on the Parish Officers. The Act of Parliament is so ambiguous and contradictory, the one clause gives power, the next destroys it."

In another case, where the Overseers had refused relief, the Lord Mayor of London thus expresses himself:

"I am ashamed to hear of such inhumanity. A calculation seems to have been made that poor old creatures will save the Parish expense by dying in the streets. I do not know how any man who has not a stone in his bosom instead of a heart, can see such cases without relieving them. The Magistrates, however, have no power to compel Parochial Authorities to afford relief."

Such is the condition to which the Poor of England are reduced! Such the utter helplessness of a humane Magistracy, while my Lord Althorpe bewails the trivial power still vested in that body, or intended by the House of Lords to be so vested, as too great a boon to be granted, even to those who are in the uttermost extremity of human misery. "I certainly," said he, "should have been better pleased if no such power had been given to the Justices."

Thus, in the collection and preparation of materials by the Commissioners for elucidating this question; in the mode of its introduction; during its developement, and throughout its entire progress, a hostile spirit was exhibited, which, perhaps, justifies more of apprehension for the ultimate consequences of this enactment, than any other measure ever submitted to a human tribunal.

In proceeding from a consideration of the Spirit of this enactment, to an examination of some of the Statements and Assertions by which it was introduced and supported, it will be scarcely necessary to go out of the Report of the Commissioners, and that extraordi

nary Pamphlet, entitled a "Corrected Report of the Speech of the Lord Chancellor, in the House of Lords, on July 21st, 1834, on moving the second reading of the Bill to Amend the Poor Laws."

On the first point, the propriety of making any public provision for the Poor, these authorities are not entirely agreed. The Commissioners speak thus hesitatingly:

"The engagements of the 43rd of Elizabeth were, perhaps, dangerous engagements; but they were engagements which for 100 years were performed, apparently, without substantial injury to the morals and industry of the labourers, or to the general prosperity of the country."

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Willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike,

They hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."

They do not venture to say that the solemn engagements of our ancestors, to preserve their distressed fellow creatures from perishing, were positively dangerous engagements; but that, perhaps, they were dangerous. They do not say that these engagements were performed, for 100 years, either to the benefit, or to the injury of the community; but that they "were performed apparently without substantial injury." Not without any injury, be it remarked, not even without substantial injury; but only apparently so. Such is the juggling equivocation contained in this vaunted Report! Such is the manner in which these Commissioners testify their respect for the engagements of their ancestors: engagements more comprehensive and important than any which have ever been entered into by any other Legislative body, and which have been followed by a national accumulation of property, and a general distribution of the means of

physical and mental enjoyment beyond all which history records.

My Lord Brougham takes bolder ground than the Commissioners: he does not shelter himself behind "perhaps" and "apparently," but thus bitterly denounces what he terms "the grievous mischiefs inherent originally in the system of a fixed provision for the Poor."

"By the origin of the mischief, I mean the origin of the Poor Law itself." "Those who framed the statute of Elizabeth

........

were not adepts in political science, they were not acquainted with the true principle of population,-they could not foresee that a Malthus would arise to enlighten mankind." "The right to share Poor Laws, with the

........

......

"I shall

in a fixed fund is the grand mischief of the seeds of which they were originally pregnant." say nothing at present of repealing the Poor Law itself. I shall, for the present, assume that the statute of Elizabeth cannot now be dealt with."

Here we see that the appropriation of any fund to the object of relieving the necessitous is unsparingly denounced, and a resumption of the provision hinted at, but not "at present." Most persons have seen other legal and prescriptive rights denounced and threatened in a similar manner. The appropriation of property by individuals for instance, has been held by some philosophers to be an act of extreme injustice, and denounced as utterly inconsistent with the natural Rights of Man. But whenever the possessions of a philosopher of this stamp are attacked by a fellow disciple, the person so attacked does not stand on his natural right; he claims prescription, throws himself on the protection of the Law, and labours to banish or hang his brother philosopher for exercising an assumed right contrary to the laws of that society of which he is a member.

But my Lord Brougham, not satisfied with attacking a Legislative provision for the Poor, lays down what he calls "a truism, an obvious principle, a selfevident proposition," contained in four assertions which, summed up, amount to this--" No man has a right to food which he does not earn." Now his Lordship has obtained from Parliament, for four years services, £5,000. per annum, during the rest of his life. This sum, at the Pauper scale, which seems to find the most favour with the Commissioners, would afford subsistence to nearly 2,000 labouring men, who require a little bread after their three score years and ten of unmitigated toil and suffering have passed over their heads, without enabling them to realize the trivial means of future subsistence. But his Lordship's doctrine shall not here be further applied to his own case. His right shall not be impeached. It is established on custom. It is ratified by Law, and foul befall the man who would disturb him in possession, on the authority of "obvious principles and selfevident propositions."

Abstract questions of Right are nothing more than exercises for metaphysical subtilty; mere themes on which ingenious sophists may descant for ever without reaching the line which separates justice from injustice. The abstract rights of the animal man are only limited by his power. Dominion has been given to him over the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the air. This lord of the forest is omnipotent in his natural right. Ranging at will, he may transfix the bounding deer for his food, and level the proudest cedar for warmth or shelter. But when the surface of the earth is appropriated, with all

its animal and vegetable productions, and protected by these conventional arrangements, which men call Laws, what then becomes of his natural rights? Can he exercise them without being liable to condign punishment as a violator of Laws? If then this natural right will not avail even the necessitous against Law or Prescription, which it certainly ought not to do, why should the Legal and Prescriptive Rights of the Poor be violated on the authority of Lord Brougham's 'general truisms, and identical propositions?" The jargon of right, employed to justify such a violation, becomes a mockery and an insult, the foundation of most pernicious doctrines, which honest Statesmen are bound to repudiate.

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The legal right of the Poor to relief is older than the right of four-fifths of the Landed Proprietors of the Country to their estates. That right was established by some of the wisest Statesmen, and most profound Lawyers, that ever adorned this country. It was well said by Mr. Whitbread, in his speech on the Poor Laws, in reference to this right, that "the great christian maxim of doing unto others as you would they should do unto you, is embodied in our Statute Book." Blackstone emphatically declares that "charity is interwoven with the Constitution of this Country." And now, after nearly two centuries and a half of undisturbed enjoyment, the Poor are to have that right, so embodied in the Statute Book, and interwoven with the Constitution, impeached. And by whom is it so impeached? Not by the mere rabble orators of the Crown and Anchor, or the Rotunda; but by the Russells and the Althorpes, and even by the Lord Chancellor of England, the guardian of right,