With this datum of 1,000,000 paupers as the average number of persons maintained, under the poor law, at the expense of their neighbours, we must try to ascertain the number of different persons relieved during any part of the year. There is certainly no necessary or invariable proportion between the number of paupers relieved on a given day, and those who are compelled for a longer or a shorter period of the year to become and remain chargeable to the poor-rate.

The statistics of the Poor Law Administration of Ireland, for 1849 and 1850, strikingly show, how uncertain a criterion of the extent of pauperism, is afforded by the mere number of poor persons receiving relief on any given day.

The total number relieved in workhouses, in Ireland, during the year ended on 29th September, 1849, was 932,284; and the number so relieved, during the following year, was 805,702: a decrease of no less than 126,569. Yet, in the latter year, when the whole number of pauper relieved in workhouses was so greatly reduced, the numbe. of such paupers in workhouses, during each week of the yea was larger than in each corresponding week of the year 1849. The very obvious explanation, given by the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland, in their Fourth Annual Report is, that "in 1850 there was far less fluctuation by way of admission into, and discharge from, the workhouse than in former years, and that, consequently, the average duration of residence in the workhouse was greater than it had been previously."

In the year ended 25th September, 1850, the highest number of inmates of workhouses in Ireland, at any one time, was in the week ended 22nd June, when it was 264,048. The lowest number was in the week ended 28th September, when it was 155,173. In round numbers there were, on the average, about 200,000 inmates of workhouses, in Ireland, during the year 1850; in other words, even in 1850, the number of persons relieved, at some period or other of the year, was nearly four times as great as the mean number of those who were receiving relief on any given day.

Having found it utterly impossible, on the published Annual Reports of the Poor Law Board, to determine the number of paupers relieved in a year in England, I have been obliged. to make applications to clerks of boards of guardians for returns of facts and figures, which, though mostly contained in the "Statistical Statement" furnished half-yearly to the Poor Law Board by the same clerks, have not, as yet, been made public. In many of my applications, I have failed to obtain returns; and such failures make me feel the more obliged to those clerks of boards of guardians whose kindness has furnished me with returns, which others would not take the trouble of making. The unions, respecting which I have been favoured with full and accurate information, include a population of upwards of 2,000,000. I have also other returns, in answer to a limited inquiry as to the corresponding numbers, in the metropolitan district, of in-door and out-door poor on the same day; and these latter returns include an additional population of nearly 1,000,000. Upon the whole, therefore, I possess a sufficient sample of the pauperism of all England.

These returns seem to show, clearly enough, that the number of out-door paupers relieved, in a year, throughout England and Wales, is fully three times as great as the average number so relieved on each day. The account of each half-year's pauperism, even as it has been returned, for several years past, from each union, to Somerset House, shows plainly enough how great is the change, in the course of each halfyear, in the persons chargeable, and how much larger is the mighty host of English pauperism, than the mere number of rations served out to it daily would indicate.

The number of persons who become chargeable during the summer half-year, is much less than that of the winter half-year. From the returns in my possession, I select the summer halfyear of prosperous 1850, in order to contrast the average daily number of persons relieved as out-door poor, with the number so relieved even during that summer half-year.

My returns are, on this point, upwards of thirty in number; they include a population of 1,773,376; and, as will be seen

by reference to the subjoined table*, the average number of persons receiving out-door relief on each day of the year is 58,331, and the whole corresponding number of persons receiving out-door relief in the summer half-year (25th March to 25th September), is no less than 121,562.

It would appear clear, therefore, that the number of persons relieved, for a longer or shorter term, during even the summer half-year, is more than twice as great as the average number of paupers chargeable on each day of the year. The number of paupers, on the relief lists, is still greater in the winter half-year than in the summer half; but a proportion of those who are relieved in the winter half-year, have been relieved, and have ceased to be chargeable, in the summer half-year. The relief lists of the several relieving officers extend over each half-year only, so that any one, who had gone off the list in one half-year, and been entered again in the next, would appear twice, once in each list. Making sufficient allowance for this double entry †, I find, on a careful comparison of all the returns before me, ample ground for the inference that, during each of the last ten years, the annual pauperism of England has numbered in its ranks about three times as many paupers, as, on the average, have been relieved or chargeable on each day of each year. The single million relieved on each day of the year, represents, therefore,

* See Appendix.

