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ly ten loaves to offer to ten purchasers, if an eleventh purchaser comes forward, his money may raise the price of competition, but cannot create a corresponding eleventh loaf,-therefore unless money can draw supplies of corn from foreign countries, it produces no national relief; for every loaf of bread you enable any individual to purchase, by supplying him with money, you deprive another individual of that very loaf.

This assistance in money afforded to individuals by the public, has, by degrees, increased to a prodigious amount. Foreign readers will hear, with surprise, that the tax raised for that purpose, on the rental of the kingdom, exceeds seven millions sterling, annually;* and in some parishes is imposed at the rate of 4s. or 5s. in the pound. The income tax itself, raised on all sorts of property, and which is thought so exorbitant, produces only from ten to twelve millions. The necessary consequences of this system are, 1st, An encouragement to idleness and improvidence, and to marriage without the means of supporting a family. 2d, A multiplicity of vexatious laws respecting settlements, by which the right of removing, at pleasure, from one part of the country to another, is so abridged, as to attach, in a great degree, the

* In 1776, the poor-rates amounted to L. 1,529,780 sterling, and the average of the years 1783-4-5, was L. 2,167,749 sterling. The price of wheat in 1776 was L. 2, 2s. 8d. sterling; in 1783-4-5, L. 2, 3s. 7d. sterling, per quarter; at the same period, the workhouses cost L. 15,892 sterling a-year; and what is most wonderful, L. 11,713 sterling for entertainments; L. 24,493 sterling expenses of removals of individuals, &c.; and finally, L. 55,891 sterling law charges! In 1803, the poor-rates were L. 5,318,000 sterling, of which L. 4,267,000 sterling only expended on the poor. The rack rental was then 40 millions, now nearly 55 millions, therefore the poor-rates may be estimated 7 millions and a half now.--Quarterly Review, No. XVI.

labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian peasant is. Parishes being bound to provide each for their own poor, it becomes a matter of importance to prevent new comers from acquiring a settlement, by removal to a new parish; and the poor are repulsed from one to the other like infected persons. They are sent back from one end of the kingdom to the other, as criminals formerly in France de brigade en brigade. You meet on the high roads, I will not say often, but too often, an old man on foot, with his little bundle, a helpless widow, pregnant perhaps, and two or three barefooted children following her, become paupers in a place where they had not yet acquired a legal right to assistance, and sent away, on that account, to their original place of settlement, supported, in the meantime, by the overseers of the parishes on their way. 3d, The funds of the poor are under the administration of overseers, at least as to the details of individual relief; men for the most part not much above, those to whom they administer this relief, in point of rank and education, and more awake to the feelings of a little brief authority, than to those of enlightened humanity,-fond of governing; watching the poor with jealousy; meddling with the management of their families with a degree of ill-natured curiosity, and subjecting them to the most odious of tyrannies, l'insupportable joug de nos égaux. 4th, When carried to an extreme, (and 5s. in the pound is very near an extreme), the system of assessment operates like an agrarian law, a levelling principle, tending to put every thing in common; that is, to destroy the very foundation of society, industry, national wealth, science, and every thing which distinguishes the civilized from the savage life, depending on the right to property. 5th, The

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wages of labour follow with difficulty the gradual rise of price of the necessaries of life; this difficulty is increased by the gratuitous assistance given by parishes, as it obviates the absolute necessity of the rise of wages; therefore, as observed by Mr. Malthus, the poor laws create, in fact, the poor they assist. It is very probable that, upon the whole, neither the rich pay more, nor the poor receive less than they would otherwise, only they receive as a charity, as alms, what ought to be salary; with this fatal difference, that the industrious labourer having no share in the alms or auxiliary salary, is much worse off than the idle. The least of the bad consequences to be expected from the poor laws, would be the final establishment of a monachal government, like that of the jesuits in Paraguay. Such is, I believe, the most prevailing opinion respecting the institution; yet no measures seem likely to be taken by Parliament to remedy the enormity of the evil. **

I am astonished that the bad effects apprehended should not be more apparent than they are; for, after all, I must repeat, that poverty is nowhere obtrusive here; no rags, no famished looks, no beggars, few robberies, at least in time of war. Looking for a cause adequate to this, we are led to suppose in the manners of the people a dislike to receiving alms; a salutary pride which shrinks from debasement and servitude. Under this point of view, the unfeeling ad

* It seems, that if, instead of receiving parish assistance, the poor were supported by government, and the expense borne by equal taxes over the whole kingdom, many of the evils would be avoided; settlements, litigations, superabundance of labourers in one parish, and scarcity in another, &c.; while no inconveniences comparable to the above would, in all probability, be incurred.

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ministration of overseers would be a happy circum stance. The more bitter and disgusting the poisonous draught, the fewer are those who can bring themselves to swallow it. That the popula tion of a country is determined by the productiveness of its soil, is a proposition sufficiently selfevident; and it is well known that the multiplication of the human species has a tendency to outrun the means of subsistence. New countries, like North America, double their population every twenty or twenty-five years; while the best possible state of agriculture, the utmost labour bestowed on a given extent of land, will not multiply its produce beyond a certain point, very soon attained; yet it has been denied that poverty is inherent to our nature, and the assertion, that the best government, in favouring population, hastened in fact the period of natural want and poverty, has been treated as a sort of political impiety. The author of the Essay on Population, already noticed, has been charged with furnishing a pretence to the selfishness of the rich, in regard to the poor, as well as an argument against any wholesome reforms in governments; but pretences will never be wanting to those who seek for them; and the physician who, at the same time that he pronounces a disorder incurable, points out a sure palliative, does us more good than the quack who promises a complete cure, never yet effected. The palliative proposed by the Essay on Population, belongs to individual prudence and forbearance, and not to legislation; namely this, not to procreate children till you have wherewithal to maintain them; not to marry till you have secured a competency. It is not domestic independence alone which would be secured by the observance of

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this rule, but also political independence, freedom, and national strength. Where there are more labouring men than are wanted for labour, the lower classes are at the mercy of the higher, and slaves as in China, and vice versa. As to strength, internal and external, it is estimated far more accurately by the number of births compared to the number of inhabitants, than by the absolute number. If 250 annual births suffice, in any given country, to keep up and recruit a permanent population of 10,000 souls, and in another country, 300 annual births are necessary to recruit a similar population, it follows, that life is shorter in the latter country, and that the inhabitants must be more exposed to want and hardships than in the former; and likewise, that fewer individuals reach that middle age, which alone constitutes an efficient population.

By the "Statistique Générale et Particulière" lately published in France, says Mr. Malthus, it appears that nine-twentieths of the French population is below the age of twenty. In England, seven-twentieths only are below that age; consequently, out of a population of ten millions, there is, in England, one million of individuals above twenty more than in France, which gives 300,000 or 400,000 males more of a military or labouring age. Early marriages, without adequate means of subsistence, might increase the number of births, but it does not follow that it would increase the population, or rather that it would increase the number of grown efficient individuals.

Lord Castlereagh stated in Parliament, in March last, that the army amounted to 320,000, men,* the

* The army is recruited by 23,000 men annually.

The last population returns of Great Britain enumerate 2,544,000