POOR LAWS, AS THEY WERE, AND AS THEY ARE; OR THE RECENT ALTERATIONS IN The Poor Laws, By the Statute 4 & 5 William IV. Cap. 76. PLAINLY STATED: SHOWING 1. THE OLD LAW; BIBL 2. THE PRESENT LAW; AND 3. THE GROUNDS, AND ANTICIPATED EFFECT, ПЕСТ BY JAMES N. MAHON, Esq. OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THOMAS HURST, PREFACE. THE important Statute, which passed both Houses of Parliament towards the close of last Session, trenched deep on the legislation of three centuries; bearing a sweeping change into the administration of the poor laws, as founded under Elizabeth, and brought down by successive enactments to the present day. advocating any rash legislation, or giving the name of reform to every ill-digested novelty, it must be admitted that a change was imperative: the dark tide of pauperism was rising to flood height, and menaced with inundation the Without whole land. The startling sum of seven millions and upwards, annually exacted in the shape of poor rates-an exaction still increasing;Whole parishes choked with idle and demoralized paupers;-Able-bodied men, in the vigour of health and youth, housed and fed by thousands, with their families, on the contributions of industry and toil;-Workhouses not scenes of temperance and labour, or a refuge for the impotent and decayed, but filled with sloth, intemperance, and vice;-The impositions and givings in the shape of out-of-door relief, too generally without distress or merit ;-Then the labour-rate system, and the monstrous plan, first begun in 1794, of bolstering up the wages of agricultural labourers by weekly additions from the poor-rates ;-All foreign to the principle of the poor laws, repugnant to the leading statute of Elizabeth, and a gross perversion of the funds that should give work to those capable of labour, and relief to the aged, lame, the impotent, and blind.-Add to this dark train, the complication of Settlements, the constant hardship and oppression of removals, with the enormous amount of litigation and expense, consequent on parish contention and appeals;-and we see a congregated mass of evils and abuses, loudly calling for legislative correction. Then, if ridicule could blend with any thing so appalling, behold the adminis tration of this vast complex system, and its funds, vested generally in persons, as parish officers, chosen, not from the reputable and intelligent portion of the community, but too often from the most vulgar, ignorant, and corrupt ;Individuals either decayed in means, brutal in manners, or corrupt in principle. In such hands rested, in numerous places, the government of |