Per whom his exulting heart often beheld ad- having been long since taken away. vancing to the very summits of society, to petually insulted by false and heartless which they added dignity, the dignity of accusations for being a pauper, when his virtue and merit. Yes, Sir, I need not accusers have compelled him to become remind the House how many of those who such; for being idle, when his work has been have rendered immortal honour to their taken from him; for improvidence, when country how many of your greatest he can hardly exist-he feels these insults merchants how many laurelled and barbed by past recollections which fasten in mitred heads, have sprung from the cot- his heart-which utter hopelessness withers tage? Such, then, was the situation of within him. The very sympathies of his this class; what is it at present? The nature become reversed: those who would "bold peasantry of England, their coun- once have constituted his comforts and pleatry's pride," are, generally speaking, now sures, his ragged and half-starved offspring, extinct. An ignorant and selfish system who cannot stray a pace from his hovel withof spurious political economy, dictating out becoming trespassers and being severely first to the mercantile, and then to the treated as such, they, with their wretched agricultural interest, had at length tri- mother,increase his misery. He escapes, perumphed, and these are its consequences. haps, from the scene of his distress, and I shall attend to some of its dicta hereafter; attempts to lose the recollection of it and of meantime, let me now contrast the present himself, in dissolute and dangerous courses. condition to which the agricultural poor Meantime, had some peculiar calamity, have been reduced, with that which I have some inscrutable visitation of Providence described as enjoyed by them till its heart- reduced him to this condition, perhaps he less dogmas prevailed. The system of might have sustained it with composure of demolition and monopoly, which has, in spirit. But he knows otherwise. He can the emphatic language of the inspired trace his sufferings and degradation to volume, "laid house to house, and field their true source. He knows they have to field, that they may stand alone in the been inflicted upon him, and he feels what earth," has left no place for the poor, none would be their cure, and can calculate how for the little cultivator; none for the little it would cost others to make him and peasant's cow; no, not enough, in one case his supremely happy. Meantime, the auin ten, for a garden. The best of the cot-thors of his sufferings are those that insult tages have been demolished-" spurned in-him with demanding that he should be dignant from the green," as the loveliest quiet and grateful, that he should be of the poets of poverty, Goldsmith, sings. contented and cheerful under them! The lonely and naked hut into which they are now thrust, for which is exacted an exorbitant rent, is destitute, both without and within, of all that formerly distinguished their humble abodes, is often unfit to stable even quadrupeds, and frequentlyso crowded by different families, as to set not comfort merely, but decency at defiance, and render morality itself an impossible virtue. Thither, then, the unhappy parent, when employed, carries his wages, which, with the exception of a few short weeks in the year, are utterly inadequate to supply the necessities of a craving family. Wages did I say? Parish pay! He is, perhaps, sold by auction, as is the case in certain parishes, where he is actually reduced to the condition of a slave, or driven to the workhouse, where he is often treated worse than a felon. Labour meant to degrade and insult him is often prescribed to him; or, wholly unemployed, he sits brooding over his miserable fate; winter labour, whether for himself or his wife and children, 66 They that have wasted him, require mirth!" Not only are the falsest accusations levelled at him, but even the feelings common to nature are imputed to him as an offence; his Marriage was a crime; his children are so many living nuisances; he himself is pronounced a redundancy; and after having been despoiled of every advantage he once possessed, he is kindly recommended as his best, and indeed only course to transport himself for life, for the good of his oppressors, and to die unpitied and unknown in some distant wilderness. And this, Sir, is the condition at the present moment of thousands-of tens of thousands-of the labouring poor. Sir, I am neither following my imagination nor my feelings in this description-I am embodying facts. The picture I have hastily drawn is not the work of fancy, nor is it exaggerated for the occasion: its darkest features are those which have been already presented to this House and the country by reports published by Committees of Parliament, appointed to examine into and report upon the very condition in question. To some of these I shall speedily refer. In those public documents, Sir, are fully pourtrayed the degradation and destitution of the labouring poor in many parts of England, and the oppression and extortion under which they labour. And, Sir, have not recent events given their unequivocal and tremendous testimony to the truth of these statements? It is quite unnecessary for me to add my humble testimony to the truth of these representations; but having recently gone through several of the districts referred to, and often personally inspected the condition in question, I can safely answer for their truth. Imagination may depict, my language cannot, the scenes of distress accompanied by mingled despondency and irritation, which I have witnessed. Nor let it be concluded that this is the situation of the idle and profligate only, which too many are quite ready to call every unfortunate being who may happen to become poor and burthensome. No, Sir. It is one of the most dreadful characteristics of the present system, wherever it prevails, that the entire class