Of John Bull's WEALTH it would be a cruel mockery to speak, when Whig and Tory-aristocrat and democrat-merchant and tradesmanmanufacturer and farmer-every denomination of society, in short, from Windsor to Wapping-from Beachy-Head to Cape Rath, agree in this one fact, that the whole nation is on the eve of bankruptcy—and half the population in the workhouse! To offer insult to indigence, is a refinement of cruelty to which I am not inclined; and therefore I shall waive the subject of WEALTH, and pass lightly and charitably over the POVERTY of my country.

If a joint stock-company were found to be in debt, to the tune of seven or eight hundred millions sterling-unable to pay the capital-and hardly capable of scraping up a low annual interest for their creditorsthey would be considered little less than insolvent. Such is the state of the JOHN BULL FIRM, according to the representations of a numerous class of society. It is exceedingly difficult for a foreigner to discover this poverty in England. He surveys the various gradations of the community, from the palace to the workhouse, and he sees splendid houses, beautiful furniture, magnificent carriages, well-dressed people, ruddy complexions, excellent roads, abundant provisions-(even in our workhouses and jails)—and oceans of money ready to flow into any channel that promises four or five per cent. interest on capital! Where, then, is the poverty of the country? It is in the unequal distribution of property. There is an immense class of PAUPERS in England, fed by their brethren, and therefore not distinguishable by the foreigners, from those who feed them.

As the national debt is a sum of money borrowed from a few, for the real or supposed good of ALL-So the interest of that debt is levied on ALL, without distinction-on the creditor as well as on the debtor. A national bankruptcy would neither augment nor diminish the sum total of wealth in the country. It might impoverish the FEW, without enriching the MANY. But we cannot, and need not dwell on a fraudulent bankruptcy in such a commercial country as this. If John Bull chooses to take the "benefit of the act," he must abide by all its provisions, and deliver up his goods and chattels to his creditors. In that case, I suspect that he would pay twenty shillings in the pound, and have a large surplus after all. Honesty is the best policy, in public as well as in private life. Government would not gain that freedom of action, which is anticipated from a fraudulent extinction of taxation for paying the public creditor. When the sponge that wipes away the national debt, is wrung dry, it may not very readily saturate itself with a fresh glut of moisture. He who stops payment from disinclination rather than poverty, may find some difficulty afterwards in putting his hand

into his neighbour's pocket, when seized with a fit of extravagance or knavery! A national debt, and the burden of discharging its interest, are not unqualified evils. They will prove a curb on national pugnacity -and produce a backwardness in picking quarrels with our neighbours —not so much, perhaps, from disinclination to mix in the WAR-DANCE, as from a well-grounded dread of paying the piper afterwards!

PAUPERISM.

If the national debt-or at least the payment of the interest-be a proof of the great wealth of England, the extent of her pauperism (paradoxical as it may appear) is a still more unequivocal testimony to the immensity of her resources. The wealth of the upper and middling classes is, in a great measure, the grand remote cause of the pauperism of the lowest class. If the former classes could not pay the poor-rates, pauperism would soon be at an end. If the poor-laws continue in their present form, pauperism will ultimately eat down property, till a level be produced, which will cure the evil! Ex nihilo nihil fit. If wealth, enormously accumulated in the hands of certain classes of society, be one of the remote causes of pauperism in others, the poor-laws are the proximate cause, both of redundant population, and its consequence, poverty. If England be destined to undergo the fate of other great empires-of Greece and Rome, for example-it will be mainly through the instrumentality of a code of laws, originating in the most benevolent motives, but unexpectedly operating to the destruction of the nation! If all the cruel tyrants, cold-hearted misanthropes, and blood-thirsty monsters that ever lived on the face of this earth, had formed a conclave, with SATAN for their chairman, they would not have been able to frame an ordonnance half so ruinous to human happiness and human prosperity as the POOR-LAWS of ENGLAND! These laws are the dry-rot of society. The more magnificent the framework of a ship, affected with this disease, the more extensive is the destructive process of the worm, and the more terrible the crash, when the timbers give way. It is so with the poor-laws. The more efforts we make to improve our circumstances, the more numerous are the blood-suckers that fasten on us for support, and drain us of our earnings. The POOR-LAWS have demoralized the indigent, and are demoralizing the affluent. If they hold out a premium for idleness and vice in one class, they lay the foundation for callous indifference, and almost misanthropy, in the

other. They are a source of terror to those who have anything to lose, and of discontent to those who have anything to gain.

There is scarcely a channel to the human heart, through which the tide of demoralization is not urged by the poor-laws. In the first place, they tend to sever the strongest of Nature's ties—those between parent and progeny-between brother and sister! "Those whose minds have been moulded by the operation of the poor-laws, appear not to feel the slightest scruple in asking to be paid for the performance of those domestic duties, which the most brutal savages are, in general, willing to render gratuitously to their own kindred! Why should I tend my sick and aged parents, when the parish is bound to do it?"-Reports on the Poor Laws, vol. i. p. 85. Various illustrations are given by the Commissioners, of this kind of modern philosophy!

Secondly, they weaken the grand stimulus to industry, (the fear of want,) by holding out a certain prospect of support from others, when our own resources fail, whether from illness, accident, or idleness!

