tax would be replaced. Whether the landed property now in mortmain be deemed exactly the proper quantity, or whether any quantity is by some politicians deemed too much, we know not; but the permission which is desirable for future good purposes need not be too broad, because the public funds and the contingent depreciation of money do not present objections so practically formidable as the too frequent alienation of charity lands by the misconduct of trustees. But land enough for the site of buildings and for gardens, or to a certain proportion of the whole annual value of a bequest, ought not to be precluded from the purposes of charity. The visible effects and comforts of well regulated alms-houses (life-hold tenements for the veteran labourer) would not fail to produce imitation and emulation among large proprietors, who, when they established such rewards for rustic virtue, would have for their own recompense a satisfaction beyond all price. Properly situated, the old would become the instructors of the rising generation and examples of rewarded merit, with the comfort of being in this manner useful to society to the last moments of their existence. Such institutions would in their very nature carry with them a certain degree of religious respectability. The euthanasy of the ancients is only a name with us: it was enjoyed as the natural termination of life in that patriarchal, or

golden age,

When as the world was in its pupillage;' now, in the physical meaning of the word, it scarcely falls to the lot of one person in a generation. The entail of the blessing has been cut off by our climate, still more perhaps by our constitutions, which in all of us are tainted, more or less, with some hereditary predisposition to disease, modified by unwholesome habits, and sapped not only by natural but by artificial anxieties, wherewith, as one of our early poets says,

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"We furnish feathers for the wings of death.'

We have however in our choice a better and nobler euthanasy, known to the patriarchs who fell asleep in the Lord,' but of which the Greeks were ignorant; and the preparation for this makes old age not merely endurable, with all its infirmities and privations, with what it takes away, and, as is so feelingly said by Wordsworth, ' with what it leaves behind;' but even gives it a delight hardly to be obtained in youth and robust life, when the passions and pursuits of the world have their full hold upon the heart. The calm of a religious old age is to the enjoyments of mid-life, what the sunset and twilight of a summer evening are to the heat of the noon-day. Of all charities the most efficient and the most fertile in good fruits is that which provides for the spiritual necessities of a rational and immortal being; of all possessions that of an assured faith the

most inestimable. And let it not be supposed that there is an inaptitude for religious feelings in the great mass of mankind; man is characteristically and emphatically a religious creature. Instruction and sympathy are what he needs: but devotion is the appetite of his soul, the instinct of his immortal part. Like other instincts and appetites, it is liable to be perverted and abused; but even when misdirected, its universal existence is proved by the universality of superstition among the uninstructed and ill-instructed part of mankind. Old age bent down with infirmities, and still rooted and clinging to the earth into which it must so soon be huddled up, is indeed a humiliating and mournful spectacle: far otherwise is it when we behold the spiritual part triumphant over mortality, ready to break its shell, and take wing for heaven!

When the French ambassador at the court of James I. inquired what books had been published by Archbishop Whitgift, and was told incidentally that he had founded an hospital and a school, he made answer-profectò hospitale, ad sublevandam paupertatem, et schola, ad instruendam juventutem, sunt optimi libri quos archiepiscopus conscribere potuit- Surely an hospital to sustain the poor, and a school to train up youth, are the worthiest books that an archbishop could set forth.--The increase of such foundations may be expected as one natural consequence of increased respectability on the part of the poor, and of that reciprocal good feeling between the poor and the rich which the present system tends directly to destroy.

In the simple remedy for the complicated evils of that system which we have ventured to propose, and which resolves itself into low diet for those who deserve no better, we should have less confidence were there no example of any great benefit achieved by means which seem obvious after they are in general use, but which yet have long remained unknown or unapplied. Such an example however we have, recent, of the most conspicuous kind, and relating to the very same difficulty which we are endeavouring to remove. it be said that the Saving Banks are here alluded to?-institutions which will create frugal habits as well as encourage them. Opportunity may be expected to make economists, not perhaps as often as it makes a spendthrift, but more readily than it makes a thief, although it be proverbially noted for teaching larceny.

Need

'The grand object,' says Mr. Colquhoun in his evidence before the Committee upon Mendicity, is to prop up poverty, and to prevent persons falling into indigence. Indigence is a state wherein a person is unable to maintain himself by his labour;-poverty is that state where a man's manual labour supports him, but no more. But I conceive the Provident Banks would give the community at large, what would be most invaluable in society, provident habits;-that the pride of having money in the bank, and the advantage arising from having their interest,

would

would induce many persons to put in small sums which they would otherwise spend. This has been found to be the practical effect, and a very slight knowledge of human nature will shew that when a man gets on a little in the world, he is desirous of getting on a little farther." So certain indeed is the growth of provident habits, that it has been said if a journeyman lays by the first five shillings, his fortune is made. Mr. William Hales, one of those persons who have bestowed most attention upon the state of the labouring classes, and exerted themselves most for their benefit, declares that he never knew an instance of any one coming to the parish who had ever saved money.

Those individuals,' he says, 'who save money are better workmen; if they do not do the work better, they behave better, and are more respectable; and I would rather have a hundred men who save money, in my trade, than two hundred who would spend every shilling they got. In proportion as individuals save a little money, their morals are much better, they husband that little,-there is a superior tone given to their morals, and they behave better from knowing they have a little stake in society.'

