made any provision of this nature, on the footing of advantage on which they would have stood, if they had commenced their contributions at an earlier age.

Your Committee is well aware, that under present circumstances the incapacity of individuals to make even the smallest deduction from their wages, may render this species of institution inapplicable in some parts of the country; but they conceive, that it may safely be left to each parish, under the inspection of the local magistracy, to determine upon the propriety of trying the experiment within itself.

The casualties, however, for which friendly societies generally provide, namely, those of sickness and old age, do not constitute the greater proportion of the demands upon the poors rate which have raised it to its present high amount; a much greater proportion, as they shall have occasion to observe, consists of the allowances distributed in most parts of England to the labouring poor, in addition to their wages, by reason of the number of their children.

Your Committee are of opinion, that parochial benefit societies may furnish facilities for affecting the desired transition, from the present system of relief to one founded upon better principles; and that it would therefore be expedient under the present circumstances of the country, to enable parishes to increase the benefits of the institutions, to an extent beyond the precise result of the contribution required; or, at least, to pay for the admission into those benefits of persons now having large families, and receiving relief on that account. Each parish, consider

ing what it now pays for the maintenance of children, would be the best judge for itself of the policy of adopting this course.

In the view with which the Committee suggest the expediency of affording this assistance from the parochial funds, it is essential that, whatever may be the contribution in the first instance, the parish should have the power of reducing prospectively its proportion, without affecting the rights of existing contributors, so as gradually to render the people dependent upon their own contributions only; but in the mean time they may be used in destroying the familiarity with parish pay, which it is above all things desirable to eradicate.

Your Committee have taken measures for ascertaining by calculation, the operation of societies formed upon the principle which they have recommended; and on this ground, as well as on account of the impracticability of framing any Bill upon this subject in the present session, they forbear from entering into the detail of the arrangements which have occurred to them, as desirable for effectuating their recommendation. .

But the House may perhaps think it reasonable, that persons who have the option of partaking in the advantages which it is thus proposed to secure to them, should be subjected to an administration of the laws of relief, rather less favourable than that which is applied to the community in general; and particularly that the benefits of the Act 36 Geo. III. c. 23, and 54 Geo. III. c. 170, respecting workhouses, should be withholden from such persons.

They

They cannot, however, quit this topic without observing, that a bill passed this House in the year 1789, having for its object much of what the Committee have now recommended, and accompanied by tables which the Committee have reason to hope may be found useful in arranging any similar measure. One of the tables will be found in the Appendix.

Having submitted to the House such observations as have occurred to them, with respect to the as. sessment of the poor rate, your Committee proceed to consider the purposes for which it is authorized to be levied, as they regard the persons entitled to relief, and the mode in which it should be administered. These will be found, by a reference to the same part of the fundamental law of Elizabeth, to be directed to

1st. Setting to work the children of all those whose parents shall not be thought able to maintain them.

2nd. Setting to work all persons having no means to maintain them, and using no ordinary or daily trade to get their bread by.

3rd. The necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them as are poor and not able to work, as well as for apprenticing such children as are before described.

And it appears to your Committee, that the above description and classification of persons entitled to relief has not been intentionally altered by any subsequent statute; that the general term, the Poor, contained in all subsequent acts on this subject, has reference only to th poor as above classed and defined in the 43d of

Elizabeth; and though the persons entitled to relief, and the sort of relief, seem to be pointed out with sufficient clearness, yet the practice has in many instances long been at variance with the law. The statute directs the children to be set to work; the almost general practice is to give money to the parents, without any provision for setting the children to work. The course adopted requires, undoubtedly, less trouble and attention than the providing and superintending proper establishments for their moral instruction, employment, and maintenance; and this deviation from the injunction of the statute obtained so early as to have attracted the attention of Lord Hale and Mr. Locke; and the Committee cannot but avail themselves of the high authority of a Report of the Board of Trade, in the year 1697, drawn up by Mr. Locke, and confirmed (if it needed confirmation) by the concurrence of the other Commissioners, after an exercise of the full powers of inquiry conferred on them for this purpose by King William the Third, and which appears to your committee still more applicable to the present moment than to the time at which it was. written.

"The children of labouring people are an ordinary burthen to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour also is generally lost to the public, till they are twelve or fourteen years old. The most effectual remedy for this, that we are able to conceive, and which we therefore humbly propose is, that working schools be set up in each, parish, to which the children

of

of all such as demand relief of the parish, above three and under fourteen years of age, whilst they live at home with their parents, and are not otherwise employed for their livelihood, by the allow ance of the overseer of the poor, shall be obliged to come. By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them at home, and so be at more liberty to work; the children will be kept in much better order, be better provided for, and from their infancy be inured to work, which is of no small consequence to the making of them sober and industrious all their lives after; and the parish will be either eased of this burthen, or at least of the misuse in the present management of it; for a great number of children giving a poor man a title to an allowance from the parish, this allowance is given once a week, or once a month to the father in money, which he, not seldom, spends on himself at the alehouse, whilst his children (for whose sake he had it) are left to suffer, or perish under the want of necessaries, unless the charity of neighbours relieve them. We humbly conceive, that a man and his wife in health may be able, by their ordinary labour, to maintain themselves and two children; more than two children at one time under the age of three years will seldom happen in one family; if, therefore, all the children above three years old be taken off their hands, those who have never so many, whilst they remain themselves in health, will not need any allowance for them. We do not suppose that children of three

