hildish, and
require an asylum--second childhood has commenced, and they require the
nurture of children; they are therefore admitted into the Union. A few
others have lost a bounty through the death of a friend, and their
allowance requires augmentation.

The entrance to this class should be carefully guarded against admission
by accident or undue influence. For instance, a lady not indisposed to
relieve human suffering, receives an indirect application from a
respectable elderly female, for charitable aid. Her charitable list is
full, but she does not like to send her empty away, although she knows
nothing of the person except through the excellent note of introduction.
Temporary relief is given. The lady's husband has an intimate friend,
who is a guardian. And, through this medium, the female becomes an
applicant for parochial relief. Forms are complied with. A sketch of her
circumstances is entered in the Report Book, with such accuracy as the
fact of the report being required at the next board meeting permitted.
Her name appearing at the end of the page of the Diary which now lies
before the chairman, and her turn having come, the guardian blandly
informs the meeting, that a case has come to his knowledge, of whose
fitness to be a recipient of their bounty he is credibly informed there
can be no doubt; and the chairman is only too certain that a case so
brought before them should be liberally responded to. An unusual amount
of relief is given, and the name put on the yearly list. And thus, a
decent person, who had by sometimes working, and by sometimes receiving
those occasional aids to which her long life of probity and prudence had
given her a title, is beguiled into that which it had really been the
great object of her life to avoid. Thousands who have been accustomed to
a life of labour, and especially those females who have lived in decent
servitude, regard the workhouse with horror. Now, to avoid errors of
this kind, and also to ensure that the necessities of the case are
thoroughly known, it ought to be a "standing order" of the board that no
case shall be draughted into the yearly list, without having been
visited and reported upon six several times.

The second class consists of those aged and infirm persons who possess
relations who are legally liable to be made to contribute towards their
support, or who have friends and relations who, in virtue of those
social ties which bind men together, may be reaso