"Is any, and what attention paid to the character of the applicant, or the causes of his distress?" Answer. "None whatever. The greatest thief in the parish has the magistrate's allowance; the honest but unfortunate get no more. The idle and dissolute are paid equally with the industrious and prudent."-Poor Law Report, p. 9.

Thirdly, the poor-laws directly encourage early and imprudent marriages the prolific source of redundant population, itself a cause as well as effect of pauperism.

If two men apply for parish relief, the one married, and the other single, the former has the preference, as to work, and the greater allowance of parochial assistance. For every child that he can produce, he has an additional weekly allowance from the parish. The thickestskulled clown in the country can see the nature of this bounty on the reproduction of the human species. He runs and gets married. Every year, or less, produces an increase of his parish allowance-and the MAN-FACTORY which impoverishes the nation, enriches the pauper!

"Whether that want is produced by imprudent marriages, or idleness, or thoughtless extravagance-or even by squandering resources with the deliberate intention of coming upon the parish, appears to be quite indifferent. Under this system, the lot of every man is the same. No one can raise himself by good conduct above the ordinary level :no one can sink himself below it by the opposite course."-Report, p. 77. What a glorious law is this for the improvement of our species in the nineteenth century!

Fourthly, the poor-laws have an additional tendency to demoralization,

by congregating various characters, in work-houses and on roads (not forgetting ale-houses) where labour is unproductive, where mischief is hatched, and good principles (if any exist) are corrupted. Every page of the Poor-law Reports exhibits illustrations of this melancholy fact!

A thousand other ways, in which the administration of the poor-laws tends to demoralize the people, and increase pauperism, might be pointed out: but the task is unnecessary. Through the four channels abovenamed, the main streams of mischief flow, swelled as they are by innumerable contributory currents.

For every intractable, or even incurable disease, a hundred infallible remedies are announced to the public every year. So, for PAUPERISM, a great many specifics have been recommended to the government, and to the parochial authorities. Many of these might probably have been serviceable, had they been fairly tried. But what is everybody's business, is nobody's! The great mass of society grumble, and pay; but decline taking any part in remedial measures, from various motives. The task itself is an invidious one; and the loss of time is balanced against the problematical benefit.

EMIGRATION has been generally considered as the most natural remedy for the evil of redundant population, and its consequence, PAUPERISM. It has been compared, and not inaptly, to the safety-valve of a steam-engine. But this safety-valve does not affect the generation of steam; it only lets off the redundancy, when the pressure becomes excessive, and endangers the boiler. It is exactly so with emigration. It carries off a portion of the redundant population, and, in that way, diminishes, for the moment, the painful sense of distention in society. It does not check the cause of the redundancy. On the contrary; it rather augments it. The migration of five hundred or a thousand people from any given locality, only enables the remainder to breathe a little freer, and fill up the vacancies with an increased impetus. In these voluntary migrations, too, it is by no means the worst part of the population that seeks a new theatre for the operation of industry.

But although voluntary migration offers no preventive check to redundant population; while forced emigration (except for crimes) is out of the question; it is possible that a third mode-alternative emigration-might be applicable as a preventive remedy to the evils of pauperism. Suppose an able-bodied man applies to the parish for relief -because he cannot get employment? The parish officer answers,— "We cannot find you work, and we will not find you the means of living without work. But we will assist you to go to a country where workmen are wanted." This is alternative emigration. You have the

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choice of staying at home and shifting for yourself-or of going abroad, free of expense, where avocation is certain.

The fear that the parish, or even the government, would be unable to accommodate the multitude who might accept the offer of alternative emigration, is quite chimerical. Not one in fifty would close with the proposal for a trip to Canada. But the refusal would leave the applicant without the power of saying, "I am forced to starve in my own country." The alternative in question would induce forty-nine in fifty to exert themselves in gaining a livelihood at home, rather than cross the Atlantic to the scene of hard labour. This, then, would be a preventive check to redundant population and pauperism.

Another, and a still more favourite check to redundant population and pauperism, in the opinion of political economists, is the "DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE." This is a problem of no easy solution, as I have remarked in another place*. It is very probable, however, that a greater diffusion of knowledge among the lower classes of society, may tend to check those causes on which redundant population depends. We find that, as the scale of civilization ascends, the tendency to early marriage decreases. Thus, the members of the learned professions are the latest to enter within the pale of matrimony. Let us look to the opposite extreme of the scale, in the bogs of Ireland. There, a pig and a piece of potato-field-or at most, "an acre of ground and a cow's grass," form a sufficient SET-OUT for poor Paddy, who rears, on this simple foundation, some twelve or fifteen HUMAN BEINGS, as poor as himself-half of them manufactured for-EXPORTATION to England and Scotland!

From this low point, in exact proportion as mankind rise on the scale of mental endowment, OR of luxurious refinement, the obstacles to matrimony multiply-celibacy increases-the average period of contracting marriage is thrown back-and redundancy of population is checked.

The peasantry of Scotland are better educated than those of Ireland. They require a greater number of comforts for the marriage state; and they are more cautious, as well as slow, in contracting matrimony. The population, therefore, advances with less rapidity in Scotland than in Ireland.

In England, the difficulties of providing for families check matrimonial engagements among the better classes of society. But the poor

* See p. 33, 34,