LTo THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."1 SIR, — Your excellent article on
the "Disfranchisement of the Sick" concludes by saying that "an engine-minder who goes to the doctor because a spark has flown in his eye" is not a pauper and, should not be disfranchised. But this would not happen in any case. The parish doctor could not put him on the list of paupers without an order from the relieving officer, and would not, in such a case, wait for the order.
Only those who have long worked at Poor-law business know how much medical relief paves the way to pauperism, or how hard it is to say why the poor family who have required parish labour, or parish food, during the stress of winter weather, are worse than those who have required parish physic.
Only those who have watched the good working of Provident Societies can appreciate their value to the country, or the danger of injuring them, by any hasty modification of the effects of poor's relief. If this discussion should give an additional motive to the labourer to join a benefit society, it will be worth all the bitterness it has caused. In common fairness it ought to be remembered that through the President of the Poor-law Board and the Attorney-General, the Government steadily opposed the enfranchising clause in the House of Commons, and that the Lords but carried out their arguments.
I think a still further consideration should be given to the question (best, I think, by a Select Committee of the House of Commons), and that your own suggestion of a small fixed payment, by which a labourer who had been obliged to obtain medical relief for hiinself or family should escape disfranchisement, needs fall discussion in Parliament. But is it not still better to let the medical relief be given by way of loan, as is done now in some unions, and allow three months for its repayment, thus preventing the sudden illness of any member from pauperising the head of the family P
I am fully with you in sympathy for the sick and needy ; but with you I see the danger of breaking down the barriers of pauperism, and I feel sure that those who are dependant on the State for support are not entitled to govern it. On one point, however, we need more information. We are told vaguely of the large numbers of persons who will be disqualified by medical relief ; but I doubt these statements. I have to-day received the exact report of a relieving-officer of a town of 14,000 population. He states that the number thus disqualified this year is only eleven.—I am, Sir, &c., Ellergreen, Kendal, ,Tune 2nd. JAMES CROPPER.
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