These results, it is submitted, prove incontestably that poor-houses have in every instance produced to a considerable extent the effect that was intended. In the case of the Barony parish, for example, while there was no poor-house, the number of poor increased twentyfive times as fast as the population; the expenditure on registered poor increased nearly fourteen times as fast as the population; and the total expenditure increased nineteen times as fast as the population whereas, since the poor-house has been in operation, the expenditure on registered poor has not increased half as fast as the population; the total expenditure has only advanced at about onefifth of the rate of increase in the population; and while the population has increased about 42 per cent., the number of poor has actually diminished 9 per cent. From the percentages which have been given, the results in the other poor-houses may be easily brought out in the same way.

But it must ever be remembered, that neither the comparative nor the actual failure of a poor-house can always be fairly ascribed to the system. The success of a poor-house depends very largely upon the efficiency of its internal discipline and management, and upon the judgment and firmness of the parochial board in offering in-door relief. Without these, failure is certain, and the cost of the establishment will not only be thrown away, but the administration of the poor-law will become more unmanageable than ever.

So far, the results of poor-houses are capable of being accurately measured by the figures of statistics; but the effects of the system upon the moral and social well-being of the population-the concluding branch of our inquiry-are neither to be gathered together in a rigid tabular form, nor are they capable of complete separation from other surrounding facts.

When we know, however, that the poor-house test tends to check imposture among applicants for relief, and to enforce observance of the natural and moral obligations to maintain relatives in sickness and indigence; to discourage improvidence, intemperance, and profligacy among recipients of relief; and to prevent the pauper from becoming an object of envy to the honest labourer, we cannot doubt that the system must be of immense value in promoting the moral and social welfare of the people at large. There may be no dry statistics to adduce, but, nevertheless, every one will be able to estimate approximately the extent of the benefit conferred. Even without the logic of figures, our grounds for judgment have all the force of actual demonstration.

All persons practically engaged in the relief of the poor recognise a manifest improvement in the habits and feelings of the people wherever the poor-house test has been introduced, and fairly worked. It must suffice at present to adduce one such witness.

The intelligent inspector of the poor for Kilmore and Kilbride, Mr. M'Caig, states with reference to that parish:-"In September, 1858, the number of poor on the roll was 150 (exclusive of dependants), receiving in round numbers £20 per week of out-door

relief. A great number of the paupers were thoroughly demoralised, a few of them living in open profligacy. It was not only that outdoor relief was demoralising the poorer classes, but the numbers were so increased that every twelfth person in the parish was a pauper." The poor-house was opened in May, 1861. "Of 242 registered paupers, including dependants, chargeable to the parish in that month, there are now (November, 1862) only 100 chargeable, being one in thirty of the population." When Mr. M'Caig was asked what had become of those who, though formerly supported by the parish, had thus ceased to receive relief, he replied that they were all maintaining themselves by their own labour and the assistance of their relatives; that he believed that they were all better off now than when they indolently relied on parochial relief, and that some of them declared that nothing would induce them again to become paupers.

Before concluding, it may be well to advert briefly to the effects of the poor-house system upon children. However beneficial to the ratepayers, however effective in checking fraud, indolence, and depravity among the adult population, if this portion of our poorlaw machinery is calculated to injure the generation which is growing up around us, it would probably be productive of greater evils in the future than those present difficulties which it is designed to

Overcome.

Now, parochial boards are permitted by law either to board pauper children with private families, or to place them in the poor-house; and, as a matter of fact, both practices are followed.

Some parochial boards prefer to retain the children in the poorhouse, believing that under the immediate eye of the officials, cleanliness, medical supervision, and good instruction can be best ensured.

Other parochial boards conceive it to be more beneficial to the children that they should receive their maintenance and nurture out of the poor-house, and thus they generally adopt the following course. Respectable and trustworthy families in the humbler ranks of life, with whom the children may be placed, are carefully selected. Either the inspector of the poor, or an officer specially appointed for the purpose (and often also a committee of the parochial board), visits the children periodically and reports upon their condition. Upon any well-founded complaint they are immediately removed to another residence. They attend the ordinary schools of the district, and their teachers are required to report upon the regularity of their attendance, their appearance, and their progress at school.

And, here it must be observed, that the Scottish system of boarding children is altogether different from the "farming out" of pauper children, as such a system has been termed and understood in England. The keeping of large numbers of pauper children in a single private establishment is unknown in Scotland. Our practice is to place in the family of a country labourer or labourer's widow, one or more at most five or six-children, the number varying with

the extent of available accommodation. The children so placed have as their daily companions the children of the family (if there are any) with which they are boarded. They go to school and spend their play hours along with other children of their own class, who are not paupers. They become attached to their guardians, who, in their turn, learn to regard them with an affection almost as strong as if they were their own offspring. This appears to be as near a substitute for parental care as can be conceived.

Again, the children so treated enter into the ordinary pursuits, pleasures, and anxieties of the labouring classes of the country. Along with those among whom they are brought up, they encounter the vicissitudes of life, they become acquainted with the economy of a cottage household, and they have the best opportunity for acquiring a love of independence and a taste for honest toil. When they are old enough, they obtain employment along with their foster brothers and sisters, and they become gradually mixed up with, and lost among, the ordinary labouring population of the district.

The advocates of this, the country boarding system, deprecate the immuring of children within the precincts of a poor-house, and they are of opinion that there the example and influence of the dissolute inmates, the atmosphere of pauperism pervading the establishment, the absence of healthy excitement and the want of experience in the realities of a labourer's life, must tend to corrupt the minds of the children, to break down their spirit and cramp their energy, and to educate them for hereditary pauperism rather than for useful employment.

