penditure ...an increasing capital would give more labour, a
decreasing capital less."

1. The first important point, in Mr. Monsell's opinion, was to consider
how they were to spend the large sum necessary to sustain the people. Is
it, he asks, to be spent on productive or unproductive labour? If on the
former, the capital of the country would be vastly increased, and the
means of giving future employment increased in proportion; if on the
latter, every pound so spent would be taken away from that capital, and
the means of employing labour proportionably reduced. It seemed,
therefore, to follow very evidently that, as the leading feature of the
Labour-rate Act was to employ the people on unproductive labour, its
direct tendency was not only to pauperize the country, but to run it
into complete ruin. 2. Another fault in the Act, but one of inferior
magnitude, was that it necessitated the congregating together of large
masses of the people upon public works, which tends to demoralize the
labouring classes; and inflicts, besides, a great hardship upon them, by
compelling them to walk great distances to and from those works, making
it almost impossible for them to have their mid-day meal carried to
them. 3. The experience of the last year proved that fully one-fourth of
the money granted to support the labouring poor was expended on the
purchase of land, on horse labour, and on blasting rocks. Hence,
according to his estimate of the money required for the coming year,
there would be a million and a-quarter of it diverted from its intended
purpose--the relief of the destitute. "The Government cannot," he says,
"by act of Parliament compel drainage or fencing; but they can compel
the owner of land to employ the poor, and make those who refuse to
employ them on productive labour pay for their employment on public
works." Appeals to public spirit, social duties, and so forth, have no
effect; nothing will avail but an appeal to self-interest. Make it,
then, the interest of landowners who neglect their duties to employ the
destitute poor upon profitable labour, by taxing them to pay those poor
for public works--unprofitable labour. As the Labour-rate Act did
nothing of this kind, it inflicted a positive injustice on the good
improving landlord, by taxing him equally with the landlord who never
made an improvement; who, in many instances, was an absentee, forgetful
and culpably ignorant of the state of his property, his sole aim b