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THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part III.

the young as to the middle-aged, and as much to the middle-agedas to the old. I state it confidently, as the result of my expe-rience, that, if once a young lad gets a pair of shoes given himby the parish, he never afterwards lays by sufficient to buy apair. So it is also with parents. The disease of pauperism ishereditary. When once a family has applied to the parish forrelief, they are pressed down for ever.” *

The truth is, the English system of poor-laws has had theeffect, so far as the poor are concerned, of repealing that greatlaw of nature, by which the effects of each man’s improvidenceor misconduct are visited upon himself and his family. Theeffect has been, moreover, to repeal, to the same extent, thelaw, by which each man and his family enjoy the benefit of hisown prudence and virtue. In abolishing punishment, we equallyabolish reward. “It appears to the pauper,” say the EnglishCommissioners, “that the government has undertaken to repeal,in his favor, the ordinary laws of nature ; to enact, that thechildren shall not suffer for the misconduct of their parents, thewife for that of the hushand, or the husband for that of the wife ;that no one shall lose the means of comfortable subsistence, what-ever be his indolence, prodigality, or vice ; in short, that thepenalty, which, after all, must be paid by some one for idlenessand improvidence, is to fall, not on the guilty person, or on hisfamily, but on the proprietors of the lands and houses encum-bered by his settlement. Can we wonder,” they continue, “ ifthe uneducated are seduced into approving a system, which aimsits allurements at all the weakest parts of our nature, which offersmarriage to the young, security to the anxious, ease to the lazy,and impunity to the profligate ? ” f Such are the chief evilswhich have attended the English system of poor-laws ; and, in acertain measure, the same system so far as it has been establishedin this country.

Still it is right to subjoin, that the English Commissioners con-sider these evils incidental to the system, and not its necessaryconsequences. They say, “From the evidence collected under

* Report of his (Britannic) Majesty’s Commissioners on the Poor-Laws,1834, p. 93.

t Idem, pp. 59, 77 .