which it is influenced, an elementary part of national education. The physical sciences are not, as Count Rumford maintained, the sole sources of human improvement; but without their aid no solid advances can be made in civilisation. For this reason, the works and inventions of Rumford and Arnott will contribute more to the progress of society than many treatises written ex professo on the subject. 3. It has been shown, that external agents have as great an influence on the frequency of sickness as on its fatality; the obvious corollary is, that man has as much power to prevent as to cure disease. That prevention is better than cure, is a proverb; that it is as easy, the facts we have advanced establish. Yet medical men, the guardians of public health, never have their attention called to the prevention of sickness; it forms no part of their education. To promote health is apparently contrary to their interests: the public do not seek the shield of medical art against disease, nor call the surgeon, till the arrows of death already rankle in the veins. This may be corrected by modifying the present system of medical education, and the manner of remunerating medical men.

4. Public health may be promoted by placing the medical institutions of the country on a liberal scientific basis; by the medical societies co-operating to collect statistical observations; and by medical writers renouncing the notion that a science can be founded upon the limited experience of an individual. Practical medicine cannot be taught by books; the science of medicine cannot be acquired in the sick-room. The healing art may likewise be promoted by encouraging post-mortem examinations of diseased parts; without which it is impossible to keep up in the body of the medical profession a clear knowledge of the internal changes indicated by symp toms during life. The practitioner who never opens a dead body must commit innumerable, and sometimes fatal errors.

5. It has been proved that, in the present state of things, the mortality is greatly augmented wherever large masses of the people are brought together: it will be the duty of the government, the mu nicipal corporations, and all classes of citizens, to render the towns of this country, and every establishment where large numbers are collected together, perfectly adapted to the wants of the human organisation, and compatible with the full enjoyment of health.

CHAPTER V.-PROVISION FOR THE Poor.

SECT. I. Poor Laws of England and Wales.

THE Poor Laws of England, like the analogous institutions of other countries, have a double object. That most apparent and immediate is the relief of such suffering as arises from the mere destitution of individuals found in the community; the other, which in all societies much advanced in their political condition is the final object of the institution, is the repression of vagrancy and mendicancy, with their constant attendants, idleness, imposture, and vagrancy, by depriving every person of the pretext for begging or plunder which a state of absolute destitution affords. The first is wholly a moral end, and regards only the distress of the individual; the second has in view the proper purpose of all political institutions, the general welfare and security of the community.

I. Of the Relief of the Poor generally.

The means resorted to in different states for the attainment of either or both of these ends are various; but, as might be expected, when the higher and more political end is kept in view, more systematic methods are adopted for its attainment.* There is, perhaps, no political society, at least none has been found, in which the relief of the destitute is left entirely to the charity of the more opulent. The most common and simple of the inducements brought in aid of that feeling, is that which results from the almost constant association of the practice of alms-giving with the observances of the popular religion. Accordingly every religion, of which we have any authentic account, adopts for its chief practical and social virtue charity; or, as it is almost invariably understood, the practice of alms-giving. Whenever the state has not undertaken the collection and control of the alms of the community, the ministers of religion are, either by direct institution or by general consent, the collectors and distributors of the charities of the laity. This is the state of things in the greater portion of Catholic Europe, in the colonies of America founded by Spain and Portugal, and throughout Asia, where benevolent institutions are not confined in their objects to the alleviation of the sufferings of the human race; but opulent foundations exist for the support of such animals as the people have a traditional veneration for, or as have used their energies in the service of man.

For a minute description of the institutions existing in various countries of Europe and America for the relief of the poor, see Appendix (F.) to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the operation of the Poor Laws; or the admirable abstract of the matter, and comments on it, contained in the Preface to the Appendix, by Mr. Senior, and republished separately in a small octavo volume.

Where the practice of alms-giving is generally inculcated as a virtue, it is often made a substitute for other virtues, and even a means of atonement for great crimes; and they who during their lives have neither practised this nor any other acts in good repute, are encouraged to believe that their defaults may be cured by a posthumous application of their wealth to the use of the poor. A large proportion of the charitable institutions of every country has been founded and endowed by persons who thereby hoped to atone for a life of avarice and extortion. These causes concurring with the natural impulses of mankind to relieve the distresses of their fellows, have in many countries, as formerly in England, and still in the Spanish peninsula, placed enormous funds at the disposal of the ministers of religion. It is universally testified by historians and travellers, that where this state of things exists, the dispensers of relief being free from accountability or responsibility, are as much the victims of the temptation to make a fraudulent use of the funds at their disposal, as the recipients are of the inducements which the system affords to idleness and imposture.

The evils obviously incidental to this mode of dispensing relief has, in many countries, led to the second modification of the machinery by which the charities of the community are administered. In this stage, the state, although it does not guarantee relief as a right, nor charge itself with the providing of funds for the purpose, takes upon itself the regulation, by means of properly constituted executive officers, of the funds arising from the voluntary contributions, legacies, and bequests of private individuals; and defines the classes of persons who are to receive a share of such funds, and the conditions on which they are to be entitled to it.

