The effect of this system was actually to depopulate many parishes.  The author of a pamphlet on the subject, Mr. Alcock, stated that the gentlemen were led by this system to adopt all sorts of expedients to hinder the poor from marrying, to discharge servants in their last quarter, to evict small tenants, and pull down cottages; so that several parishes were in a manner depopulated, while England complained of a want of useful hands for agriculture, manufactories, for the land and sea service.  ‘When the minister marries a couple,’ he said, ’he rightly prays that they may be fruitful in the procreation of children; but most of the parishioners pray for the very contrary, and perhaps complain of him for marrying persons, that, should they have a family of children, might likewise become chargeable.’  Arthur Young also described the operation of the law in his time, in clearing off the people, and causing universally ’an open war against cottages.’  Gentlemen bought them up whenever they had an opportunity, and immediately levelled them with the ground, lest they should become ‘nests of beggars’ brats.’  The removal of a cottage often drove the industrious labourer from a parish where he could earn 15 s. a week, to one where he could earn but 10 s.  As many as thirty or forty families were sent off by removals in one day.  Thus, as among the Scotch labourers of the present day, marriage was discouraged; the peasantry were cleared off the land, and increasing immorality was the necessary consequence.

There was another change in the old system, by which the interests of the influential classes were made to run in favour of the ‘beggars’ nests,’ which were soon at a premium.  The labourer was to be paid, not for the value of his labour, but according to the number of his family; the prices of provisions being fixed by authority, and the guardians making up the difference between what the wages would buy and what the family required.

The allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over.  The effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got 9 s. a week wages, required nine gallon loaves, or 13 s. 6 d. a week, so that he had a pension of 4 s. 6 d. over his wages.  Another man, with a wife and five children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had 12 s. a week to support him.  The increase of allowance according to the number of children acted as a direct bounty upon marriage.  The report of the Committee of the House of Commons on labourers’ wages, printed in 1824, describes the effect of this allowance system in paralysing the industry of the poor.  ’It is obvious,’ remarked the committee, ’that a disinclination to work must be the consequence of so vicious a system.  He whose subsistence