are constantly confounded, and the whole of it doomed to one undistinguishable mass of misery. Finally, Sir, I must add, and I do so with unfeigned reluctance, but it is necessary to speak the real truth in order to rouse us to a sense of our duty, and quicken us in the discharge of it-this state of things is remediable-remediable by Parliament, which cannot, I fear, be held altogether guiltless of having permitted, if not produced it. Individually, I acquit them, and freely confess that in their personal and local sphere, the Aristocracy and landed proprietors of England are among the most attentive and benevolent individuals of the community; and that none are more anxious to prevent or to relieve the sufferings of the poor under their immediate notice and protection. But it is to those parts of the country, and they comprehend a vast proportion of its surface, which are far removed from their notice to which I particularly advert, where a false and pernicious system of management is suffered to prevail, and where the poor are consequently under the domination of a set of English middle- | men, who often act as fully up to that character, and are as deserving of the name, as those of Ireland; and where a system of cruelty, oppression and extortion prevails, which has at length placed the labourers in different parts on the utmost limits of endurance, and in many instances pushed them beyond it. Meantime, the evil is rapidly spreading, and must be remedied, or we are undone. When, therefore, we contemplate the multitudes of our agricultural poor who are already plunged into the state I have been describing, and know that the rest are rapidly sinking into it-when we have been made to understand so fully, by recent and fearful experience, that it is a condition that cannot and will not be much longer endured-I think policy, as well as humanity, will urge us to attempt a remedy for the ills of this important part of the people; and may not I add to these motives, those of justice and gratitude? When we recollect that it is this class that affords us our daily bread, and spreads our boards with the plenty we enjoy, can we remain any longer insensible to their privations and sufferings, and consent to muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn, and see it abused and goaded in its labours to deeds of desperation and destruction? But let us now inquire what are the causes which have produced this lamentable state of things; and it is the more necessary to ascertain these, as I am fully persuaded that the false views which have unhappily prevailed regarding them, have dictated the policy which has produced the evils we have been contemplating, and will, if not rectified, withstand the application of their only remedies. In this inquiry I shall confine myself as much as possible to those authentic and official documents, which have been put forth by the authority of this House on these important topics. Sir, I hold in my hand the report of the Select Committee on labourers' wagesa document to which it is necessary that I should more particularly allude, as it pronounces upon the subject on which I am treating, with the express sanction and authority of this House. It is a document indeed of a most singular character, embodying evidence of a very important description, yet drawing from it, as it appears to me, deductions wholly irreconcileable with its general tenor. Premising that the miserable and degraded condition of the poor is fully set forth in this report, I will proceed to consider, as shortly as possible, the conclusions at which it arrived, of certain instances to serve my purpose, but by taking those selected by the Committee, doubtless, with a view of advancing its own. It is asserted, then, in this report, that the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Lincoln, are nearly, if not totally, exempt from the malversation of the Poor-laws, which produce, according to its authority, these numerous marriages, and this increase of surplus population. The counties, on the other hand, where that malversation is stated to be most general, and where, consequently, the plague of marriage and population most prevails are particularised. They are these and which it presented to this House and | myself to this House to overthrow the the public; and it is the more necessary to whole of them, and exhibit them, as they examine them, as they have long been held in reality are, a set of the most egregious as incontrovertible, and are repeated as such errors that ever darkened the understandin pamphlets, and reviews, and speeches, ing, or deadened the heart of man. I shall whenever the subjects of the English do this, not by reasoning, but by arithmetic labouring poor and their distresses force-by matters of fact; not by the selection themselves upon the attention of our writers and speakers upon political economy. And, first, this report attributes a great part of the evil it points out, to the mal-administration of the Poor laws. This is the inexhaustible source of declamation with those who vainly hope to cripple or destroy the national charity in this country, or to prevent its extension to the other divisions of the British empire, both of which attempts will prove equally unavailing. I am not about to contend, that the institution is perfect, or that its administration is in all cases faultless; but I will maintain, that both one and the other are more free from all just imputation than Suffolk, Sussex, Bedfordshire, Buckingany other establishment in the country. hamshire, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire. The misapplications of the national charity Now, Sir, there were, during the ten years are not attributable to the law; they are preceding the date of the last census, rather the result of a conspiracy among celebrated in the countics of Northumberthe wealthier classes where such evils land, Cumberland, and Lincoln, 45,288 occur to evade it; and even where its