years old will be able, at that age, to get their livelihoods at the working school; but we are sure, that what is necessary for their relief will more effectually have that use, if it be distributed to them in bread at that school, than if it be given to their fathers in money. What they have at home from their parents is seldom more than bread and water, and that, many of them, very scantily too; if, therefore, care be taken, that they have each of them their belly full of bread daily at school they will be in no danger of famishing; but, on the contrary, they will be healthier and stronger than those who are bred otherwise. Nor will this practice cost the overseer any trouble, for a baker may be agreed with to furnish and bring into the school house every day the allowance of bread necessary for all the scholars that are there. And to this may be added also, with out any trouble, in cold weather, if it be thought needful, a little warm water-gruel; for the same fire that warms the room may be made use of to boil a pot of it. From this method the children will not only reap the foren entioned advantages, with far less charge to the parish than what is now done for them, and apply themselves to work, because otherwise they will have no victuals; and also the benefit thereby, both to themselves and the parish, will daily increase; for the earnings of their labour at school every day increasing, it may reasonably be concluded, that computing all the earnings of a child from three to fourteen years of age, the nourishment and teaching of such child, during that whole time,

will cost the parish nothing; whereas there is no child now which from its birth is maintained by the parish, but before the age of fourteen, costs the parish fifty or sixty pounds. Another advantage also of bringing poor children thus to a working school is, that by this means they may be obliged to come constantly to church every Sunday along with their schoolmasters or dames, whereby they may be brought into some sense of religion: whereas ordinarily now, in their loose and idle way of breeding up, they are as utter strangers both to religion and morality as they are to industry. In order, therefore, to the more effectually carrying on this work to the advantage of this kingdom, we further humbly propose that these schools be generally for spinning or knitting, or some other part of the woollen manufacture, unless in countries where the place shall furnish some other materials fitter for the employment of such poor children; in which places the choice of those materials for their employment may be left to the prudence and direction of the guardians of the poor of that hundred; and that the teaching in these schools be paid out of the poor rates, as can be agreed.

This, though at first setting up, it may cost the parish a little, yet we humbly conceive that the earnings of the children abating the charge of their maintenance, and as much work being required of each of them as they are reasonably able to perform, it will quickly pay its own charges, with an overplus.

the poor children of any parish is greater than for them all to be employed in one school, they be there divided into two, and the boys and girls, if thought convenient, taught and kept to work separately. That the handicraftsmen in each hundred be bound to take every other of their respective apprentices from amongst the boys in some one of the schools in the said hundred, without any money, which boys they may so take at what age they please, to be bound to them till the age of twenty-three years, that so the length of time may more than make amends for the usual sums that are given to handicraftsmen with such apprentices.

"That those also in the hundred who keep in their hands land of their own to the value of 251. per annum, or upwards, may chuse out of the schools of the said hundred what boy each of them pleases, to be his apprentice in husbandry upon the same condition.

"That whatever boys are not by this means bound out apprentices before they are full fourteen, shall, at the Easter meeting of the guardians of each hundred every year, be bound to such gentlemen, yeomen, or farmers, within the said hundred, as have the greatest number of acres of land in their hands, who shall be obliged to take them for their apprentices till the age of twenty-three,

or bind them out at their own cost to some handicraftsmen; provided always, that no such gentleman, yeoman, or farmer, shall be bound to have two such apprentices at a time."

There can have been no period

at

at which the literal and faithful execution of the law so strongly recommended, and by such high authority, can have been more indispensable than at the present moment; and some facilities appear to offer themselves at this time, which have not existed at former periods; the institution of parochial or district schools for education, proposed some years since as the basis of an amended system, are now so generally established and supported by voluntary subscriptions, that they appear to afford the readiest means by which education and industry may be most advantageously united. And if the large sums of money now given to the parents were really bestowed on the maintenance of their children in such schools, it would probably more than defray the expense of such

an institution.

The Committee would therefore recommend most earnestly a more faithful execution of the existing law by the establishment of schools for the above purposes; and they believe such institutions would be in all respects more beneficial, if the children were lodged where they would be employed and maintained, for in extensive parishes the daily attendance of the younger class would be impracticable; and where proper establishments for these purposes shall be adopted to the satisfaction of two justices, who shall certify the same, relief should no longer be given on account of such children as shall be of a fit age to be there instructed and maintained. And if it should be found that the 43d of Elizabeth aided by the 9th Geo. I. has not provided suffi

cient means for the accomplish ment of its own purpose, new powers should be given to parishes for this end.

In such an execution of the directions of the 43d Eliz. to set to work the children of parents who cannot maintain them, your Committee see, besides the advantages so forcibly above stated, the only remedy for that practice which has prevailed in the south of England particularly, of defraying what should be part of the wages of labour out of the poor rates, according to an uniform scale of relief, to which an undeviating adherence is in some instances required, without reference to any other consideration than the numbers of the family of the claimant, and the amount of their actual present earnings, and the price of bread. Higher wages may have been squandered away, and the actual earnings may be far less than increased and reasonable industry might secure, and yet the amount of relief is unvaried. Such a practice, by placing the idle and industrious upon an equal footing, must necessarily destroy every human motive to exertion; nor does your Committee conceive it to be strictly consonant to law; for an order of relief they apprehend to be invalid that does not adjudge the party to be "impotent" as well as poor." It has familiarized the labourer to a dependence upon the parish, which he would formerly have conssdered as a degradation, has imposed upon those contributors to the rate who employ no labourers a most unjust burthen, and has swelled the amount of the assessment to a de

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