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CHAP.  V.

Of Taxes for the Maintenance of the Poor.—­Their enormous Increase.—­The Cause.—­Comparison between those of England and Scotland.—­Simple, easy, and humane Mode of reducing them.

Amongst the interior causes that threaten England with decline, none is more alarming than the increasing expenses of the poor; expenses evidently rising in a proportion beyond our prosperity, and totally without example, either in the history of past times, or in that of any modern nation.

The poor of England cost more to maintain than the free revenue of the country amounted to thirty years ago, and to nearly three times the amount of the whole revenues of the nation, at the time of the revolution.

The proportion between the healthy and the sick cannot have changed so much as to account for this augmentation; we must, therefore, seek for the cause elsewhere.

It probably arises from several causes; the increasing luxury, which leaves more persons in indigence when they come to an advanced age, owing to their being unwilling or unable to undergo the hardships to which nature subjects those who have been born to labour, and outlive their vigour; being thereby deprived of those indulgences which, in better days, they have experienced.  In England, menial servants are accustomed to consume more than people of moderate fortune do in other countries, and they are the race of people most likely to be left to penury in their old age.  In countries where there are, indeed, greater trains of menial attendants than in England, they, in general, belong to the great, who make some provision for them, or who, keeping them from ostentation, can retain them to a more advanced age; and, at all events, as they live a less luxurious life, they can make a better stand against that penury which it is their hard destiny to encounter. [end of page #247]

In a commercial country there is less attachment between master and servant, than in any other; and the instances of provision for them are very rare.

In proportion as a nation gets wealthy, the human race shares the same fate with other animals employed in labour; they are worked hard, and well fed while they are able to work, but their services are not regarded when they can do but little. {194}

Want of economy in the management of the funds destined for the purpose of their maintenance is another cause of increase in the expense of the poor.  In a nation where every individual is fully occupied with his affairs, and has little time to attend to any thing else, those who manage the affairs of the poor find that few are inclined to look close into matters, and fewer still have the means of doing it if they would; so that abuses increase, as is always the case when there is no counteracting check to keep them within bounds.

Another cause, no doubt, is that, as the number of unproductive labourers increase, greater numbers of children are left in want.