† Many of the returns which I have obtained, give the exact deduction to be made on account of the double entries in the lists of the second half-year. The clerks of unions, in their half-yearly return of the official "Statistical Statement " to the Poor Law Board, merely show the absolute number of different persons relieved in each half-year; and although no single person is twice entered in one half-year, yet any one who both receives relief, and ceases to be chargeable, in the first half-year, and then becomes again chargeable in the second half-year would be entered again on the new relief list of that second half-year, so that the simple addition together of the numbers appearing by the lists to have been relieved in the two half-years, would contain a certain number of persons counted twice over: my returns have corrected this. The master of each workhouse is able to apply the correction for the in-door poor, and the relieving officer, if intelligent, and willing to take trouble about the matter, can do it for the out-door. The number of such double entries varies considerably in different localities.

three millions of paupers relieved during some part of the year.

In-door relief is given to about 300,000 of the year's paupers; and the corresponding number of the out-door poor is nearly 2,700,000.

Throughout the whole of England and Wales, the average number of persons receiving out-door relief, on each day, for several years past, has been upwards of seven times as great as the number of those on the same day receiving in-door relief. For instance, in 1850, on the 1st January, (a season when the proportion of in-door paupers is above the average,) there were, in the 595 unions of England and Wales, only 109,307 persons receiving in-door relief, while there were as many as 769,687 receiving out-door relief; and on the 1st July, in the same year, the former class amounted to 86,352 only, and the latter to 708,571.

But, throughout the great and populous region of the metropolis, the out-door poor is hardly three times as numerous as the in-door. It follows, therefore, that in some parts of the country, the number of persons receiving out-door relief must be very much more than seven times as great as the number of those relieved in workhouses.

The districts in which, mainly, this large proportion of out-door relief is bestowed, in which the "workhouse test has been most sparingly applied, and has, in truth, long ceased to be applied at all, will probably be sufficiently indicated by a subjoined table.* It exhibits the average number of the in-door and out-door recipients of relief, in several manufacturing towns, on each day of the year ended 25th March, 1851.

The average number of persons so relieved appears to have been:

In-door

Out-door

2,124

26,131

so that, for every one in-door pauper, there are, on the average, more than twelve out-door.

* See Appendix.

Such is the result of the endeavour so severely made, by the administrators of the Poor Law Amendment Act, for some time after its passing in 1834, to make the workhouse the only place of relief for the poor!

Assuming that, on the average of the ten years, 1841-1850, the number of paupers always receiving relief has been 1,000,000, and the corresponding number relieved during the course of each year nearly 3,000,000, (from one in six to one in five on the whole population,) it remains to consider the character of the different classes of poor persons who constitute this great army of pauperism.

The whole number of adult paupers receiving relief daily in England and Wales, during the last few years, has been from 600,000 to 650,000, and the remaining 350,000 to 400,000 daily recipients of relief have been children under sixteen years of age. Of the 600,000 or 650,000 adult paupers, it is important to ascertain what proportion, on the average, have been able-bodied. The number of able-bodied adult paupers,-poor persons both willing and physically able to work, but unable to obtain employment so as to earn their daily bread,—is most variable, differing greatly, not only in different years, but in different parts of the same year.

Able-bodied adults are the class of paupers who have given rise to the worst, if not to the greater part, of our past pauper legislation, and the class on whose condition and numbers a great change may possibly be produced by future legislation. The proportion of able-bodied adult paupers to the total number of paupers relieved on two given days in 1850, was as follows:

* Third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1850, p. 125.

† Ibid. p. 137.