direction God's laws respecting moral purity, and industry, and honesty, it could communicate no salutary impulse to these laws; and, it would certainly lead to their very great perversion. And, in regard to charity, the law may be a very efficient instrument; for, it may do much for the remedy and the prevention of pauperism. It may act with a great and rightful power for these objects, by the means to which I have already adverted. And, in addition to these, it may give authority to Overseers of the poor to retain' in their charge and service any able-bodied recipient of their aid, or support, till, by his labors he has remunerated them, or the institution in which he has been aided, for the expense incurred for him. A law to this effect would be justified by the principle, that if a man refuse to pay a just debt, he violates one of the elementary principles of civil society; of the laws of property; and may therefore be constrained to pay it. It may also establish Houses of Reformation for juvenile offenders, and thus save society from their depredations, and many hundreds of them from poverty and crime. It may make its prisons, through the solitary confinement of their inmates, and its wise and humane provisions for moral discipline, for useful instruction, and for generous excitement, to be schools of reformation. And it may extend all that protection equally to all the rights and interests of the poorest, which may be fairly claimed and enjoyed by the most opulent; and thus enlist the sympathies of the poor in the cause of law, and justice, and order, and the common weal. But it cannot authoritatively require charity, or prescribe the manner or amount of almsgiving, without encroaching on a moral principle, to the action, or even to the very life of which, freedom is as es

sential a requisite as is air to the continuance of human existence. It cannot prescribe the manner and amount of almsgiving, without substituting a principle for charity, which will be even far more liable to the greatest abuses, than is charity, amidst all the selfishness of the world, to be insufficient for the occasions which require its exercise. This is a fact, which, I think, is very clearly demonstrated by the history of all legal interpositions for the support of the poor. These interpositions have commenced in seasons which, it was thought, peculiarly demanded them; that is, in seasons which called for extraordinary efforts for the relief of the poor. But, in such seasons, what has been the resort in Scotland? There, these exigencies have been left to the free judgment of those who were to meet, and to provide for them; and measures have been adopted, which were confined in their operation to the time for which they were required. But in England, fettered as it has been by legal requisitions in regard to the poor, the resort, in similar exigencies, has been to the law in the case; and, if no fair use could be made of it, recourse was had to an abuse of the law. This is the natural operation of the systems of the two countries for the relief of the poor. An extraordinary demand for this relief calls forth, in one, an extraordinary exercise of actual charity; and, not only of individual, but of social charity. When these exigencies occur there, the landed proprietors meet for the purpose of affording the relief required; and they afford it by a voluntary assessment. Or, the Parish Sessions may give the relief which the necessities of the case demand. This relief, however, is continued no longer than the exigency which called for it. On the other hand, the abuses of the poor-laws in

England, of which so much is said, and which are traced to the scarcity which began in 1795, have continued to this day, are sanctioned by usage, and, till the occurrence of a few late acts of resistance to them, threatened to become as essentially a part of the system, as if the law had incorporated them with it. This is a fact full of solemn admonition, and should not be lightly regarded by us.*

* In Mundell's Comparative View of the Industrial Situation of Great Britain from the year 1795 to the present time,' the author, in speaking of the act of the 43d of Elizabeth, says, 'The Legislature here made a great mistake, in attempting to enforce a moral obligation, which rests upon a far higher sanction. This obligation has never been found to fail in the parishes of Scotland, where no compulsory provision has been introduced. Mr. Duncan, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, says, “the poor,” in his parish, "are principally supported by their own relations. There is that feeling, in Scotland, of independence, that laudable desire among the poor to provide for themselves, and that dislike of anything approaching to charity, that the laboring classes in those quarters in which poor-rates have not been introduced, universally consider it their duty to make every sacrifice to support their poor relations." Whenever this moral obligation has been interfered with in Scotland, it has been found to be prejudicial. A committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, in a report made to a select committee of the House of Commons upon the poor-laws, in 1817, say," It is clear to the committee, that, in almost all the parishes that have come under their notice, where a regular assessment has been established, the wants of the poor, and the extent of the assessments, have regularly and progressively increased from the commencement. And it does appear to be a matter for very serious interest to the community at large, to prevent, as far as possible, this practice from being adopted; to limit the assessments as much as they can be limited, where the circumstances of particular parishes render them unavoidable; and, wherever it is practicable, to abandon them."' pp. 101, 102.

' A fund is raised in every parish in Scotland by voluntary col

Our Commonwealth, almost from the very date of its foundation, has been under the influence of poor laws. Our fathers came here with all their prepossessions strong in favor of laws for the support of the poor. They had lived under the operation of such laws in the parent country. One of the very first enactments, therefore, of the Court of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, had for its object, 'to determine all difference about the lawful settling, and providing for, poor persons; and the extraordinary power was given to any Shire Court, or any two magistrates out of Court, to dispose of all unsettled persons into such towns as they shall judge to be most fit for the maintenance, and employment of such persons, and families, for the ease of this county.' Here, then, is the origin of all that litigation, which, from the beginning, has disturbed the peace of our towns, upon the question of the settlement of the poor; a litigation, the least evil of which has been, and is, the not unfrequent expendi

This

lections at the kirk door, and devoted to charitable uses. fund is administered by the " Kirk Session,” a body composed of the ministers and elders of the parish. When a year of extraordinary pressure occurs, and the fund proves insufficient for its purposes, the heritors, or landholders of the parish, hold a meeting, at which they fix for themselves a rate of contribution to make up the deficiency.' Edinburgh Review, No. 55.

'No country in Europe has followed the example of England in the institution of poor laws.' 'On the continent of Europe, the public institutions afford protection only against infirmity, and extreme penury. Even Holland, so noted for its hospitals and charities, has not a poor-rate on the comprehensive plan of England.'

See Mr Meredith's report to the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania, on the operation of the poor laws. 1825. And Lowe's Present state of England. p. 189.

ture of twice the amount of money, which would be required to support him, or her, who is the object of the contention. Let the Overseers of the poor in the towns of our Commonwealth be consulted upon this subject, and great numbers of them, as well from their own experience, as their observation, will acknowledge this evil to be a great one. It is a contention, respecting what? The legal duty of a town in regard to the relief, or support of a fellow being, to whom it has been found necessary to give relief, or support. A poor individual, or a poor family has asked for, and has received assistance, from an Overseer of the poor. And it is not improbable that relief may have so been asked, from the very circumstance that the Overseers are legally required to give it. It is believed, however, that he, or they, have a habitancy in another town in the Commonwealth. Notice is therefore sent to this town, that the individual, or family so aided must be removed; and that, till this removal is effected, all expenses incurred for the sufferer, or sufferers, will be charged to the town to which he, or they, are so supposed to belong. Is the asserted habitancy denied? The resort is 'to the law; and the question is argued as a mere legal and pecuniary one. So, indeed, it must of necessity be. If the support required by the poor individual, or family, was regarded only as a concern of humanity and charity, no argument could be held upon it in our Courts. Presented in this form, it would be dismissed at once as a purely moral question, to be settled by moral considerations and principles. And as a merely legal and pecuniary question, the decision of which must rest upon the facts which go to prove, or to disprove,