But let us look to inner sentiments of a nobler quality, in order to know what we have to build upon.  Affecting proofs occur in every one’s experience, who is acquainted with the unfortunate and the indigent, of their unwillingness to derive their subsistence from aught but their own funds or labour, or to be indebted to parochial assistance for the attainment of any object, however dear to them.  A case was reported, the other day, from a coroner’s inquest, of a pair who, through the space of four years, had carried about their dead infant from house to house, and from lodging to lodging, as their necessities drove them, rather than ask the parish to bear the expense of its interment:—­the poor creatures lived in the hope of one day being able to bury their child at their own cost.  It must have been heart-rending to see and hear the mother, who had been called upon to account for the state in which the body was found, make this deposition.  By some, judging coldly, if not harshly, this conduct might be imputed to an unwarrantable pride, as she and her husband had, it is true, been once in prosperity.  But examples, where the spirit of independence works with equal strength, though not with like miserable accompaniments, are frequently to be found even yet among the humblest peasantry and mechanics.  There is not, then, sufficient cause for doubting that a like sense of honour may be revived among the people, and their ancient habits of independence restored, without resorting to those severities which the new Poor Law Act has introduced.

But even if the surfaces of things only are to be examined, we have a right to expect that lawgivers should take into account the various tempers and dispositions of mankind:  while some are led, by the existence of a legislative provision, into idleness and extravagance, the economical virtues might be cherished in others by the knowledge that, if all their efforts fail, they have in the Poor Laws a ’refuge from the storm and a shadow from the heat.’  Despondency and distraction are no friends to prudence:  the springs of industry will relax, if cheerfulness be destroyed by anxiety; without hope men become reckless, and have a sullen pride in adding to the heap of their own wretchedness.  He who feels that he is abandoned by his fellow-men will be almost irresistibly driven to care little for himself; will lose his self-respect accordingly, and with that loss what remains to him of virtue?

With all due deference to the particular experience and general intelligence of the individuals who framed the Act, and of those who in and out of Parliament have approved of and supported it; it may be said, that it proceeds too much upon the presumption that it is a labouring man’s own fault if he be not, as the phrase is, before-hand with the world.  But the most prudent are liable to be thrown back by sickness, cutting them off from labour, and causing to them expense:  and who but has observed how