Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Another of the objections to Communism is similar to that so often urged against poor-laws: that if every member of the community were assured of subsistence for himself and any number of children, on the sole condition of willingness to work, prudential restraint on the multiplication of mankind would be at an end, and population would start forward at a rate which would reduce the community through successive stages of increasing discomfort to actual starvation.
The opinion delivered by others has been, that there are no materials to be found in Ireland proper for forming, or if formed for administering with salutary effect, any system of poor-laws such as exists in this country; and I, my lords, believe that there is no doubt whatever of the justice and truth of that opinion, considering the English poor-laws, as they formerly existed, and as they were carried into execution up to the year 1834, when the noble lords opposite introduced the measure which amended them.
That might be true if the poor were a set of lazy supernumeraries living on the industrious. But the truth is that the poor man does the work, and is forced to put up in return with a part of the produce of his labour. The poor-laws recognise the principle that those who get all from the labour of others should provide from their superfluities for the necessities of those in want.
Malthus says that the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, have rendered that relief physically impossible; and yet he would abrogate the poor-laws by an act of the legislature, in order to take away that impossible relief, which the laws of God deny, and which the laws of man actually afford.
Wheat was sold over again, even at a higher price; poachers were recalled to life, or from beyond seas, to be re-killed or re-transported. The poor-laws were a very rich topic, and the poor lands a very ruinous one.
He did not attempt too much; and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators of the new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered. One main object of the new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of individual benevolence.
"It is, unquestionably," assented Brisbane, "so difficult, that I am afraid some of our legislators are unwilling to face it; but it ought to be faced, for there is much to be done in the way of improving the poor-laws, which at present tend to foster pauperism in the young, and bear heavily on the aged.
But your history, since I have known you, has been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. In the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed. He entreated Bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by Trail, who pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in which Bentham might be useful.
What, again, it was of the highest importance to know, was the true 'incidence' of tithes, of a land-tax, of the poor-laws, of an income-tax, and of all the multitudinous indirect taxes from which the national income was derived? The most varying views were held and eagerly defended. Who really paid? That question interested everybody, and occupies a large part of Ricardo's book.
But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full. After making a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice to be visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who had suffered much; Mr.
Word Of The Day