19 MARCH 1842, Page 15

TRANSLATION OF N. G. GBIJER'S POOR-LAWS.

WITH the unpromising title of an essay on the Poor-laws, and a pamphlet-looking air with a foreign type, this publication is a va- luable contribution to a particular and neglected branch of his- tory—the history of the poor. The purpose of GELTER, the well- known Swedish Professor of History, was to give a general account of the origin and progress of the mode of maintaining the poor in Sweden, as well as of the principle which should govern the rules for the support and treatment of the destitute in that coun- try. To accomplish this purpose, however, he began with the beginning. In a summary sketch of the institution and laws of slavery, with a rapid glance at the condition of slaves in the classical world of Greece and Rome, he presents the most real and life-like view of the masses in ancient times that we have ever met with. The effects wrought by the barbarian invasions, as well as the operations of the Church and Feudalism on the condition of the poor directly, and indirectly upon society at large, are also unfolded. And in the three first chapters these topics are pre- sented, in a rapid, brief, and masterly manner; forming one of the best specimens of general history we have seen ; the generic chs- racter of the whole being impressed upon the mind, and particulars only noticed when they illustrate the general view. Various causes diminish the interest of the remainder of the work; which, after a brief notice of the theory of bler..vnus and of the practice of the English Poor-law, is confined to Sweden. In the first place, the Professor seems more at home in narrative than in disquisition; next,the subject ofthe Poor-law has been so hacknied in this country, that not only can nothing new be said upon it, but the very topic is distasteful ; and though its application to Sweden is less stale, it is more remote. The history of the Swedish mode of maintaining the poor is of a higher value ; full of curious particu- lars indicative of the old Scandinavian or Norman society. By it- self, this matter would have formed a very interesting continuation of the subject, passing from the general history of poverty into its particular condition in the North. In the publication before us, however, the history of the Swedish poor is mixed up with general disquisition or particular law. As a whole the composition is not altogether free from a foreign cast. The earlier chapters of the work are full of passages indicating a thorough mastery of ancient history, and presenting its essence to the reader so far as relates to the subject in hand. The following extracts will give an idea of this power, as well as of the character of the translation. POOR-LAW OF ANCIENT ROME.

Bread and the spectacle of the gladiators (panem et eircenses) the popu-

lace of Rome demanded of their Emperor. It was what the best omitted not to grant and what the severest durst not refuse. The distribution of free bread or of corn gratis to the people was restricted at first by Augustus, but rose again even in his time; so that such a distribution took place to two hundred thousand persons. Tiberiue, who by the abolition of the Comitia blotted out the last semblance of the people's political influence—Tiberius, who sternly re- fused in the Senate to continue the beneficence of Augustus towards a repre- sentative of the noble Hortensian family, sunk with many children in the ex- treme of destitution, saying, "If every sort of beggar were to come here and ask for money for his children's sake, it were impossible that each should be satisfied, but the state would be sacrificed "—Tiberius, whose tyranny other- wise defied every thing, claret not defy the indignation of the people in the theatres on the occasion of an omitted distribution of corn. He gave more than Augustus. A ticket of tin entitled the bearer to his portion at these dis- tributions. Such ticket were given out first for a month, then for a quarter, afterwards for life: finally, they went by will or inheritance. This was Rome's relief of the poor. Moreover, all Rome enjoyed the benefit of a reduced price of corn the deficit was covered by the state treasury. Trajan instituted sepa- rate free bread for five thousand children, and caused their names to be en- graved on plates of copper. Encouraged by him, such institutions sprang up in many Italian cities: his friend, the Younger Pliny, founded one himself, at his own expense. Hadrian and the Antonines increased the number of these institutions of relief. Antoninus Pius revived an establishment of Augustus for discounting; whence the poor were allowed to borrow at the rate of four per cent. A later Emperor founded an establishment for the purchase of shares in property for the poor, and the loans to be gradually paid off. Commodus, son of the virtuous Marcus Aurelius, so unlike his father, instituted a great corn warehouse in Rome, to provide against the scarcity which sometimes arose when the Egyptian corn-fleet failed to arrive. Septimus Severna extended this avarehoueing to many years advance, according to Rome's estimated yearly

`want ; and from this estimate one is led to conclude that the distributions which were made gratis amounted to six hundred thousand persons, though a good deal of corn distributed as wages seems to be here included.

SLOW GROWTH OF GENERAL HUMANITY.

