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Gowing most unnecessarily , and as we conceive most mischievously , might proper to encumber it . As might have been expected , the wantage thus given has been eagerly seized by the enemies of the ililL ' The Times exclaims , that the truth has come out at last , and aat the real object of the Poor Law reformers is now visible . Whether ' The Times' asserts this factiously or ignorantly , it is probable aat many , who have no opportunity of being better informed , will share
ne impression . Now , if there be any thing which may be predicated with certainty of ite Poor Law Bill it is this , that if carried into effect in the spirit in Ihich it is conceived , it will leave no excuse whatever for attempting to Polish Poor Laws . It affords the means by which society may guarantee isubsibtence to every one of its members , without producing any of the iital consequences to their industry and prudence , which though rising only from the manner in which the law has been administered ,
me been erroneously supposed to be inseparable from its principle . We hold a public provision for the poor to be an indispensable part tf tbe institutions of every civilized country . To put the least dignified tonsideration first , it is necessary even as part of a system of police ; for if here such a provision does not exist , there must be unbounded toleraiion of mendicity , the very worst species of pauperism next to that which iow exists in the southern counties of England . Besides , it is imposible to refuse to an innocent person in want , that subsistence which you vili be obliged to afford to him as soon as he becomes a criminal .
Let mere poverty be attended with consequences equal to the most terible of your punishments , and the chances of crime will be preferred to he certainty of starvation . —Secondly , Poor Laws are necessary on still igher grounds of public policy ; as the only means by which an alliance an be established between the pecuniary interest of the rich and the omfort and independence of the poor . —Lastly , Poor Laws are required
v the plainest dictates of justice ; since it is monstrous that human reatures , who exercised no choice in being born , should be starved for ie fault of their progenitors . There is food enough on the earth for all too are alive , and society has motives , short of capital punishment , by hich it can enforce , when enforce it must , any necessary restraint upon ie increase of the numbers of mankind .
The Anti-ppor-jaw doctrine is now almost universally exploded among olitical economists , though political economy still continues to be most njustly burthened with the discredit of it , and though Lord Brougham wibtless thought he proved himself a master in the science by professing ne of its ^ discarded errors . Of the prudence of perking in the faces of ankind opinions abhorrent to them , on an occasion when those
unions were perfectly irrelevant , we say nothing , as we think with Fhe Chronicle , ' that statesmen are not to be very severely reproached for parity ; and we are well pleased to find that Lord Brougham , after so *» y years of public life , has at last , for once , lain under that reproach . 23 rf July . —The Rich and the Poor . —A certain Major Pitman , a gistrate of the county of Devon , having been convicted before a ^ ch of magistrates in Petty Sessions , of a series of most brutal vaults , committed , with scarcely any provocation , upon his maid-^ ant , accompanied with the grossest and most disgusting abuse , and
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The Rlc / i and the Poor . 597
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 597, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/67/
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