in different countries of Europe and America.  It was upon the report of this commission of enquiry that the act was founded for the amendment and better administration of the laws relating to the poor in England and Wales (4 and 5 William IV., cap. 76).  A more solid foundation for a legislative enactment could scarcely be found.  The importance of the subject fully warranted all the expense and labour by which it was obtained.

One of the most astounding facts established by the enquiry was the wide-spread demoralisation which had developed itself in certain districts.  Home had lost its sanctity.  The ties that bind parents and children were loosened, and natural affection gave place to intense selfishness, which often manifested itself in the most brutal manner.  Workmen grew lazy and dishonest.  Young women lost the virtue which is not only the point of honour with their sex, but the chief support of all other virtues.  Not only women of the working classes, but in some cases even substantial farmers’ daughters, and sometimes those who were themselves the actual owners of property, had their illegitimate children as charges on the parish, regularly deducting the cost of their maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace.  The system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a shocking want of self-respect.

Dr. Burn has given a graphic sketch of the duties of an overseer under the old poor-law system in England.  ’His office is to keep an extraordinary watch to prevent people from coming to inhabit without certificates; to fly to the justices to remove them.  Not to let anyone have a farm of 10 l. a year.  To warn the parishioners, if they would have servants, to hire them by the month, the week, or the day, rather than by any way that can give them a settlement; or if they do hire them for a year, then to endeavour to pick a quarrel with them before the year’s end, and so to get rid of them.  To maintain their poor as cheaply as they possibly can, and not to lay out twopence in prospect of any future good, but only to serve the present necessity.  To bargain with some sturdy person to take them by the lump, who yet is not intended to take them, but to hang over them in terrorem, if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance.  To send them out into the country a begging.  To bind out poor children apprentices, no matter to whom, or to what trade; but to take special care that the master live in another parish.  To move heaven and earth if any dispute happen about a settlement; and, in that particular, to invert the general rule, and stick at no expense.  To pull down cottages:  to drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few, as they possibly can; that is, to depopulate the parish, in order to lessen the poor’s-rate.  To be generous, indeed, sometimes, in giving a portion with the mother of a bastard child to the reputed father, on condition that he will marry her, or with a poor widow, always provided that the husband be settled elsewhere; or if a poor man with a large family happen to be industrious, they will charitably assist him in taking a farm in some neighbouring parish, and give him 10 l. to pay his first year’s rent with, that they may thus for ever get rid of him and his progeny.’