Man is a late idea in history. Immediately without the antique family is

the stranger, the same as enemy ; immediately without the antique state, the barbarian' the same as outlaw; wherefore also the Roman accounted slavery as a right belonging to jus gentium. But slavery affects not merely the con- quered stranger or the foreign foe. It is domestic in the family, where the husband long possesses the wife he has bought or captured and the children be has begotten, by the same right with the slaves he has acquired or bred. Slavery becomes domestic in the state, and increases in severity in proportion ; as not only the family as such, but the state, that is to say the privileged class as such, has the mass under it as a slave. We have spoken of antiquity as though a sort of provision for the poor existed there also. This seems op- posed to that position of experience, that provision for the poor was first intro- duced into society as the slaves became free; which has indeed generally been the case. Provision for the poor as a public concern is least discernible in the despotic slave-state; where, owing to the absence of the principle of liberty, its opposite, slavery, does not either present itself in sharp outline, but is softened just by reason of its universality, and treated so to speak as the child of the house. The care begins in the republican slave state; where, as liberty is cor- rupted and destroyed, the sovereign people at last fall back upon the poor- house. Thus it is that in imperial Rome, pupates Romanus is dependent upon charity ; for whatever worthlessness might be concealed under that name, it retained the title of its bankrupt nobility, and in this capacity received its free bread, which properly belonged to Roman citizens, not at all to foreigners and slaves, of which the ovcrplus number on occasions of threatening scarcity were always without mercy driven out of Rome. That slavery in republics is harder than under despotisms, may indeed be alleged from the example of Rome. The greatest economist of republican Rome, the elder Cato, enforced as:a rule of economy the expediency of getting rid of old slaves, to avoid the

burden of their maintenance. Roman emperors were milder than Roman aristocrats. There was in the Tiber an island, the island of fEsculapius, on which the sick and infirm slaves were exposed, and suffered to die under the protection of ./Esculapiue. The Emperor Claudius pronounced such slaves free. Afterwards the masters killed them ; which the Emperor was also obliged to prohibit. Of a being without God, without kindred, without coun- try, without law, all which the slave is, according to the strict Roman notion, the very misery is not human.

ORIGIN OF GENTILITY.

Servigentem vel genus non habent," say the Roman jurists. Hence the de- finition of gentility, "gentem habent soli cujus parentes nemini servierunt "- birth have those only whose ancestors have never served any one. Whence also it follows that neither the freed-man nor his issue could ever become gentle. The idea prevalent in the North American republics, arising out of the Slave States, according .to which slave blood, in even the extremest branch contaminates, and remains with itrignominy indelible, is Roman.

The old laws and customs of Sweden have this peculiar interest attached to them, that they contain the germs of what subsequently expanded into the Feudal system, as well as much of our old Anglo-Saxon law—of communal or parochial government as op- posed to centralization. An instance of the latter will be found in

the very curious Swedish custom of" protection," by which a per- son who had no property in a parish, or could not procure service, so as to have others bound, as it were, for any misdeeeds he might commit, with joint-stock means to pay his fines, became without protection or peace—it would seem, a species of outlaw. Among the germs of feudal chivalry, is the rationale of

CRIMES INVOLVING LOSS OF HONOUR.

The only crimes which in our ancient laws are inexpiable (that is, cannot be expiated with fines) are those by which this moral security to society was totally destroyed. Such were attended with the forfeiture of honour, which was civil death, of which physical death might be a consequence, although capital punishment in the sprit of the old laws is permitted rather than en- joined. The principle of life for life was adopted subsequently, from the Mosaic law. The punishment of death was, moreover, not recognized by our old laws for other crimes than those which involved loss of honour. The honourless was branded with the name "niding "; and " nidingsverk" implies in the laws the grossest crimes against personal safety, which were connected with treachery,— such as murder committed in places consecrated to peace, in the church, the assize-court, or within a dwelling; killing a sleeping man, or one incapable of self-defence, or one's own master, or him with whom one had shared most and drink, or a woman, "for she shall go protected to meetings and mass, though never so much war be waged among the men" (rays our West Gothic law); killing any one with cruelty, or in a torturing manner; bearing arms against one's own country ; embarking in an armed vessel, and becoming a pirate, which last specified crimes indicate the introduction of Christian morality. All these were inexpiable by fines. In general those crimes were regarded as most worthy of punishment which were committed in a deceitful and cowardly manner, wherefore also the thief was punished either with death or slavery. All bodily punishment belonged to slavery, which had no rights. "To beat a person as a slave "—" to possess no more rights than the scourged handmaid" or female house slave, are, therefore, expressions which the old laws employ.

The disquisition on the Swedish Poor-laws will have little gene- ral interest here; nor do we think GRIPER shines as an economical expositor. If his studies, however, have lain in what is called universal history, we think him, from the specimen before us, well fitted to produce, what is rather a desideratum in literature, a general history in which the results of events should be broadly presented without much particularization of the events themselves.