pauperism, as took place at Stockport and Nottingham, at Leeds and Manchester, in 1841 and 1842, at Sheffield and Birmingham in 1848, and at Liverpool during the recent famine in Ireland. Two-thirds of the whole charge of such sudden and violent aggravations of that burden would always be substantially removed, by being shared by the country at large, with the place in which they occur. At the same time, the contribution, by the parish in which such pauperism receives its relief, of one-third of the actual outlay, will preserve a sufficient local interest in the due administration of the relief fund, to secure to the country the indispensable services of the ratepayers themselves, in attending, by their own locally elected officers and guardians, to the administration of their own affairs. Much inquiry and consideration induce me to think, that a less interest than the payment, by each parish, of one-third of its own actual expenditure, would be insufficient to keep up, in proper activity, the attention of parish guardians at union boards, and of other parish officers and ratepayers, to the administration of the poor-law. And it is a matter, not only of economical, but political importance, in no respect to impair that great principle of local government, which serves to distinguish England from some countries of the European continent, heretofore possessing a share of freedom, but in which the smallest matters of local interest are now subjected to the direct control of a central absolutism. The proposals which I have made are consistent with the truest principles of English constitutional freedom, and, by their adoption, the personal liberty of the body of the people would receive a larger extension than has been secured by any legislative measure passed since the Revolution of 1688. With the more general diffusion of the means of education the labourer would find opportunity and motive for intellectual and moral advancement; and it may reasonably be hoped that he would soon be raised from his present miserable and debased condition. The small, but powerful, section of the community, who alone have suffered by the repeal of the Corn Laws, would be justly relieved from a disproportionate burden of local taxation. The centres of commercial and manufacturing industry, by the distribution of the poor-rate over so much wider and less variable a basis, would receive a benefit, not so immediate or manifest, but still of a large and permanent character. And the ratepayers of England would all contribute, in more just proportions, towards the maintenance of the poor. These benefits would be secured even if the present amount of pauperism were not diminished. But a greater benefit than all these would be found in the diminution of pauperism, obtained by removing the restrictions to which the circulation of labour is subjected by the law of settlement, and in the advantages which would result, to all classes of the community, from the accompanying improvement in the physical and moral condition of the labouring population. APPENDIX. CHAP. I. TABLE showing the Population, according to the Census of 1851, the Average Number of Out-door Paupers receiving Relief, on each Day of the Year ended 25th March, 1851, and the Number of Out-door Paupers relieved during the whole or any part of the Half-year ended 25th September, 1850. —(Referred to at page 11.) The following are two specimens of the thirty returns on which the above table is founded. After repeatedly failing to obtain, from clerks of guardians, the |