ion by a variety
of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the
weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is
so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,--no, his
main care was to stimulate industry and raise hope. The ambition and
emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful
levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose
condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate. Unconsciously
his whole practice began to refute his theories. The abuses of the old
Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and
perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the
best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too
wise to be the Philosopher Square of a system. He did not attempt too
much; and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators
of the new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered. One main object
of the new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of
individual benevolence. If the proprietor or the clergyman find under
his own eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship in
a general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, he ought
to attend to the individual instances; and private benevolence ought
to keep the balance of the scales even, and be the makeweight wherever
there is a just deficiency of national charity.* It was this which, in
the modified and discreet regulations that he sought to establish on
his estates, Maltravers especially and pointedly attended to. Age,
infirmity, temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a
steady, watchful, indefatigable friend. In these labours, commenced with
extraordinary promptitude, and the energy of a single purpose and
stern mind, Maltravers was necessarily brought into contact with
the neighbouring magistrates and gentry. He was combating evils and
advancing objects in which all were interested; and his vigorous sense,
and his past parliamentary reputation, joined with the respect which in
provinces always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general
favour to his views. At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not
only through occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever
thrown in his way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the
house. Every one (Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,--even Caroline, whos