institutions established throughout the country, and mainly supported by voluntary contributions. The amount thus raised is very large, and is difficult to ascertain with any near approach to the truth. It cannot be far short of 2,000,000l. yearly, and may greatly exceed that sum.

It appears, therefore, that, beyond the whole amount of what is given by individual Christian charity, the sum of money expended on the indigent poor of England, by what may be termed the organisation of public charity, wholly independent of the relief bestowed under the poor law, amounts to from 3,000,000l. to 4,000,000l. yearly.*

Lastly comes the relief of paupers under the poor law; and here we have a vast expenditure, respecting which official statistics give us accurate information.

During the three years 1748, 1749, and 1750, the average annual sum so expended was 689,9717., and the then population of the country was 6,455,672 souls. During the three years 1848, 1849, and 1850, the corresponding average annual sum has been 5,789,583l., the average population of those three years having been 17,488,821.

England, therefore, has almost trebled her population in a single century; and during the same period has increased her

* Eden, State of the Poor, i. 465., with a poor-rate for England and Wales of only 2,167,7497., and a population of only 8,000,000, estimated the whole yearly amount "disbursed in the various objects of permanent or occasional charity," at upwards of six millions; adding to his estimate, that “it is probably much below the truth." I do not think that 4,000,000l., nearly double the then amount of the poor-rate, can have been distributed to the poor of England by voluntary charity in 1783, 1784, or 1785. Baron De Gérando, speaking of 1835 and 1836, when the poor-rate was from 6,000,000l. to 7,000,000l., says, with a nearer approach to the truth, "On estime que les bienfaits répandus, soit par des associations philantropiques, soit par la charité individuelle, ajoutent encore au moins 3 ou 4 millions sterling aux secours distribués en Angleterre et dans le pays de Galles.". - De la Bienfaisance Publique, tom. iv. p. 147. Colquhoun also, Treatise on Indigence, London, 1806, is probably within the truth when, pp. 60, 61, he puts down relief from poor rate 4,267,965l., from charitable bequests 400,000l., and from public and private charity 3,332,0351.; making a total of 8,000,000l. for 1803.

†The average pauperism of the years 1748, 1749, and 1750, was ascertained under an order of the House of Commons, made on 20th March, 1750.

absolute official pauperism in the proportion of 5,789,533 to 689,971, that is, of more than eight to one.

It is to be observed that, in 1750, the outlay, in relief of the poor, was little more than 2s. per head on the whole population: it is now nearly three times as great. And in several years, between 1840 and 1850, it has exceeded 6s. per head on the population, on the average of the whole country, while, in many extensive districts, even now in 1851, it amounts to 10s. per head on the population.

Great as has been the increase, during the last century, in the value of the property rateable to the relief of the poor, such value has not increased uniformly throughout the country, nor has it increased at an equal rate with the localised pauperism preying on it. But the existing distribution of the pauperism of England, as found in the metropolis and in the agricultural and manufacturing districts respectively, will call for separate consideration. At present it will suffice to ascertain the aggregate cost and numbers of this official pauperism, leaving for subsequent pages the distribution of its burden.

The poor law reform of 1834 put an end to numerous inveterate abuses in the mere administration of relief to the poor, and thereby effected a considerable diminution in the yearly cost of pauperism. That effect was fully produced in the year ended at Lady-day, 1837, in which the sum expended in the relief of the poor was only 4,044,7417.

From 1837 there has been a considerable increase of expenditure in relief of the poor, as recorded in the annual official reports of the Poor Law Commissioners: its maximum of 6,180,7647. was attained in 1848.

The great prosperity of nearly all classes, in England, since the repeal of the corn laws, has been accompanied by a considerable diminution, since 1848, in the total money cost of pauperism: the sum expended in relief, for the year ended in March, 1851, has probably been less, by one million sterling, than was expended in the year ended in March, 1848. Nevertheless, even in 1851, the year's expenditure in actual relief of the poor is still 5,000,000l. sterling, under these

most favourable circumstances, and with wheat at 40s. the quarter.