'Archimedes,' says Sir Henry Wotton, was wont to say, "that he would remove the world out of its place, if he had elsewhere to set his foot." And truly I believe so far, that otherwise he could not do it. I am sure so much is evident in the architecture of fortunes, in the raising of which the best art or endeavour is able to do nothing, if it have not where to lay the first stone.'—This it is which is given by the Saving Banks.

The encouragement given to Saving Banks by the act of the last session shews the high opinion in which they are held by the legislature, and we hope was not excessive nor injudicious, though the attempt to connect these banks with the poor rates might well excite serious apprehensions, important as it is to preserve with the greatest care an entire separation of the sound and the unsound,— and to foster the rising efforts at respectability and independence on the part of the industrious poor, in contradistinction and opposition to the poor-relief system. This error, we rejoiced to see, was strenuously resisted, and with success; and thence it may be hoped that intentional kindness towards the poor will hereafter be received with more caution than heretofore; and that the state of a parish pauper shall not be deemed honourable, as might be inferred from the act of 1808 abolishing parish badges, which, though they were out of use, ought always to have distinguished those who would not, or could not maintain themselves. The legislation which from time to time has taken place regarding workhouses and friendly societies, is at least of very questionable utility; and the public may be congratulated upon the feeling now aroused, and the knowledge lately developed, which will direct the future attention

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of the legislature with more judicious aim at the gradual diminution and possible extinction of the poor rates.

Not that a golden age is to be expected, in which poverty and disease shall disappear: even when the mother evil, the poor rates, shall be removed, more, much more remains to be done, before we effect even that improvement in the general weal which assuredly is within our reach. But let this mother evil be withdrawn, and it may fairly be expected that the particular and general charity put in action by the respectability of the poor will outrun the demands upon it; that the interested patronage of employers, the disinterested benevolence of the wealthy, the increase of hospitals and alms-houses, the rise of wages, and above all the general establishment of Saving Banks, will leave nothing to be done by means of compulsory contributions. It may reasonably be expected that a generous spirit of emulation will arise among the industrious poor in every parish, not to ask for aid, and among their employers to prevent the necessity of their so doing,—whereby to be early in the list of those parishes in which the poor rates shall become obsolete, never to revive again. We hazard no prediction as to the progress or attainment of so happy a consummation; agreeing indeed with Mr. Davison, that a compulsory diminution of the amount of the poor's rate to be regulated by law is scarcely advisable: though it may be highly expedient that the comparative annual amount in every parish within the habitual jurisdiction of every meeting of justices should always be before them, thereby to excite their vigilance and interference in the management of those parishes that shall be behind others in the reformation hereafter to be effected by means of those legislative enactments, which in some shape or other must certainly take place.

prove

The proposed return to the expressed principle of the old law would be as beneficial to the meritorious poor, as it would medicinal to the lazzaroni-that class of paupers who come to the parish for relief, because they do not chuse to work, or because of the direct consequence of their own misconduct;-they who sing Hang sorrow and cast away care,

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The parish is bound to find us.'

But be

At present this numerous description of persons entertain a full persuasion that they have what they call a right to be maintained. The lax manner in which the poor laws have been administered has suffered this opinion to grow up and strike deep root. it remembered that both the spirit and the letter of the law provide relief for those only who are helpless as well as poor; and the remedy for the huge existing evil is nothing more than a strict and just adherence to this principle. For age and for childhood more should be done than has yet been provided; all that the spendthrift,

the

the drunkard and the vagabond can expect is that they should be preserved from perishing by want. To put them in a better condition than that of the poorest labourer who earns his own subsistence is an act of direct injustice and a discouragement to meritorious poverty. When the poor-house supplies for such guests no better fare than they deserve, the table will soon cease to be crowded.

The principle which we have here sought to enforce will be found applicable beyond the important purpose of extinguishing the poor laws: we shall endeavour, on a proper occasion, to prove that it may hereafter become an effectual remedy of the abuses of the debtor and creditor laws. Another application of it, perhaps not less salutary, remains to be explained, and is the more appropriate to the general purpose of this essay, as remedial prospectively, and in some degree at present, of the burthen of county-rates. For it is an error to imagine that the poors' rate, although by its magnitude it hides all other parochial burthens, is itself the sole burthen. The county-rates have increased much faster in the last forty years; so that the money expended for other purposes than the maintenance of the poor is at present not less than two millions per annum, and of this the sum paid to the county-rates may be taken at a million a year. A great aggravation of this burthen has arisen from the erection of county jails and bridewells, to the amount perhaps of five millions sterling;-even more when the relative value of money is considered, than in the same space of time was ever expended in cathedrals by our forefathers. And this will be deemed a low estimate by those who have opportunity to know the expenditure of the several counties, or who have seen the fortresslike edifices, massive and ornamental, appropriated to this ill-omened purpose. For in building a jail, not only the expensive accommodations provided in work-houses are held to be necessary, but enormous strength and solidity of fabric becomes so, in proportion as moral means of securing the prisoner are neglected, and the ruder ones are held to be improper. A jail which shall be at the same time sufficiently commodious and secure can scarcely, we understand, be constructed at 3007. a head for the number of its intended tenants; and the establishment of jailors and turnkeys annually increases from the same cause. May we be permitted to ask, whether it is impossible to find other security better and cheaper than walls and guards? Is it impossible to divide prisoners into two classes, those who are willing, and those who are unwilling to put themselves upon trial? Suppose prison-breaking were made a substantive crime punishable by transportation for life, provided the prisoner had consented to that condition, the inmates of our jails would become far less troublesome. Those who were conscious

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