Upon this subject reference may be made to an interesting report by Mr. Peterkin, the experienced visiting officer to the Board of Supervision, upon the condition of pauper children boarded in Arran by the parishes of Glasgow and some other parishes in the West of Scotland. This report is published in the Board of Supervision's Seventeenth Annual Report, and is well worthy of perusal. In January of the present year, the parochial board of the parish of Paisley, in a communication to the Board of Supervision, made the following statement:

"For many years prior to 1838 all orphan children belonging to the parish were boarded, educated, and brought up in the poorhouse. After long experience, it appeared to the satisfaction of the board that the children brought up in this way were both morally and physically inferior to those of other classes of the community. They were in general much less robust than other children, of a weaker constitution, more liable to disease, and subject to a higher average mortality. When dismissed to service and set free from their accustomed restraints, a large proportion of them fell into idle habits, and ultimately became bad members of society. These results became latterly very apparent, and convinced the board that the training of children within a poor-house, while injurious to health, was defective also in its influence on the formation of good character, and particularly unfavourable to the cultivation of social

affections, and the acquisition of habits of industry, economy, and self-reliance, which to the labouring classes are absolutely essential to success in after life. The board accordingly, in the year 1838, after very mature deliberation, boarded out their pauper children with private families in country districts. The change was attended with the most satisfactory results, and throughout an experience of twenty-four years, it has been found that the children now not only enjoy better health, but are also much more happy and contented. They are placed under the influence of domestic ties, their social affections are brought into exercise, and permanent attachments formed which prove of great value to them in after life. They are educated at schools in their vicinity, and mingle freely with other children. They are removed from the constant presence and depressing influence of pauperism, accustomed to the exercise of liberty and self-control, and in their own and neighbouring households are early familiarised with the necessity of forming economical and industrious habits. The favourable effect of these circumstances is observed in their subsequent conduct. When ready for work they are dismissed with a better knowledge of the world, and with clearer perceptions of their altered position. As might be expected, they more easily adapt themselves to labour, and eventually turn out more useful members of society."

It may be thought, perhaps, by some that as yet the results of these two systems have not been fully developed and tested by experience; but those parochial boards who withdraw the children. entrusted to them from every-day life and its influences, and retain them in a poor-house, undoubtedly incur a heavy responsibility in making the experiment.

The Injustice and Impolicy of exempting the Income of Property, on the ground of its Charitable or Meritorious Employment, from the Taxation to which other like Property is Subject. By THOMAS HARE.

I WILL first explain what the tax is, of which we are about to speak, and why the question arises at this time.

It has no reference to the income from voluntary gifts, whether in subscriptions, donations, or in any other shape. The contributions of mere bounty, whether to persons or institutions, it is not proposed to tax. Again, there is no question of taxing the houses, edifices, or lands in which the business of any institution is carried on, and from which no pecuniary profit is derived. It is not a question of taxing Heriot's Hospital or Donaldson's Hospital. It has never been proposed to value or tax those buildings; but if one side of Princes Street, or £100,000 in the funds belonged to Heriot's or Donaldson's Hospitals, in that case, without some special exemption, the collector of taxes would gather

the income-tax from the hospital tenants, and the bank clerk would deduct it from the dividends, as of any other proprietors. It is property of this kind which in justice it is argued should be dealt with like all other of the same nature.

Why has it not been so dealt with? At the time of the introduction of the income-tax by Mr. Pitt, very little was known of the vast extent of charitable estates. The Gilbert returns were very imperfect, and I believe had never been digested, and if they had been they would have shown an aggregate gross income, amounting to no more than about half the sum which the State at this day grants yearly for education. Nothing at that time was granted for such purposes, and it was known that the grammar and free schools throughout the country were doing almost the entire work of popular education, so far as it was then done at all. It was natural and reasonable in such a state of things to exempt the income of these estates. When direct taxation in this form was resumed by Sir Robert Peel, he, as far as possible, adopted the model of the old Acts. It was a time when statesmen were labouring to revise the charitable institutions of this country. It was a time, moreover, when the annual grants for the education of the poor were still insignificant compared to what they now are. We have now arrived at a more accurate knowledge of the extent of these estates, of their rapidly increasing value, and of the place which they really fill in the true educational and eleemosynary institutions of the empire. With the statistics now at its disposal, it is not possible that Parliament in the conscientious performance of its duties, as the guardian of the public from unnecessary and improper taxation, can escape the deliberate consideration of this important subject.

I mean by "injustice to describe the act of taking money compulsorily from the people at large, that it may be given to a select number of persons, not in return for any public service, or in reward of any public desert, or in relief of any exigency or need which it is for the common benefit of society to relieve by general taxation.

I treat the word "injustice" as not the less applicable because it has the sanction of law. A law which should charge all the expenditure of the State upon the proprietors of land, or any other special class, would not be the less unjust because it was legal.

The exemption referred to does in fact take money compulsorily from the people at large. If a revenue of £1,000 a year be raised from the income of several proprietors of houses and lands producing altogether £10,000 a year, a charge of ten per cent. on each will suffice; but if the proprietors of £1,000 a year be exempted, the rest must pay more than eleven per cent. to make up the sum required. It can only be done by increasing taxation upon others.

It is not pretended that the money which is thus exacted in consequence of the exemption is applied for any purposes of remuneration or reward, and it is not required for the common benefit of the community which is forced to pay it.

In England, we have been several centuries in acquiring the