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    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

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    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/