation , both in its arguments or in its facts . Who , for instance , would have expected to be told ( as in the 'Times '
of the 14 th of May ) that this Bill renders fruitless the ' protracted struggle from which the British people never ceased , until they had succeeded in making it part and parcel of their constitution , that tlie meanest subject in the realm should neither be subjected to any taxes , hot amenable to any rules of conduct , except such as should be imposed by the joint consent of King , Lords , and Commons in Parliament
Untitled Article
45 $ Notes on the Newspapers .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 452, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/70/
-