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the increasing effects of diminished produce at home, and, with the decrease of home growth, and consequently of the employment of home industry, the poor's rate increased with the foreign importation, in the five following years, in so much that the amount of the rate in 1828-29 was 1,092,1447. above the amount in 1823-24; being an increase to this amount in five years.

There was a small improvement in 1829-30, the amount being 30,1547. below the amount in the preceding year, a diminution too insignificant to draw any conclusion from; though, probably, owing to the good season of 1829, in which, though the crops were comparatively abundant, they were still unable to prevent a large foreign importation in the following year.

CHAP. III.

EFFECTS OF THE MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF THE POOR LAWS UPON MORALS AND INDUSTRY.

A DISTINCTION having been created between married and unmarried labourers, so that, generally speaking, the latter do not receive above half the sum paid to the former, it follows that an unmarried labourer can save nothing to pro

vide the means of keeping a family, which he is nevertheless induced to have in order that he may increase his parish pay. The effect of this abuse is to produce habits of improvidence among the lower orders.

The moral effects upon young women are still more to be deplored. Among the lower orders, chastity in unmarried women has almost ceased to be a virtue. No harm is conceived to be done, until the fruit of this promiscuous intercourse promises to be a child; and then the expectant mother swears the child to any man she likes best, or finds most convenient; who, by another abuse in the administration of these laws, is obliged to marry her or go to prison. A young woman has thus only to get a child in order to get a husband: the consequence of which, besides degrading the woman, is to multiply children without any provision having been made for the means of maintaining them, and to destroy the natural love of parents for their offspring, by setting them free from the natural obligation to maintain their children, and by removing that solicitude about them which endears them to their affections.

Where mankind are immoral, they are rarely industrious. Carelessness, idleness, and indolence, are the natural consequence of this state of things; which further obliging the labourer to look to assistance from the parish to supply his wants, in

place of being obliged to rely upon his own industry for his means of support, he becomes discontented with his condition, which being unable to improve by any exertion of his own, he further becomes helpless and hopeless, but reckless withal, and ready for any sort of mischief that may be presented to him.*

The consequence of all these things to industry is, that the work done by a labourer lessens progressively. The Rev. Mr. Becher, already referred to, (who has introduced a correction of the abuses of the poor-laws into his part of Nottinghamshire, which will be afterwards noticed,) says, that the work of a labourer in his district is four times the quantity of the work performed by a labourer in the other districts of

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* This consequence may serve to explain the aptitude found among our agricultural labourers to become incendiaries two years ago. The burnings of ricks and barns, however, may have originated from the same cause which produced burnings in Normandy, long before they happened in England, namely, the operation of the Corn Laws in depriving labourers of employment; for France, having divided her kingdom into four parts, and not allowing any one of these divisions to trade with another in the article of grain, until, in each, it rises to a certain price, she has a worse Corn Law than even we have; and labourers there, as here, burnt corn, in order that, in raising a further supply, they might receive better wages. The Game Laws, also, have had ascribed to them an increase of crime, a large portion of which springs from the operation of the Corn Laws in throwing labourers out of employment.

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that county where these abuses still prevail; so that a farmer, while he supposes he and the parish are paying such labourer only at the rate of 2s. per day, he and the parish are actually paying such labourer at the rate of 8s. per day.

It thus becomes manifest how the mal-administration of the Poor Laws powerfully assist the operation of the Corn Laws in diminishing home produce by increasing the cost of production.

CHAP. IV.

EFFECT OF THE MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF THE POOR

LAWS UPON POPULATION.

THE REV. Mr. Whateley, vicar of the parish of Cookham, in Berkshire, who has introduced into that parish a system corrective of the abuses of the Poor Laws (to be afterwards adverted to), stated, in his examination before the Lords' Committee on the Poor Laws in 1831, that he had examined the register of births in his parish for eighteen years before his system began, and for nine years afterwards, and he found the number of births in each period of nine years to have been as follows:-593, 706, 676; so that the number of births, which increased 113 upon 593,

the number in the first nine years, diminished, in the nine years after his system commenced, 30 upon 706, the number in the nine years immediately before it came into operation.

Nothing can show in a more striking manner the effect of the abuses of the Poor Laws, in inducing an over-population, than the mere statement of this fact, which, with the operation of the Corn Laws in diminishing the home growth of corn, may serve to point out the errors committed by our political economists in their attempts to establish a ratio for the increase of the population. In every country there are restraints upon industry, which limit or diminish the growth of food, and increase the numbers of the population, which they do not take into the account; and most assuredly, in their reasonings upon the ratio of the increase of the population of Great Britain, they have altogether overlooked these two very prominent facts. The accounts of the imports and exports of grain enable us to measure the diminution of the home growth of corn; but we are not yet in possession of sufficient details to enable us to appreciate the proportion of over-population, produced by the abuses of the Poor Laws; though the above fact leaves us no room to doubt that their operation is extensive in this respect.

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