INEQUALITY OF THE FOOR - RATES.
25th May 1857. • Sue—I have perused with much interest various letters which have recently appeared in the daily papers having reference to the equalization of the poor-rates within the Metropolis, and most truly do I desire that the discussion which is now in progress on this important subject may succeed in what it proposes to effect; for if once the wedge be introduced, it assuredly will move forwards in the right direction.
Hastening to avow that I am thus an advocate for the equalization, or rather the approximation of the poor-rates, yet, with something more in prospect, and so far as the poorer classes are themselves concerned, lain led to trace the great source of most of the existing evils which have to be endured to the law of settlement; a law which, however wisely framed in remote and bygone times, has now become a stain on the statute-book To take one of the evils and hardships of this law, it prohibits the poor man, whose only produce consists in the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow, from conveying that produce to the best market; whereas with the productions of the soil, free trade is not only the cry, but is being carried out to every possible extent ,• and, as has been forcibly remarked, under the present system the parish where a man lives, not the parish where he works, is taxed, while the rich parish is relieved and the poor parish is burdened with poor-rates. The locality in which I reside is one of twenty-three parishes formed into a union, the scope of that union being about 58,000 acres, the population some 17,600, and the assessed property amounting to 76,0001. • the poor-rate assessed and levied in these several parishes varies from 'about 7s., that being the ordinary annual u..,sessment of the parish in which I am dwelling, to Is. in the pound. The peculiar circumstances and position of the parish from which I write are these—it has the misfortune of possessing, with only a surface of 3400 acres, purely and entirely agricultural, a large population, some 1400 souls of its own, with a good deal of cottage accommodation, such as it is at least ; and it has for ite.neighbours parishes not affording that accommodation ; the result being, that beyond its own labouring poor, it shelters more than four hundred of the working classes belonging to, and gaining, for the most part, their daily bread in, other parishes. Indeed, I believe I may assert as a fact not to be contradicted, that from one adjoining parish alone, where the property is chiefly college. hold, and where the cottage accommodation is unusually spare, upwards of two hundred of the poor of that parish reside within our walls. One of the consequences of this influx of non-parishioners is to overflow our dwellings, whilst our own people, be it remembered, owing to the unequal and oppressive operation of the law of settlement, are prevented from going elsewhere with all they possess, viz, the labour of their hands ; and thus we are borne down by an unwonted number of poor, and our rates are swollen to a fearful and an undue height. Here let me observe that the rateable property of the parish ifkunder 00001.; one-third of which amount is actually raised for the poor-rate annually ! If I were to attempt to go into the general question of cottage accommodation—I mean such as is fit and suitable for the poor to inhabit—I should enter on a very wide and neglected field ; yet there is no point or matter more loudly calling for the intervention of the Legislature than this does. I have known instances here, and beyond doubt they are to be found in other places also, of from eight to ten persons, of all ages and of both sexes, sleeping in a room not more than twelve feet square—to say nothing of the state and condition of their cottages in other respects. I certainly am not going to deny the advantages of educating the poor ; but I cannot divest myself of the conviction, that so long as the poor are lodged and herded together in the way I have mentioned, their moral and social state must fail of being materially if at all improved by the mere introduction and dissemination of the schoolmaster.
To go back for a moment to the law of settlement, which I hold to be mainly at the root of the evils I have feebly attempted to set forth—to be, moreover, an infliction on the poor man and an injustice to the ratepayer : I heartily trust, for the sake of all classes, that its days may be numbered. Allowing even that its abolition might be a work of difficulty, yet other great and sweeping changes have been brought about by legal. enactment, and the State still flourishes : is it not to be hoped, therefore, that before long the labouring poor will cease to be chained down to their birth settlements, and that the poor of a district or of a county will be made, at no very distant period, to form one community under a fair and equitable scale of rating ?
Should you deem the foregoing remarks worthy of a place in your columns, I shall be greatly obliged by their insertion; and I have tne honour to remain, die., A GUARDIAN OF THE POOR.
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