.

Can any one wonder that the poor decline to accept public relief under
these conditions? That they starve rather than enter these bastilles? I
have the reports of five cases in which persons actually starving, when
the guardians refused them outdoor relief, went back to their miserable
homes and died of starvation rather than enter these hells. Thus far
have the Poor Law Commissioners attained their object. At the same time,
however, the workhouses have intensified, more than any other measure of
the party in power, the hatred of the working-class against the property-
holders, who very generally admire the New Poor Law.

From Newcastle to Dover, there is but one voice among the workers--the
voice of hatred against the new law. The bourgeoisie has formulated so
clearly in this law its conception of its duties towards the proletariat,
that it has been appreciated even by the dullest. So frankly, so boldly
had the conception never yet been formulated, that the non-possessing
class exists solely for the purpose of being exploited, and of starving
when the property-holders can no longer make use of it. Hence it is that
this new Poor Law has contributed so greatly to accelerate the labour
movement, and especially to spread Chartism; and, as it is carried out
most extensively in the country, it facilitates the development of the
proletarian movement which is arising in the agricultural districts. Let
me add that a similar law in force in Ireland since 1838, affords a
similar refuge for eighty thousand paupers. Here, too, it has made
itself disliked, and would have been intensely hated if it had attained
anything like the same importance as in England. But what difference
does the ill-treatment of eighty thousand proletarians make in a country
in which there are two and a half millions of them? In Scotland there
are, with local exceptions, no Poor Laws.

I hope that after this picture of the New Poor Law and its results, no
word which I have said of the English bourgeoisie will be thought too
stern. In this public measure, in which it acts _in corpore_ as the
ruling power, it formulates its real intentions, reveals the animus of
those smaller transactions with the proletariat, of which the blame
apparently attaches to individuals. And that this measure did not
originate with any one section of the bourgeoisie, but enjoys the
approval of the whole class, is proved by the Parliamentary debates of
1844. The Lib