inhabitants are
poor and embarrassed. And it is to be feared that this evil, against
which the press exclaim so loudly, will continue to predominate so long
as the existing unequal charge upon parishes continues. The magnates of
St. George, Hanover Square, can afford to be magnanimous and humane. In
St. Luke, Middlesex, or St. Leonard, Shoreditch, where the rate-payers
are poor, it is a different matter altogether. And yet it is in these
poor neighbourhoods that the poor live; and where they live, there they
must be relieved.

The administration of the relief given in consequence of poverty and
illness requires great care. The list contains the most meritorious of
the poor: and as the relief given is of the greatest value, it is the
relief most sought after by "cadgers" and impostors. The great abuses
which creep into the administration of out-door relief do not arise from
the relief of the able-bodied, but from affording relief to persons who
allege that they are suffering from bodily ailments without proper
investigation. In ordinarily well managed parishes, impostors, cadgers,
and mendicants have no chance of obtaining relief in money. Therefore
the whole of their practised cunning is brought to bear upon this more
valuable form of relief. Now, from the peculiar habits of this class of
persons, there is often strong ground for the claim. They will starve
three days, and complete the week in revel and debauchery. Those
periods, which they consider days of prosperity, are too often occasions
for emaciating their bodies by drinking gin and eating unnutritious
food. A chilly, foggy, November night is the time when the supposed
widow can parade her children on the highway with the best chance of
exciting the compassion of the passersby; and it is the time, too, when,
if there is any predisposition to disease, the circumstances are most
favourable for its development. It is to this class that the workhouse
may be offered--as an infirmary. It is a fact, however, that those of
this class who suffer from external diseases, and especially those which
may be exposed with impunity, do not desire to enter a workhouse, and
will not remain there until they are completely cured. And then, with
reference to children who are exposed at night in the streets,
notwithstanding the parents may be warned that they are sowing the seeds
of incurable disease in the bodies of these infants, and are offered
relief sufficient to constitute the g