HOW TO RENEW THE POOR-LAW DISCUSSION.
Orin esteemed correspondent, "A Guardian," contributes another valuable letter on the Poor-law. He contends that national charity ought to be administered on the same principle with pri- vate charity,—that is to say, a portion of our incomes should be set apart for the purpose, and distributed to the most worthy. The Commissioners of Inquiry seem to have made out a strong case against any plan by which worth would be received as a test of the claim to relief; it is so difficult to obtain reliable evi- dence as to character, and so impossible to find sufficient argu- ments to warrant the withholding of relief in cases of urgent want, whatever may be the merit of the claimant. Our corre- spondent grants that "work ought to be, according to the statute of Elizabeth, the test of destitution "; but he afterwards speaks as if it were an impracticable test. We doubt whether in the statute it is at all proposed as a test ; and we should protest against its being considered merely in that light. The use of labour as an accompaniment of relief for the able-bodied, is less to test the genuineness of the want than to preserve to the relief given some degree of wholesomeness : in making the recipient still earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, it is deprived of de- moralizing comparisons with labour of the ordinary kind. La- bour, if it be practicable, is less desirable as a test than as a kind of moral antiseptic. This part of the subject has been much ne- glected, but we are not without evidence on it : even under the old law there were marked distinctions between idle pauper warrens and real workhouses ; and at Stockport an improved system of work seems to have operated beneficially on the character of the work- house inmates. On this matter our correspondent is evidently suspended in doubt, his conviction quailing before the difficulties of the question. He shows very clearly that the present law may operate in fat- tening the professed pauper or prostitute on the public money, while the deserving orphan may starve; but he does not say that
he would make the Poor-law an engine for enforcing moral con- duct, or that he would punish a prostitute with starvation. Do we reproach our correspondent with these evidences of doubt, or with others that might be picked out of his letters? Quite the contrary. We know that the Spectator also has been accused of "vagueness "—of pointing out defects without the remedies—of unsettling without settling. We are free to confess that we have done so purposely. A state of doubt is the salutary state for the public mind at present on the subject of the Poor- law. The existing statute was directed less to the establishment of a poor-law on clear, sufficient, and positive grounds, than to correct the abuses in the administration of the old law ; whose principle the reformers professed to adopt. The old abuses, not the direct and proper objects of a poor-law, were the prominent topics of consideration and discussion. A great check was given to the abuses, great improvements were effected; but, in the mid career of the new law, through imperfections in its framework or administration, new abuses are detected. Minds of a high and able order were earnestly devoted to the framing and administra- tion of the law which has fallen into discredit. Such results make the hardiest thinker pause; and we do not respect that im- patience which would require any one who may see the difficulty to thrust forward a ready-made nostrum. Past conclusions have been shaken ; but there would be neither modesty nor sense in hastening to other conclusions, merely to relieve the feeling of uneasiness which we experience from a state of intellectual sus- pense. On the contrary, much of the existing information has evidently been misapplied, some of it is in its nature imperfect; public men have to revise their past opinions and to compare notes; revived discussions must start from new points : now it would hardly conduce to enlarge or stimulate discussion if we endeavoured to prepossess the minds of those whom we might influence with foregone conclusions. The most judicious and useful state of mind in which all can enter upon the discussion is a state of doubt.
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