be- marriages, the arithmetical mean of the nevolent code is so wrested as to oppress population being in that term 606,600, or and degrade while it relieves, still, even rather more than one annual wedding to in such cases, it still stands between the every 133 of the inhabitants. But in proud oppressor and the prostrate poor, the six counties in which we are to look and shields the latter from still greater for this great excess of marriages, there miseries than they endure-from Irish were, during the same term, on a mean starvation! But, Sir, the official record population of 1,046,350 souls, 76,949 before me, which, as I before mentioned, marriages, or one annual marriage in 136 fully recognizes the miserable condition of only. But this comparison, though it the poor, assigning for it as a reason the decides the dispute, does not give the real supposed malversation of the Poor-laws, truth in its just proportions; the practice goes on to state, as the consequence, of so many marriages in the border counthat thereby a surplus population is ties of Northumberland and Cumberland encouraged men know they have only being celebrated across the boundaries— 'to marry. Aware, Sir, that these notions a fact which Mr. Rickman has mentioned are not only generally, but almost uni- in those censuses (which are, in every point versally prevalent; that they are taken as of view, an honour to the country as well so many truisms and repeated as such; as to his great industry and talents), as that they embody the notions of the poli- greatly diminishing the registered proportical economists on this subject, who how- tion of such marriages. To arrive, thereever widely they may differ, and however fore, at a more just comparison, let us warmly they may disagree, are, neverthe-take, for instance, the county of Lincoln, less, on this topic, unanimous; and being which is stated to be free from the evils in perfectly aware that any general attempt question, and that of Dorset, which is to better the condition of the agricultural particularised as one of those in which poor, if these positions were true, would they are the most prevalent and oppressive, not only be entirely fruitless, but even each of which, on the authority of an inpernicious in its ultimate consequences, it telligent and humane witness, who had is necessary, before I proceed, to examine resided in both, deserves to be thus sethese confident assertions; and I pledge | lected. Well, Sir, the marriages in Lin colnshire, computed as before, had for the preceding ten years been rather more than one in 128, while in Dorset the proportion was not as much as one in 144; so utterly groundless then, so entirely opposed to facts, are the allegations of this report. But, Sir, I will place the matter in another and yet stronger light, by presenting facts, still authentic and official, of such a character that defy all contradiction or evasion, and which will dispose at once and for ever of the stale and senseless accusations against the poor of these counties, where they are at once grievously oppressed and cruelly misrepresented. The report in question says, that the misery it describes, is in great 'part to be attributed to the maladminis'tration of the Poor-laws during the latter 'years of the late war.' Let us examine the exact facts in this case also. Taking then the whole period of its duration, namely, that from 1803 to 1813, including and dividing it into two equal parts, of five years each, giving half the intermediate year 1808 to each, we shall find that the number of the marriages in Suffolk, Sussex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire, was 39,315 in the former half, while in the latter it amounted to 37,417 only. But the number of the marriages in the three counties which the Committee pronounce to be free from these malversations, advanced during the same period, from 22,081 to 23,227. If we take a still wider range in this examination, we shall find the results are precisely similar. Taking the average of the first two years of the late war (in order to avoid the casual fluctuations which might affect single ones), viz., those of 1803 and 1804, we find that the weddings amounted to 7836. I have already stated how much the marriages fell off in the latter period, in fact, in 1812 and 1813, the average number was 6774 only. And here I cannot refrain from pausing, to put a very important question. I ask, whether the malversation in the Poor-laws, and the consequent misery of the poor labourers, so strongly depicted in this report, namely, their living chiefly upon bread, or even potatoes, scarcely ever tasting meat or beer, or being able to buy milk, is a state justly attributed to the condition of agriculture during the same period-whether the profits of that pursuit, and the price of all its produce during the latter part of the last war would not have enabled the great cultivators, the farmers, to have afforded direct and sufficient wages to their poor labourers, without degrading them as paupers, and partly starving them into the bargain? Shall I mention the average price of grain during this term. I need not. Let, however, this striking fact suggest to us this important conclusion, that no returning state of prosperity as regards the agricultural interests, will ever restore comfort and independence to the poor labourer, except this House comes in to his defence, and defeats a combination arrayed against him, compared with which he is utterly powerless. But when we extend the inquiry by a reference to the forthcoming census (which I have already diligently examined for this purpose), to the years immediately preceding the date of this report, those of 1822 and 1823, the average number of marriages in these two years will be found to be 7,767 ; consequently still less than it had been nearly twenty years before; and that of the terminating years of 1829 and 1830 will exhibit, I think, the same average as compared with the first-still