hes and
great poverty. Intense light produces deep shade. Nowhere else but in
wealthy England do God's creatures die of starvation, wanting food,
while others are rich beyond comparison. The soil which affords
sustenance for the people is rightly charged with the cost of feeding
those who lack the necessaries of life, but the same object would be
better achieved in a different way. Poor-rates are now a charge upon a
man's entire estate, and it would be much better for society if land
to an amount equivalent to the charge were taken from the estate and
assigned to the poor. If a man is charged with L100 a year poor-rate,
it would make no real difference to him, while it would make a vast
difference to the poor to take land to that value, put the poor to work
tilling it, allowing them to enjoy the produce. Any expense should be
paid direct by the landlord, which would leave the charge upon the land,
and exempt the improvements of the tenant, which represent his labor,
free.

The evil has intensified in magnitude, and a permanent army of paupers
numbering at the minimum 829,281 persons, but increasing at some
periods to upward of 1,000,000, has to be provided for; the cost, about
L8,000,000 a year, is paid, not by landlords but by tenants, in addition
to the various charities founded by benevolent persons. There are two
classes relieved under this system, and which ought to be differently
dealt with--the sick and the young. Hospitals for the former and schools
for the latter ought to take the place of the workhouse. It is difficult
to fancy a worse place for educating the young than the workhouse, and
it would tend to lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained
and educated in separate establishments from those for the reception
of paupers. Pauperism is the concomitant of large holdings of land and
insecurity of tenure. The necessity of such a provision arose, as I have
previously shown, from the wholesale eviction of large numbers of the
occupiers of land; and, as the means of supplying the need came from
the LAND, the expense should, like tithes, have fallen exclusively
upon land. The poor-rates are, however, also levied upon houses and
buildings, which represent labor. The owner of land is the people, as
represented by the Crown, and the charges thereon next in succession to
the claims of the state are the church and the poor.

The Continental wars at the close of the eighteenth and the commencement
of the n