During the last ten years the mean population of England and Wales has been 16,918,458: the mean expenditure for the relief of the poor, during the same period, will be seen by the following statement:

The amount of money levied for the poor-rate, (including as it does county rate, police rate, and other matters, besides the mere relief of the poor,) is always a much larger sum than that expended in relief. Thus the amount so levied, for the year which ended at Lady-day, 1850, was 7,270,4937.; while the sum expended in relief, for the same year, was 5,395,0221.*

* Since an account of sums so "levied for poor-rate" includes many large items wholly unconnected with the relief of the poor, we need not wonder that a return (in the Parliamentary Paper 690, House of Commons, 1851) of the rate "levied for the relief of the poor " in several metropolitan parishes, should present St. George's Hanover Square at an apparent rating of 1s. 8d. in the pound on its rental, although, in truth, the yearly relief of the poor in that parish does not require a rate of more than 6d. or 7d. in the pound.

It is obvious that such an undiscriminating return wholly fails to give any idea of the inequality in the incidence of the poor-rate, so far as the real burden of pauperism is concerned. It even tends to mislead, when headed "Poor Relief," as if its amount were applied to relieving the poor. Every parish included in the return in question is under 10 Geo. IV. c. 44. (An Act for Improving

It is to be observed, that the sum expended in relief of the poor for the year ended Lady-day, 1850, notwithstanding the general prosperity of all classes, excepting the agricultural, throughout the country, exceeds by 143,2237. the average amount of that relief for each of the last ten years; and that, if the quantity of wheat, for which the 5,395,0221. expended in 1850 could have been then exchanged, be looked at, the last year of the series has been the most costly of them all.

Important as it is to know the amount of money expended yearly in relieving the poor, it is not less important to determine the number of indigent persons among whom the vast yearly sum is divided. I will now endeavour to show what proportion of the whole population of England is thus under the sad necessity of obtaining yearly the means of subsistence, in part at least, from the poor-rate.

The questions to be determined will be:

1. What number of persons are admitted yearly into workhouses and there relieved?

2. What number of persons are relieved yearly as out-door poor?

It is greatly to be regretted that these important questions do not admit of any direct answer, by a mere reference to the voluminous Blue Books, folio and octavo, published at the instance of the Poor Law Commissioners, or the Poor Law Board. Ample materials, however, exist, at Somerset House, or Gwydyr House, for answering them; and, even while those materials are still a sealed book to the public, we may approximate closely to the truth of the required answer to each. of the questions.

Ever since 1848, the clerks to boards of guardians have returned half-yearly, to the Poor Law Board, a "Statistical Statement," for the half-year, of the cost and numbers of the poor persons relieved in their respective unions; and, so far

the Police in and near the Metropolis), and sec. 20. of that statute directs parish overseers to levy the whole of the police rate "as part of the rate for the relief of the poor." Similarly the county rate is payable "out of the money to be collected for the relief of the poor."

as the money amount of such relief is concerned, the Poor Law Board have published the result of those returns. The number of poor persons, so relieved in each half-year, has, however, not been published by the Poor Law Board; the only published returns of the number receiving relief having been confined to those receiving it on two days, the 1st January and the 1st July, in each year.

The published returns, therefore, at the most, only supply the average number of mouths that are constantly yawning for relief; but no more exhibit the number of persons relieved in a year, than the number of hundreds of persons in Coldbath Fields Prison, or in St. Thomas's Hospital, on any given day, would represent the thousands received into, and discharged from, those establishments in a year. However, referring to what has been made public by the Poor Law Board, we obtain the following figures.

The Third Annual Report of the Poor Law Board gives the total number of perons receiving relief in 595 unions in England and Wales. on the 1st January, 1850, as 881,206.

But these 595 unions contained a population of only 13,724,508 inhabitants out of a whole population of England and Wales (in 1841) of 15,911,737, and the whole population now, in 1851, has become 17,922,768. It therefore follows that, in round numbers, we must add one-sixth to the poor law returns for its 595 unions, in order to obtain the true number of poor persons relieved throughout England and Wales on the day in question. Adding, therefore, 146,867 to the 881,206 persons then relieved in unions, we obtain 1,028,073 as the number of paupers relieved on the 1st January, 1850.

An examination of many other official returns shows that it may be safely taken that, on the average of the last ten years, the number of poor persons constantly receiving relief, or, in poor law phraseology, chargeable, has been not much, if at all, less than 1,000,000. The number of poor persons relieved on the 1st January in each of the years 1847, 1848, and 1849, was greater than the number so relieved on the 1st January, 1850.