almost precisely stationary, though they ought to have advanced to upwards of 10,000, without showing any relative increase; the population of these counties (exclusive of Brighton, throughout the whole calculation) during these twenty-eight years, having increased upwards of thirty per cent. So entirely opposed to truth, therefore, are the assumptions of our economists regarding the habits and condition of our labouring poor, and so utterly, therefore, do they err as to the only means of remedying their distresses. But not to dwell further upon these pernicious mistakes, I will now proceed to prove, and from the pages of the very report which has given its authority to so injurious an error, that, notwithstanding the discouragements to which labour has been subjected in this country, our rural population is not, even yet, redundant; and, in doing so, I will confine myself to the simple facts published in this report, and those will abundantly suffice to negative the conclusion at which the Committee unhappily arrived. We find it there stated that, even as early as April, all the healthy labourers are employed; that April is a very busy time; and that from thence to the termination of the harvest the demand for labour increases, need not be mentioned; so much so, indeed, that on turning to the agricul- | whatever? Does the sportsman deem his tural surveys, I find that in the counties horses and his dogs redundant in the sumwhere so much is said of the redundancy mer months-the General call his soldiers of labourers, even the hay harvest could superfluous while in their winter quarters? not be got in by the resident population In the very commonest concerns of life is without foreign assistance. But to come any such delusion witnessed? But when to the main question, and to determine it we come to talk of our labourers, the on the authority of the witness whom the political economist determines whether Committee very properly place at the they are in excess or otherwise, not by the head of their list of witnesses, as having demand for them in the season of the more minute and practical knowledge re- year when they are essentially necessary, garding what is called the market of but in that in which he imagines he can labour, especially in the rural districts, dispense with them altogether a method than almost any other individual that of computation which would make out a could have been selected-I mean Mr. case against them as clearly as at present, M'Adam. To the first question put to were the population of the country rehim he replies, that he has had very con- duced to a tenth of its present number. siderable experience in hiring labour in Nothing then can be more absurd and unthe country. The second query is this- just than the present method of computHave you found in general that it is very ing the alleged surplus of agricultural 'easy to obtain labourers? The answer: labourers. Under the best possible sysGenerally speaking I have, excepting tem, their labour will be less pressingly 'during the harvest months; we then demanded in the winter than in the spring 'find a great scarcity of workmen.' And and harvest months. Nor is it, when yet, Sir, the Committee talk about the re- duly considered, one of the least strikingly dundancy of agricultural labourers! Nor benevolent ordinations in nature, that the is this all. The agricultural labourers are hardest and most essential operations not only not redundant; they are too of husbandry have to be performed few! Were it not for a large accession in the finest periods of the year when of workmen at the period of the harvest, the days are the most protracted much of the product of the land would and the weather the most temperate. never be secured. In addition to the in- Hence at all times, in every country, and flux of hands from towns and manufactur- under whatever system of cultivation, the ing districts, an immense assistance is also ancient maxim will be found applicable, demanded annually from Ireland, or the hyems ignava colono. In the natural harvests of England could neither be order of things other industrious occupareaped nor gathered in. I need not, I tions have been reserved for this comparapresume, bring proofs of this fact, other- tively inactive and severe season, and have wise they could be easily obtained. I occupied it; of these, however, the inhave myself consulted some of the mana-dustrious cottagers of England have been, gers of our great steam-boat companies, in great measure, bereft, by causes over and I find from them, that there annually which they have had no control; and this leave Ireland for the harvest fields of circumstance, Sir, is it, that, among many Great Britain, a number which I cannot others, has occasioned much of the discalculate at less than the entire male tress under which they labour, and has adult population employed as agricultural furnished the apology for these perpetual workmen in some five or six of our Eng- declamations as to their redundancy. lish counties, though they are dispersed, Still, however, as we cannot, in conformity it is true, through the whole of our corn with the new theory, annihilate them districts. And if your fields could not be when we do not want their labour, bereaped, I need not say they would never cause we cannot revive and multiply them be sown. It is, therefore, idle, worse than when we do; and as nature has not inidle, for political economists, whether indulged us with a human genus that can this House or out of it, to rant about the redundancy of labour. It is not merely abhorrent to humanity, to reason as they do, it is an insult to truth, and an outrage upon common sense. Does such an infatuated feeling prevail in any other case hybernate, or one which, after having secured the fruits of their industry, we can safely destroy when we have obtained its honey, as we once did their prototype, the bee; if, in short, we cannot gather in the kindly fruits of the earth, nor in due time |