from relatives or friends outside the house; the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are handed over, helpless and without redress, to the caprice of the inspectors.  To prevent their labour from competing with that of outside concerns, they are set to rather useless tasks:  the men break stones, “as much as a strong man can accomplish with effort in a day;” the women, children, and aged men pick oakum, for I know not what insignificant use.  To prevent the “superfluous” from multiplying, and “demoralised” parents from influencing their children, families are broken up, the husband is placed in one wing, the wife in another, the children in a third, and they are permitted to see one another only at stated times after long intervals, and then only when they have, in the opinion of the officials, behaved well.  And in order to shut off the external world from contamination by pauperism within these bastilles, the inmates are permitted to receive visits only with the consent of the officials, and in the reception-rooms; to communicate in general with the world outside only by leave and under supervision.

Yet the food is supposed to be wholesome and the treatment humane with all this.  But the intent of the law is too loudly outspoken for this requirement to be in any wise fulfilled.  The Poor Law Commissioners and the whole English bourgeoisie deceive themselves if they believe the administration of the law possible without these results.  The treatment, which the letter of the law prescribes, is in direct contradiction of its spirit.  If the law in its essence proclaims the poor criminals, the workhouses prisons, their inmates beyond the pale of the law, beyond the pale of humanity, objects of disgust and repulsion, then all commands to the contrary are unavailing.  In practice, the spirit and not the letter of the law is followed in the treatment of the poor, as in the following few examples: 

“In the workhouse at Greenwich, in the summer of 1843, a boy five years old was punished by being shut into the dead-room, where he had to sleep upon the lids of the coffins.  In the workhouse at Herne, the same punishment was inflicted upon a little girl for wetting the bed at night, and this method of punishment seems to be a favourite one.  This workhouse, which stands in one of the most beautiful regions of Kent, is peculiar, in so far as its windows open only upon the court, and but two, newly introduced, afford the inmates a glimpse of the outer world.  The author who relates this in the Illuminated Magazine, closes his description with the words:  “If God punished men for crimes as man punishes man for poverty, then woe to the sons of Adam!”