This state of things prevails generally in those states of Europe where the reformed religion has displaced the Roman Catholic as the state religion, and where, consequently, the public endowments for charitable purposes, like other secular matters previously controlled by the Catholic priesthood, became almost necessarily a subject for the interference of the state. The Foreign Communications, in Appendix (F.) to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the administration of the Poor Laws in England and Wales, represent this modification of the institutions for charitable purposes as existing in the Hanseatic Towns, Holland, France, Belgium, Portugal, the Sardinian States, Franckfort, and Venice; and doubtless it exists in many other states, of which no account is given in that collection of documents.

The third modification of these institutions is that in which the state recognises the right of every individual, in a destitute condition, to be relieved at the expense of the community; and provides for such relief by a compulsory tax on its subjects. This will be recognised as the character of the system which prevails in England, where it has been established for nearly three centuries. In America it has prevailed from the first establishment of the English colonies there. In the United States each state has its peculiar regulations, but all of English origin adopt the general principle. In the few countries of Europe where it is admitted, this extension of the principle is, with slight exceptions, of comparatively recent adoption. In Denmark, which

has a very systematic code of poor laws, and in several other states, it dates from the end of the last or the commencement of the present century. The other countries, of which an account is to be found in the Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners, in which the right to relief at the charge of the community is recognised by the law, are Norway, Sweden, Russia, Mecklenberg, Prussia, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, and the Canton of Berne; and it is probable that there are some others, from which accounts could not be procured by the Commissioners.

This last form of public charity usually coexists simultaneously with that previously described, as the regulations for the administration of the public charities are invariably found to be applicable to funds derived from private sources, and destined to the same ends. Thus in Norway and in Denmark the yearly proceeds of legacies and bequests for the benefit of the poor, are applied indiscriminately with the funds derived from the taxes. In Wurtemberg, it is stated that "a large proportion of their parishes appears to possess a fund called pium corpus, arising partly from voluntary contributions, and other casual receipts, but principally from funds which, previously to the Reformation, had been employed for the purposes of the Roman Catholic worship, and, instead of being confiscated by the government, as was the case in England, were directed to be applied for charitable purposes." "Many of them also have alms-houses, or, as they are called in the Reports, hospitals for the residence of the poor, and other endowments for their use; and almost all possess an estate called an allemand, which is the joint property of the persons for the time being having bürgerrecht, or the right of citizenship in the parish, and is, together with the pium corpus and endowments, the primary fund for the relief of the poor."-(Senior's Statement of the Provision for the Poor, p. 54.) In Bavaria "the yearly produce of all charities belongs to the poor institutions, and is used for these purposes; do "the legacies for the poor, when, by the will of the people, they are to be laid out in a regular yearly income, and the fourth part of such legacies as are destined in general for pious purposes." The voluntary donations applicable to the fund "consist of casual gifts in money and food, which have been given by philanthropic persons of their own accord for the use of the poor institution, and in this manner are applied for their daily use."— Lord Erskine's Report of the Poor Laws in Bavaria, Appendix (F.)

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Mr. Senior's Statement of the Provisions for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a considerable Portion of America and Europe, contains, in a compendious form, invaluable details on the mode of administration of those respective kinds of relief, and of the social results derived from them; and the account is the more interesting, because, with all the varieties in practice, those results have, in every case, corresponded with the results of similar institutions in England; for in England, at different periods, the provision for the destitute has been of each of the three kinds before described; and the preambles to the enactments of the legislature, and other contemporary accounts, show the nature of the evils prevailing in

connection with the modes of administering charity at each epoch when a change in the institutions was effected.

II. History of English Poor Laws.

The recent changes in the Poor Laws, are changes rather in the machinery by which they are to be administered, than changes in the body of the law itself. Besides the 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76. (The Poor Law Amendment Act), which repealed a considerable portion of the statutes previously existing, there are still in full force 118 statutes, extending from the reign of Elizabeth to the present time, and occupying a very closely printed 8vo volume of 454 pages, all of which relate exclusively to the administration of relief to the poor; and there are still many others which relate only partially or incidentally to that object. The body of law known as the Poor Laws consists besides of a vast mass of decisions of the courts of law, a selection of which made by Bott, with additions and an Appendix by Mr. Tidd Pratt, although by no means complete, occupies three considerable Svo. volumes.

These statutes and decisions were made at various periods, under widely different circumstances, and during the prevalence of opinions and feelings the most dissimilar; and they consequently contain a multitude of provisions differing wholly in their objects and tendency, and which can be brought to no consistency amongst themselves by any mere statement of their nature and effect, although they may be adequately explained by a description of the circumstances in which they respectively originated. A history of the Poor Laws, however summary, is therefore indispensable for the right understanding of their present and actual effect. The following statement of the objects and purport of the statutes previous to that of the 43 Eliz. is for the most part taken from the analysis printed in the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834.

The sole object of our legislation on this matter, from its very commencement down to the time of Henry the Eighth, and of the suppression of the religious houses, was the restraint of vagrancy and mendicancy. And with this object every destitute person was compelled to confine himself to certain defined localities. This restriction is the origin of our law of settlement, which was substantially created by the statutes passed within that period, although it has been modified in many par ticulars since, and has at length so completely changed its character of a restraint as to have become the foundation of the title to relief in any particular place.

The 12 Rich. 2. c. 7. (enacted in the year 1388) prohibits any labourer from departing from the hundred, rape, wapentake, city, or borough where he is dwelling, without a testimonial, showing reasonable cause for his going, to be issued under the authority of the jus tices of the peace. Any labourer found wandering without such letter, is to be put in the stocks till he find surety to return to the