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Updated: May 26, 2025
May 3, 1838. State of Poverty in Ireland. Of all the countries in Europe, Ireland is the one in which it has appeared to me to be least possible to establish anything in the nature of the English poor-laws.
Mill's prophecies of coming events. She is severe on the triviality of the House, or the quarrelsome debates of the past Session. She passes by our murmured excuse of the weather, and dwells with a temperate enthusiasm on the fact that the next will be a social Parliament. Do we know anything about the Poor-laws or Education or Trades'-societies? Have we subscribed to Mr. Mill's election?
The possibility of an improved law, which might act as a moral discipline instead of a simply corrupting agency, is simply left out of account; and the tendency to stimulate reckless population is regarded not only as one probable consequence, but as the very essence of all poor-laws.
His policy was liberal and did much in forming the public opinion that at length found voice in Catholic emancipation , in the Reform Bill , and in the abolition of slavery in the English colonies . Then followed important amendments of the poor-laws, extension of local governmental powers in the towns, improvement of popular education, and other reforms.
We could easily detail them, but such not being our object at present, we will now dismiss the subject of poor-laws, and resume our narrative. Far far different from this description of impostors, were Owen M'Carthy and his family. Their misfortunes were not the consequences of negligence or misconduct on their own part.
'The desire of bettering our condition and the fear of making it worse, like the vis medicatrix in physics, is the vis medicatrix naturae in politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from narrow human institutions. It is only because the poor-laws have not quite destroyed it, that they have not quite ruined the country.
He accepts Malthus's view of the poor-laws, and hopes that, by encouraging foresight, we may by degrees approach 'a sounder and more healthful state. He repudiates emphatically a suggestion of Say that one of his arguments implies 'indifference to the happiness' of the masses, and holds that 'the friends of humanity' should encourage the poor to raise their standard of comfort and enjoyment.
But don't you see, sir, how all poor-laws, old or new either, suck the independent spirit out of a man; how they make the poor wretch reckless; how they tempt him to spend every extra farthing in amusement? 'How then? 'Why, he is always tempted to say to himself, "Whatever happens to me, the parish must keep me.
He has taught the poor that they have no claim to relief, and the rich that, by indulging in vice, they are conferring a benefit upon the country. The poor-laws admit a right, and he taunts Malthus for proposing to abolish it, and refusing food to a poor man on the ground that he had notice not to come into the world two years before he was born.
Accordingly, the government bill proposed the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to whom the general administration of the Poor-laws over the whole kingdom was to be intrusted.
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